DAKFL - zoom me in

[purplerabbits]

I wish to buy a digital camera with a lot of optical zoom for photies of birds and other things. I do not want to spend more than £150. I was thinking of this one Fuji FinePix S5700 Digital Camera (7.0MP, 10x Optical) 2.5" LCD purely cos I saw in reduced in Jessops and Amazon have it even cheaper (which is not to say cheap). Does anyone have any others to recommend/warn against or notes of things I should think about?

Comments

High magnification

[nojay.livejournal.com]

If you're using high zoom settings you really could use image stabilisation, where the camera reduces image blur by moving the lens system to compensate for for hand shake. Look for the letters "IS" in the name or description of the camera. Sadly there are few cameras with IS under 150 quid and most of them have lower pixel counts than the newer better cameras.

I've just bought a Canon A640 which only has a 4x zoom lens but it does have a 10Mpixel sensor. This allows me a false "digital" zoom option where I can crop out the middle of a larger image and still view it in some detail. PCworld are selling these cameras online for just under 160 quid at the moment.