Sister is going to Brazil, recommend a digital p+s?

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gerbilthemistake

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My sister is planning on going to Brazil early next year, she will be traveling all over from hostel to hostel. She is interested in visiting the homeless organizations and perhaps maybe teaching ESL. This will be her first time there and she would like to document the trip as much as possible.

I am going to help out with her camera purchase and would like suggestions as to what to get. So far she has told me she needs something easy to operate, small enough to carry around all the time, and not too pricey just in case it gets stolen. I figure the camera should be fairly durable as well and get a few SD cards to go with it. Could anyone suggest a p+s that meets these requirement and takes decent pictures say 200-400 dollars?

Thanks
 
I recommended to my mom that she get a Canon SD1000 and she's been pretty happy with it. Small, less than 200 when she got it, and OK photos from it.
The one slight downside for your sister might be that it doesn't use AA batteries.
I think she'll need some kind of power adapter to charge a camera in Brazil, depending on where you guys are buying from.
It might be easier to get a camera that uses AAs and source those locally?
Rob
 
Canon Powershot S90 would come just $30 over-budget at $430, but it's got a nice zoom range, F/2.0 on the wide end. I haven't seen any samples or anything, but yeah, have a look into it.
 
What I would recommend is a ricoh gx100 or gx200. Great lens starting at 24mm, with the ability to use filters (with an adapter) which she´ll need because of the strong light here. The ricoh has a lot of options (various flash modes, program, manual, raw, etc) and doesn't look like it's worth to steal (yes that happens).

Another thing - tell your sister to learn portuguese, at least the basics. Few people speak english or even spanish here.
 
Hmm... Thanks everyone, I was thinking of helping her purchase a ricoh at first too (i have the grdII), but I just dont think she'll be interested in learning how to use many of the features that makes the ricohs so great. She is more interested in just snapping pictures in program mode and using jpegs straight from the camera. I will look more into the canon's suggested, maybe a more consumer based ricoh like the CX-2 is better suited? OK she just told me that she would prefer the camera to take AA batteries.
 
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Another vote for the s90! Small, powerfull, great PQ, well bulit.

And will keep delivering great pictures aftert the trip too, if you are worried about the extra $!


:)
 
The Fujifilm with an exr sensor has the nicest higher iso pics straight as jpeg and easy to operate and uses sd cards-- I returned mine because my old finepix f30 had a smaller but brighter LCD -- all of them suck on battery life. I'd probably take an Olympus stylus epic loaded with 400 iso film and have the lab process and scan the film.
 
charjohncarter said:
Aren't they pretty much all the same? Just get her one that is her favorite color.
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I agree with this. Get the best camera in the price range that comes in pink. Unless she encounters roving bands of thieving schoolgirls, pink should be a pretty theft-resistant color. After that, cram the most massive sd card you can get your hands on in there, and set her camera to JPG fine. Also, since aperture has such a tiny effect on depth of field with a point and shoot due to the small sensor, set the aperture to its most wide open setting, and tell her to just leave the camera in A, and then just point and shoot. It should have enough shutter speed on the fast end to be able to handle f2 or f2.8 in bright sunlight, and it will mean she can shoot in lower light without flash. I think i would also probably set her ISO to a fixed 100 or 200, especially if the camera has VR, which would let her shoot in pretty low light before she needed to pop up the flash. With those settings and auto white balance, she would probably be able to get the best results with the least investment in learning how to use a camera.
 
You won't need a power adapter if the camera has a charger made for the US.

As noted above, she should learn some Portuguese. And, keep the camera out of sight when walking around. Tell her not to wear it around her neck....

Maybe you should consider getting a 'last generation' camera, slightly used. Like a Canon G10 or somesuch. I'd rather have a higher-level 'old camera' than a cheap current one. People should be selling the G10 in anticipation of the upcoming G11....

If possible, if she's there for more than a couple weeks, she should dump images from the cards as quickly as possible, in case the camera is stolen or lost.

Which cities will she tour? I'm only familiar with Rio (25x) and Vitoria (2x). If she has any questions, send me a message.
 
