As I was discussing in this thread, I'm unhappy with the fixed-ISO of my current Canon camera, because it takes poor low-light shots, and I'm looking at options. Either a new camera or one of the suggested external flash units.

But at the moment, more importantly, my wife is looking to buy a digicam of her own whose primary purpose will be taking photos of real estate, both indoor and outdoor. She specifically wants to get natural-light indoor shots of the homes (i.e., not a flash picture, but a nice natural light picture). That means it's going to have similar low-light requirements as what I'm looking for.

The following are going to be the requirements for her camera:

- Very good at low-light and natural-light shots indoors. Imagine, say, a dining room with light coming in from the windows.

- Relatively compact and rugged. Imagine it going into a woman's purse.

- Relatively inexpensive.

- Simple enough for a non-tech to use.

Everything else is pretty much nonissues, such as pixel resolution, battery life, memory card type/capacity, yada yada. The above requirements are going to be tough enough to intersect, I suspect.

I'm trying to browse at www.dpreview.com , but their features search does not include an ISO rating as one of the search options. Anyone have any suggestions?

Unfortunately the only real option for good low light and wide angle performance (she will need wide angle for the interiors) is a DSLR. No other digital camera comes close to a DSLR when it comes to low light.

There really is a massive difference between "normal" digi cameras and DSLR in this area.

The Canon Digital Rebel with the kit lens would be good for this type of task. It would also be no harder to use than any other digital camera, all you need to do is put it on programme mode and set the ISO to 1600. Then just press the shutter release. A DSLR might look more complicated than other cameras but they aren't really if you just leave it on dummies (no offence intended) mode.

Unfortunately of course it doesn't meet the requirements of small size and low-ish cost.

She might be OK with iso 400 or 800. I'm not talking candlelight...

The Nikon Coolpix units like the coolpix 4500 come very close to meeting those requirements, but they're a tad pricey.

I don't really think a DSLR is the only option for wide angle and low light. For one things most DSLR's are very expensive to get to wide angles unless you get the digital rebel w/ it's special lenses. A less expensive option might be a more pro-oriented digital camera like the Minotla Dimage series or the Canon G5 or similar. Those are both very capable digital cameras which will have little trouble with digital noise in low light situations. Really for low light non-flash pictures your only real options is a tripod- no matter what camera you buy. Remember no matter how good the camera is- optics are always a limitation and you can't change the laws of optics. So my advice is get a decent digital camera (unless you can afford a DSLR), and get either a monopod and/or tripod and learn how to use it. Otherwise don't expect to get decent low-light pictures with any camera.

A tripod is definitely an option, but I want to make sure that I can get a camera which takes good low light shots even with a tripod. My Canon, even with a tripod or some other kind of support, produces grainy low-light shots.

If a tripod is an option, then it seems that any small digital camera with a full manual or semi manual mode (where you can fix the iso speed) should be capable, usually the exposure time limit is 30 seconds, which will capture a very dark room so long as nothing moves. It's the automatic high iso that's creating the graniness. If you want I'll email you some low light shots I took with my older Canon S30, both braced (ancient ceramics kiln in Taiwan 0.4 seconds) and with a tripod (firelight shot - 8 seconds). They're too big to post here.

-Zeke

Okay, then. As long as the exposure control is simple enough for my wife to operate, or can be set to auto and still work, and an inexpensive tripod can be linked as an example, then that would be adequate. She can keep the tripod in her car and bring it in for the indoor shots.

Suggestions?

I'm a Canon guy myself, so I'm biased. Sony's tend to not have much in the way of manual settings (at least the two or three I've used over the years). The Canon modes you'd want are P, Tv, Av, and M (Program, Time Variable, Aperature Variable and Manual modes). P, Tv, Av will all set the exposure time and aperature automatically, but will use whatever ISO speed you have set. The full Manual mode requires that you set the time & aperature manually, but will tell you if you're going to be over or under-exposed, and by how many stops.

I don't know how the other camera manufacurers label their modes, but these four types of mode are pretty common across camera manufacturers.

One trick you might suggest for her: to reduce camera shake, use the auto-timer. It'll reduce the wiggle (and subsequent fuzzy focus) you get when you manually press the button. Not as good as mirror-lockup mode on a DSLR, but much better than by hand - especially with an inexpensive tripod which will probably be a bit on the lighter/less rigid side.

-Zeke

On one hand, I agree with Andy that for hand-held low-available-light photography, no point-and-shoot beats a D-SLR. Your wife would most likely consider the Canon D-Rebel and the Nikon D70. Both come with optional kit lenses that are nicely wide angle. For many other tasks beyond your intended usage, the Nikon D70 trounces the Canon D-Rebel, but the Nikon kit is $1299 versus $999 (?) for the Canon kit.

If (and only if) you're willing to use a tripod for low-light photography, then the right answer is almost certainly a Canon Powershot G5 (or the older G3, if you can find one for less). These have high quality optics and excellent low noise with their ISO 50 setting, but beyond that, forget it. On a tripod, all you would have to do is explicitly disable the flash and the camera should figure everything else out. You can use the self-timer or the included IR remote control to minimize camera shake. The only downside to a G3 is that the lens cap has a habit of slipping off the lens. I'm told they fixed this with the G5, but if the camera's going to be banging around in a purse, this could be an issue for you. I'd probably recommend you investigate the wild and wonderful world of camera bags. Somewhere, somebody makes a bag with just exactly the right amount of space inside.

Welp, for now she gets a Kodak DX6340 and a tripod. We'll see how it does...

I can second the G5.
I upgraded my wifes digicam from the S100 to a G5 and have never looked back.
She still uses the pocketcam S100 for 'on the move' shots but for anything that has the slightest bit of composition then she uses the G5 every time.
I don't bother with the S100 at all now. The G5 is flexible enough to get pretty much everything.

To capture better low light photos requires:

(1) low-noise camera design, and
(2) LARGER photo capture-sites on the imaging chip.

This generally means a LARGER imaging chip.
Pretty much all non-SLR digicams use fingernail-sized chips.
Pretty much all SLR digicams use imaging chips that have 4-8x the capture area of the smaller ones.

Eg. A Canon EOS-10D/DRebel SLR captures photos at ISO800 that are as good as ISO100 photos from many smaller digicams.

Cheers

The only downside to the bigger cameras is, unless you spend the big bucks, you're getting smaller apertures. My Canon G3 lens opens all the way to f/2.0 (at the wide-angle end). My much pricier Nikon D70 kit lens opens to f/3.5 (again, at the wide-angle end). That's a difference of 1.5 stops. On the other hand, the Canon has to run at ISO50 to get optimally low-noise photographs, where the Nikon doesn't even go lower than ISO200.

Which is to say, that it's something of a wash. You can push the Canon G3 to ISO400. You can push the Nikon D70 to ISO1600. In both cases, that's three stops. I've found the G3 to be usable at ISO200 and just awful at ISO400. Eyeballing photos of mine, I'd say the G3 at ISO200 is similar in noise to the D70 at ISO1600.

So, trying to hold things the same (smaller camera, brighter lens vs. larger camera, dimmer lens, better sensor), I'd say the bigger camera only really buys you one stop of extra light. Of course, you can spend extra bucks on a bigger, brighter lens for the bigger camera. You can also get one of these vibration reduction lenses that, in effect, buys you another two or three stops by letting you hand-hold the lens at slow exposures.