best flash?

My bf bought a canon camera and while I'm sure it is great, it weighs way to much and is uncomfortable on my wrists after snapping 2 pics.

What is a great (under $400) digital camera that wont be a chore carrying around, will fit in my purse, and has a great flash? And can go more than 2-4 ft distance without blur?
I have no idea

I loved but need to retire my pocket camera (canon powershot sd 630), the problem is the flash is going, and it is blurry (so I need image stabilization I believe), esp if more than 2-4 ft away.

Anything like this one with a better flash by any chance? Or should I keep dreaming?

Oh, and it has to come with a rechargeable battery pack (no AA crap).

A Canon SD series camera...

napoleonDM wrote in post #5721713
My bf bought a canon camera and while I'm sure it is great, it weighs way to much and is uncomfortable on my wrists after snapping 2 pics.
What is a great (under $400) digital camera that wont be a chore carrying around, will fit in my purse, and has a great flash? And can go more than 2-4 ft distance without blur?
I have no idea

I loved but need to retire my pocket camera (canon powershot sd 630), the problem is the flash is going, and it is blurry (so I need image stabilization I believe), esp if more than 2-4 ft away.

Anything like this one with a better flash by any chance? Or should I keep dreaming?

Oh, and it has to come with a rechargeable battery pack (no AA crap).

Perhaps you might be mixing two concepts up.

When you say '2-4 ft distance without blur', do you mean light falloff? Image blur is attributed more to matters such as insufficient shutter speeds. So if your subject is moving too fast or your shutter speeds are just too low, you'll get blur.. regardless of how close they are to the camera.

If you want a Canon with a rechargeable battery pack, then you're limiting your choices quite a bit. So it's each another SD (one of the newer ones) or a G9. None of them have particular great flashes, but the G9 should have a slightly more effective flash compared to your current SD. Also, it has a hotshoe, which allows the option of an external flash (which will REALLY kick things along if you want flash capability). Trouble is, you probably won't take advantage of it because you were seeking something which must reasonably inconspicuously fit into your purse at all times.

Thanks for your reply.

By blur, I mean the image is blurry (a lot of times awful) enough I cannot see clear borders at all on the people in the pic. Even in the ones with minimal blur (or fuzzy looking pic) I cannot even edit red eye in the pics.

The camera does not have image stabilization which I read helps a lot with this (but the people are always still in the pics and posing, not moving), so I need one with that feature I guess.

I know it is normal, but distance from the camera of more than 2-4 feet away from people, causes blur and the complete photo is ruined.

*Has the SD series made a camera which can go farther than that?


What are your thoughts on Panasonic, Nikon? are they comparable to Canon? I asked the employees at 2 places (haha Best Buy/Circuit City) and they told me Canon was superior to them.

I wish pocket cameras in the future would have some type of removable extra flash you could purchase. *dreams*

Do you have an example of one of these blurry/fuzzy shots.

IMO it sounds like either the settings your using or something wrong with your camera if you can't take a picture of people 4 feet away without them being blurry.

2 words.

Handshake?

A canon g9 would probably serve you well. Although it would be expensive in context a 430EX flashgun would also be a good idea - you could use the camera without it most of the time, then just add it on when you wanted better flash (it's as big and heavy as the camera itself, maybe bigger).

The tiny flashes built into point and shoot cameras have a very limited range. For indoor shooting, within about 6 ft the flash can fully illuminate the subject and "freeze" the subject (shutterspeed won't matter).

At greater than about 6 ft the flash is useless and the subject will be illuminated by ambient light. Because of this the camera will probably set itself with the lens wide open, a low shutterspeed and high ISO just to get the exposure right. The low shutterspeed resuls in lots of motion blur.

If you want a smaller camera, but also want the ability to take flash images >6ft I would suggest getting a G9 and a 430EX. For most of your shots the G9 will do everything you need, then when you need more flash power just mount the 430EX (which is actually bigger than the G9).

If you look at a flash the size of a 430EX or 580EX II and compare it to the size of a little P&S you'll have an aha moment as to why the P&S onboard flash is so limited

oh ... and don't use alkaline AA's. Use rechargable NiMH AA batteries instead.

new_user wrote in post #5726089
2 words.

Handshake?

I don't think my hands are that shaky. Only time they shake is when I am carrying something very heavy...

Also the bf got a nice big stand for it so it would not shake.

The blur is enough to be depressed about, also I forgot to mention the "night" setting is totally malfunctioned. It worked when I first got it. Now I am not sure what is going on there.
Sometimes it tells me the memory card is messed up (umm, no it's not). It usually rights itself, but it leaves me scratching my head. This started happening about 1 month ago.

I just think the flash is going, it was never the best flash, but it was decent.

Bob_A wrote in post #5726172
The tiny flashes built into point and shoot cameras have a very limited range. For indoor shooting, within about 6 ft the flash can fully illuminate the subject and "freeze" the subject (shutterspeed won't matter).

At greater than about 6 ft the flash is useless and the subject will be illuminated by ambient light. Because of this the camera will probably set itself with the lens wide open, a low shutterspeed and high ISO just to get the exposure right. The low shutterspeed resuls in lots of motion blur.

If you want a smaller camera, but also want the ability to take flash images >6ft I would suggest getting a G9 and a 430EX. For most of your shots the G9 will do everything you need, then when you need more flash power just mount the 430EX (which is actually bigger than the G9).

If you look at a flash the size of a 430EX or 580EX II and compare it to the size of a little P&S you'll have an aha moment as to why the P&S onboard flash is so limited

I am going to look into this and go to best buy or another electronics store and I'll see how heavy the camera is itself.

Yea, the G9 has a lithium rechargeable battery
But it's not a very attractive camera (not that I care), but Canon has some mighty good looking cameras.

Gah, went to Amazon, that would be $700

I'm not suppose to go over $400.

The beauty of being a broke college student.

napoleonDM wrote in post #5726020
I know it is normal, but distance from the camera of more than 2-4 feet away from people, causes blur and the complete photo is ruined.

This is what I was confused about and still is. Image blur is caused by factors such as your subjects moving too fast or hand shake due to insufficient shutter speeds. In other words, the effect should be greater if they were actually CLOSER. The distance 'away from the camera' is not causing this.

Anyhow, I'd consider your options very carefully before you invest in any IS upgrades. It seems clear to me that you like to shoot people in poor light. Is this correct? This is often where the IS would NOT eradicate your problems.

How does IS help? As you know, your hands will shake the camera to a certain degree. Certain people have steadier hands than others - that's a given. All IS does is to help steady the camera by varying the optical path of the light from the lens to the sensor to correct the shake caused by your hands. So for low shutter speeds (such as night time shooting) where the time of the shutter remaining open is relatively long, the IS will help to give you steadier shots.

BUT this does NOT help when your subject is still moving. If you have heavy handshake, it certainly will help for both background and subject, but just be aware that IS may not automatically solve all your problems. If your subject (such as kids) insist on moving around a bit, you will still get a blurry shot. Just that now everything stationary in the shot will be alot more stable, but the subjects will still remain somewhat blurry.

For this reason, for people shots at night - I would personally much rather focus on expanded flash capability (or better high ISO performance, although you won't get much of that unless you move to dSLR territory).

napoleonDM wrote in post #5726020
I wish pocket cameras in the future would have some type of removable extra flash you could purchase. *dreams*

*Poof!*

Canon HF-DC1

I have one and it can extend the flash out to as much as 30ft. and works well as a fill flash in daytime situations. It's not perfect and has very basic control, but once you learn to control it, it can be useful.