I would like to know whether there is a noticeable difference between these 2 cameras in image quality. I expect to mainly use a camera for web, email, colour print in magazines. I may occassionally use for print on photo quality at a lab.

What is the best option

-- Rowan Mark Price (rmprice@matra.com.au), April 10, 1999

Answers

Sony mauvicas are famous for being at the bottom of the heap in image quality, resolutions are perpetually behind the competition, a killer for printing images. Still a very popular cam because of features and sony brand, though. Maybe look at the D700 instead, or some new nikon/olympus? The kodak 260 has quite good image quality, good for printing, nice vibrant colors. They just posted a favorable 265 review here too.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), April 12, 1999.

I agree with Benoit. Sony is fun - but you've mentioned magazines and photo quality. It's easy to go down (web, email) but the Sony line just isn't up to printing in magazines - especially if you crop the image to any degree.

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@tek.com), April 12, 1999.

For good quality prints of any size, it'll be hard to get good results from a digital camera. Unless you do a large volume of work, you may be better off with a 35mm camera & film scanner. If you go digital, it'll be pricy, say $650 or up for the current crop of high-end consumer cameras. I would recommend Kodak DC260 or DC265, Canon Powershot Pro 70, or Nikon 950. There are some other good choices as well. This site has wonderfully thorough reviews.

Stay away from the Sony floppy disk cameras (note that they're not reviewed on this site, and for good reason!... it's a fundamentally bad way to store images: slow, lots of moving parts, only 1.4MB capacity each. That's enough for maybe two high quality images. I bought a 40MB compactflash card for just over $100. It's solid state, fast, and holds as much as around 27 floppy disks. Good luck, -Ryan

-- Ryan Baucom (ryan.baucom@ieee.org), April 29, 1999.