I am going on a 3 week trip to Europe next month and wanted to buy a digital camera for it. I have two choices:

Canon G5

OR

Canon Digital Rebel?

What would you recommend? I'm torn between the G5's ability to take movies, flip out LCD screen and the Digital Rebel's ability to take absolutely stunning photos of almost everything.

 

The Canon G5 will suffer from the infuriating lag between pressing the button and the photo being taken that all of the non-SLR digitals suffer from.

This makes action shots almost impossible and even something as simple as trying to photograph the kids is difficult.

The Canon Digital Rebel is going to be much larger and not so easy to carry about in the pocket.

I spent ~$850 on my last camera but if I was buying now I would get an SLR ..... and probably a small cheaper camera like an IXUS as well.

 

great question for the photo gallery forum on this board!

 

The lag is very annoying. I have a Nikon coolpix 5700 but i'm thinking of selling it just for this reason and getting a Nikon D100 SLR. It's near impossible to take a nice pic of something that is moving.

 

I agree with both StevenM and S2k. I bought the Canon G2 when it came out and the lag is really annoying. I'd take the Digital Rebel out of your two choices.

 

I'd pick a Canon G3 over a G5 ... it'll be much cheaper and the G5 has problems from what I hear, something about trying to get 5 megapixels out of a component that really can only do 4 megapixels ... it would take a scientist to explain ...

 

Rebel EOS Digital will be my choice.

My Father-in-law just got one on my advice. I have a G2 from about 2 years ago and LOVE it STILL! I like the fact that it takes my 35mm SLR EOS A2e Lenses and compatable with 540ez flash. It's pretty fast to focus and very user friendly.

 

I just bought a Fujifilm Finepix F700. This camera is fantastic - state of the Art. Nobody else comes close right now. New octogonal pixel configuration (two different sizes -- for light and dark) gives you the closest thing to 35 mm film resolution. You might check out this link:
http://google4-cnet.com.com/Fujifilm_FineP...ag=pl&q=finepix

 

I just bought a Fujifilm S7000. I take mostly product shots, but need the higher resolusion for catalog images. I'm not a pro by any stretch, but I have pretty good luck with the Fuji. I was pretty maxed out on budget, but if it were an option, I would have picked up the SLR. The below shot is pretty true. A little color balance is all I did.

 

For those who are experiencing annoying shutter lag, are you pre-focusing the camera (half press the shutter) before taking the picture? If not, you should be. My Olympus C-2100 Ultra Zoom (2.1 megapixels, a few years old) will take about a second to nab a shot if I haven't pre-focused. If I half press the shutter it'll take nearly a second to set the focus and exposure, but then when I press the shutter all the way down the picture is taken pretty much instantly. Less than 2 tenths of a second for sure. I use it for action photography all the time, and have had a lot of fun with it (the 10x optical zoom helps a lot here).

http://www.pbase.com/image/21824052
http://www.pbase.com/image/21824047
http://www.pbase.com/image/15519638
http://www.pbase.com/image/15519614
http://www.pbase.com/image/15217853
http://www.pbase.com/image/8099294
http://www.pbase.com/image/8099274
http://www.pbase.com/image/16762475

That said I'm looking into the Canon Digital Rebel (SLR) next year. My old Olympus' major shortcoming is its low resolution and low light noise.