What kind of digital camera has a lens that can take pictures in a small room?

Question

My digital cameras, including my camcorders really don't capture "enough" area. I always find myself in a corner against a wall to get the most of a scene.

I wish that manufactures would now concentrate on the lens, instead of the insane sizes of megapixels and fancy color digital menus.

The only cameras that do what I want are my 2-1/4" Yashica and my 35mm Monolta film cameras. I really like digital though.
I have no room for my darkroom anymore, and digital is cheaper and quicker.

Answer 1

Dusty's right that a DSLR is your best answer, but that's not cheap. There are not too many point and shoot digital cameras that go very wide. The small sensor used in most makes it darn near impossible to do because of lens angles and all kinds of stuff that I can't explain very well.

Anyhow, one P&S that I know about that has a sort of wide angle lens in the Canon Powershot SD800-IS. It isn't really great at the wide angle (loss of edge sharpness and some distortion are visible), but it's a bit wider than most that only go to 35-38 mm at 28 mm. It's still not cheap...

Check out this page. Click on "In-depth review" and "Read Owner Opinions" for the camera. Be sure to note that the review is many pages long so you don't stop after page one. Check the sample images, also. You can enlarge these to full size images if you click on the link below the picture. You will have to then put your cursor in the white space to the right of the picture and click once. After that, you can pass your cursor over the image and it will turn into a magnifier. Click it as a magnifier once and the image will go to full size and you can really examine the detail or look for artifacts like fringing or noise or distortion.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonsd800is/

Answer 2

You obviously have some idea of what you want, and have nominated one reasonable model of camera. For portraits you might want a lens rather longer than standard, thus 50mm. For general versatility you might want standard (say 30mm) and wide as well. Maybe start with a 17 or 18 to 70 zoom. The 16 to 85 Nikor has good reviews, but is expensive. You nmay need some lighting also.

Answer 3

You need a DSLR camera. Most all of them have interchangeable lenses just like your 35 film camera. I have a Pentax that is in the mid prosumer price range and one of the lenses I have for it is an 18 to 55 mil zoom. That 18 is a very wide angle which is great for macro copy work too.

Answer 4

You may want to consider buying a dSLR. You probably want a lens that is 10mms-20mms as the smallest for a small room. Of course with the cropping factor its about 30mm equivalent.