Pics as Good as Lumix
In March 2010, I bought two of these from Sears. This is essentially my first DC so I do not have much to compare it to, but a friend of mine who has had a DC before says that the pics and features are great, esp. when you consider that I paid $47.00 for them at Sears.
I am still messing around with the thing, but the only thing that I can say I do not like about the camera is the shutter speed. It does take several seconds before taking other pics. This might be helped with some scene adjustments, I do not know. It is not the thinnest camera out there, but it will still fit nicely in a jacket pocket.
What I do love is that I can shoot (really I cannot according to the green pics I keep getting) in manual or automatic mode, the flash works well with indoor pics, and the panoramic shot feature is really awesome. The camera's on-screen pic display is very good as well. For such an inexpensive camera, it does not feel cheaply made. It is solid in weight, but not too heavy.
Last year, I tested the much-praised Panasonic Lumix TZ5, also a 9.1 megapixel camera, for a few days. Used, it cost me about $120.00 more than this camera. I have to admit that I never did print out pics from that camera, but I did transfer some to my comp. I would be hard-pressed to say that the Lumix took better pics. I cannot speak for videos, which the Lumix is supposed to do well, but does not allow you to focus in and out while taping; the GE does, but video quality is only OK.
I am not yet sold on the anti-shake feature on the GE camera yet, but I have not used it much either. Overall, I am very happy with the camera. It has great features that cannot be found on any name brand camera for what this one is going for these days. Oh, some complain about the battery life, but I do think they are going by the life of the cheap ones that came with the camera... Yes, they lasted for about 3 days!
If you can get this for $60.00 or under, go for it. I think that I chose the right camera for my foray into digital photography and I got great pics of me and my fried, who I was seeing for the first time in 10 years. I worried that with such a "cheap" camera, I would end up missing some precious moments, but things went very well with this camera. In total, we bought 4 GE camera's that week: one A1251 (which was the first I won here for her neice), then we decided to get one each for ourselves and I won one A950 on Ebay (had to return to seller), then bought 2 A950s from Sears. Were I in the market to buy a DC, especially for someone's first camera, I would make my run back out to Sears!Read full review