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The Nikon is a bit out of the price range, I suggested to her the stylus epic but she isnt sure where to get film developed there. It is starting to look like i'll just pick a P+S within the price range that takes AA batteries, I'm starting to think that PQ will be about the same, as stated previously :p
 
I'd recommend her bringing a couple cheap ones, and a lot of memory cards, especially if she's going to favelas. Anything digital is a target for favelados, especially considering the insane import tax in Brasil and also factor in that if she's going early next year (I assume for Carnival) the risk is increased.

I was last down in winter (May/June) and someone on a bike attempted to steal my girlfriend's camera out of her hand while taking a picture of her aunt's barzinho in Ribeirão Preto. The camera was marked for death and ultimately was taken from us at gun point in Barra da Tijuca about a week later.

After my girlfriend got over being robbed at gunpoint, we joked about how angry the favelado must have been later, as the point and shoot he stole from us was years old (even then) and shot at a max of 2 megapixels.

Back to the point though, she just went to Japan and brought a SD780IS (it was on sale for something like $170) and got some great pictures out of it. The lens is slow, but the IS helps a lot. We were at a show this past week and I brought my M2 with a 50/1.5 and shot at 400 at 1/15s, she brought her point and shoot and shot at 1600, no flash, at 1/8th and 1/12ths and got some very good shots.

I picked out her camera and basically looked at them all being the same unless we were going to spend a lot and get something with a faster lens (twice the price) and haven't been disappointed. Takes better color pictures than I've been able to get out of my M2 (I never seem to have luck with color film).
 
Oh, and the multiple sd card suggestion was so that every few days (if she's not able to dump cards while there) she can move on to a new card, even if not full, so if the camera does get stolen, she doesn't lose all her pictures. We lost about 5 days worth when ours was stolen, to which my girlfriend cried relentlessly about, since they were the pictures of us alone doing the 'romantic' thing.

Edit: Also, make she she knows how to drive a standard transmission, there's not an automatic to be found in almost the whole country
 
Thanks, I think i will take that advice and start looking out for a couple cheap ones i think it makes the most sense.

Mephiloco said:
I'd recommend her bringing a couple cheap ones, and a lot of memory cards, especially if she's going to favelas. Anything digital is a target for favelados, especially considering the insane import tax in Brasil and also factor in that if she's going early next year (I assume for Carnival) the risk is increased.

I was last down in winter (May/June) and someone on a bike attempted to steal my girlfriend's camera out of her hand while taking a picture of her aunt's barzinho in Ribeirão Preto. The camera was marked for death and ultimately was taken from us at gun point in Barra da Tijuca about a week later.

After my girlfriend got over being robbed at gunpoint, we joked about how angry the favelado must have been later, as the point and shoot he stole from us was years old (even then) and shot at a max of 2 megapixels.

Back to the point though, she just went to Japan and brought a SD780IS (it was on sale for something like $170) and got some great pictures out of it. The lens is slow, but the IS helps a lot. We were at a show this past week and I brought my M2 with a 50/1.5 and shot at 400 at 1/15s, she brought her point and shoot and shot at 1600, no flash, at 1/8th and 1/12ths and got some very good shots.

I picked out her camera and basically looked at them all being the same unless we were going to spend a lot and get something with a faster lens (twice the price) and haven't been disappointed. Takes better color pictures than I've been able to get out of my M2 (I never seem to have luck with color film).
Click to expand...
 
Did this exercise a year ago for Peru visit

Did this exercise a year ago for Peru visit

Have a lady friend who asked me to find her a good camera to replace her aging and battery-sucking Olympus.

Looked at a lot of the market. Came up with the Panasonic TZ5, and she loved it.

Wide 28mm equivalent
10X Optical Zoom
One of the models that is rebranded for Leica
Selling currently at about $300
Great build quality... good size and heft.
Not ruining ISO with an overabundance of MP (9)

She was ecstatic with the ease of use. She is perhaps one of my least pc literate computer clients and preferred that the camera be really "dumbed down". The Panasonic served well in that area with the bonus of much manual potential.
 
I'll suggest the latest Canon A series - the A2000 - for one big reason: you can find AA batteries anywhere in the world. That was a huge point driving me to get an A590 for our digicrap^m

It's 36 -216mm equiv rather than 28-105 and a bit slower at f3.2 max. Digic III vs Digic 4 but both are 10 megapixels. Half the price of the S90 too... In the end, all she needs is a handfull of batteries & a couple of big sdhd cards and she's set.

Hope this helps.

William
 
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