Digital Camera confusion

I'm trying to work out which digital camera to buy. However, having a
limited budget, I am at a loss as to what to buy. I have an eight year
old Fuji 1.3 megapixel camera with no optical zoom. While I still make
regular use of it, I would like something higher in quality, with
optical zoom, and movie mode.

I'm not even an "amateur" photographer. My main purpose for the camera
is to take snapshots on family outings etc. But we do take a lot of
such shots.

Among reasonably cheap cameras, the following are possibilities.

Fuji S5700. Plusses for this camera seem to be that it's reasonably
cheap, has a 10x zoom, and movie mode. It doesn't seem to have a good
image stabilisation system, relying it seems on using a fast shutter
speed to reduce blur. Using a tripod or monopod when using higher
zooms is a plausible option, e.g. for nature shots of birds and other
wildlife.

Fujifilm Finepix S6500fd. Lower resolution, but it seems a better
camera. Still no real image stabilization. Very good reviews on
Amazon.

Panasonic Lumix DMC LZ5. Only 6x zoom. But has an optical image
stabilisation. My partner would probably use the camera as well, and
has difficulty with blurred pictures.

Panasonic DMC-TZ2EB-S. At the top of the price range I would consider.
But has only one review on Amazon. The wide-angle lens sounds useful
as I frequently have problems in rooms where I can't back far enough
away to get the shot I want.

Panasonic LUMIX DMC FZ7. No optical viewfinder. But good zoom @12x
optical. Optical image stabiliser. Again, at about £200 at the top of
my range.

For all of the above cameras, I have to check whether they have the
"gotcha" of only being able to record movies as long as fits in the
internal memory. Not the much larger memory card.

Also, I haven't ever seen movies taken using cameras of this type. So
I don't know what quality they are. I'd like to burn DVDs of the
movies I take, which would mean letterboxing or scaling the image. I
wouldn't think that scaling/cropping from 640 x 480 to 720 x 575 would
decrease quality all that much. Would it? Also, would the camera apply
considerable compression to the movies, so that they had undergone
irreversible quality loss before I could get them off the camera?

I admit that I'm looking through the cameras available, and there are
such a large number of them that it looks impossible to decide. Any
hints?

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Recording Bird/Nature Sounds
    ... I have a Sony Digital camera that can also record movies with sound. ...
    (rec.birds)
  • Re: Recording Bird/Nature Sounds
    ... I have a Sony Digital camera that can also record movies with sound. ... I've been learning bird sounds (I'm thru Birding by Ear and just started ...
    (rec.birds)
  • Re: Brand new PC - Movie Maker hangs....
    ... > thing--took the computer back to store and they gave me another new ... >> attach this camera to my TV if I want to record movies onto a video tape. ... >> The cable has red and white plugs and on the camera says 'rf out'. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.moviemaker)
  • Re: Which movie?
    ... these movies are going to be photorealistic. ... While I do not do graphics and animation, there is a camera at work ... generated environment will match the camera angle of the real object ...
    (comp.graphics.animation)
  • Re: Which movie?
    ... these movies are going to be photorealistic. ... camera, ... So that if you film a real ... generated environment will match the camera angle of the real object ...
    (comp.graphics.animation)