revjim.net

So, I bought a Canon A80. $380 plus tax came to $411. I still need a flash card, but, that's not too bad.

Sigh.

I hate buying anything that I can't easily replace and/or swap our for something else. Especially when there is no clear-cut winner.

I really wanted hot shoe/external flash capability. But, the closest thing I could find that offered roughly the same features with a Hot Shoe was the Canon G5 at $270 more than the cost of the A80. I just couldn't see paying that much.

When I got to the store,  the sales person recommended the Olympus C-5000. I was impressed, actually, and almost changed my mind. It's a pretty nice camera. Lots of features. 5MP. Hot Shoe. Manual everything. The interface sucked and I was certain it would get on my nerves within a few weeks. The lens wasn't that great either. It was a 3X zoom, but the max aperature tapered off very quickly. All around, however, functionally, I liked it more than the A80. And, since it had a Hot Shoe and an extra megapixel, it was well worth the $70 difference.

But I got the A80 instead. I was too worried that the image quality would be horrible.

As soon as I got back to work, I looked up reviews of the C-5000. People like it. But, they did mention that noise was on the "above average" side. However, as best as I can tell, it wasn't any worse than the Minolta dImage 7 I used to own.

I don't know.

Someone talk some sense into me, please. I'm going crazy here.