So we saved, and shopped, and looked, and spent months debating, then finally bought a new digital camera. It’s coming in the mail, and should probably be here by Friday. It’s the Kodak Easyshare Z7590. We’ll have to let you know how well it works after it arrives, but the cool thing, to me, was the great deal we got.
We had been hunting for a good deal on a digital camera. The one we have was a Wal-Mart special, $99.98 piece of junk. The funny thing is, the pictures it takes aren’t great, they tend to be really fuzzy when taken indoors, the shutter speed is laughable… yet it worked. We liked it, because we could take a ton of pictures, put them on an SD card, dump them on the hard drive of our PC or Mac, and be able to take all the pictures we liked without spending a fortune on developing them all. We’ve used it a lot, and the cheap-o digital has lasted longer than any other camera we’ve owned. It’s still working! Maybe we’ll give it to the kids or something.
But really, how many of your pictures turn out to be “keepers” that you scrapbook? Maybe out of a whole roll, 2-5 pictures will be worth keeping. The rest may make decent fodder for the lining of scrapbook pages, or they’ll sit in a dusty bin moldering in the attic.
Anyway, we knew we wanted a new digital camera to replace the old. A conventional camera just makes no sense for us. After several months of off-and-on hunting, we finally figured out what it was we wanted:
- Minimum of 4 megapixels, so that we could print out an 8×10 photo from our printer and have it look good.
- High optical zoom capability. This is important, because most “point-and-shoot” cameras only zoom up to 3X using their optical lens, and then maybe 3X more using “digital zoom”, which really sods the quality of the photo. You’re better off not using digital zoom at all, and just cropping the picture later.
- Good reviews
- A name-brand. No more “Connor 5000” or “GenericBrand001”.
- We wanted to make sure that the viewfinder view (the little eyepiece) and the display would give you exactly the same picture. The problem with our existing digital camera is that the viewfinder is, at best, a gross approximation of what you’ll get from the screen. But when you’re taking pictures outdoors in bright sunlight, there’s not an LCD made that can handle that kind of glare.
- It had to use “SD”, or “Secure Digital” media. It’s what we’re already using for our electronics, and I like to stick with it. We actually ended up deciding on SD some years ago because that was what our Palms supported. I’ve never regretted the decision, as I have an SD slot in the side of my laptop, SD readers on our computers, and everything we use uses SD. Makes it easy to figure out if we can transfer stuff without weird cables everywhere.
- It had to support video with audio. We’re not looking to make it into a camcorder, but occasionally you just can’t capture the moment in a still shot. Then it’s nice to kick the camera into video mode, and record a few minutes of video to archive the movement of something special. Our old camera had the ability to do video, but no audio.
- It had to have ways to add at least a few accessories. With the high-zoom capability, a tripod mount would be a must.
- It needed a high-quality glass lens.
With that laundry list, there are actually a ton of different choices available. We looked at several of them, and the one that kept popping up was the Kodak Z7590, along with its little brothers in the “DX” series. The camera is 5 megapixels, 10X zoom, has excellent reviews, is a name brand, has a digital viewfinder (a second, small LCD which shows the same image as the large LCD), uses SD media, does video recording at SVHS quality with audio, can do a tripod and a shoe flash, and has a reasonable-quality glass lens. So we checked out the camera in Wal-Mart and a CompUSA, found that it had the features we wanted, and more, and set out to find the best deal.
About the only thing missing is the possibility of using a remote control. Remotes are handy for when you’re taking a picture at very high zoom and don’t want to jiggle the camera at all by pushing the button. A timer can serve a similar function by letting you stay hands-off when the camera shoots, but it’s slightly less convenient. Oh well.
We didn’t know when we started hunting, but Dell sells consumer electronics. It’s not their primary business, but if it’s closely associated with computers — as digital cameras are — they probably sell it. Anyway, in cruising the Internet for good deals, I ran across an article talking about “coupon stacking” with Dell.
I’d stacked coupons buying my laptop from them several months ago, and saved a crazy amount of money versus regular price. About $800. I hadn’t even thought of it for anything other than computers, though.
Well, we were able to do it again. Regular retail on the camera is about $400. We used a 20% off coupon code that we found on the Internet for that specific model of camera. Then I found a “$30 off all orders of $300 or more or $60 off all orders of $500 or more” coupon. And Dell Home was running a promotion with free shipping for all orders of $25.00 or more.
So I bought a tripod and a 1GB memory card to go along with the camera. This changed our pre-coupon price to a little over $500. We applied the $60.00 off coupon, then the 20% off the camera price coupon (order is important: if we applied the camera coupon first, Dell’s web site would only let us take $30.00 off the total order via the Dell Home coupon, as it was then less than $500.00). I changed my shipping option to the “free” option.
Total price for a top-of-the-line point-and-shoot Kodak camera, plus tripod and a gigabyte of memory: $365.00. Retail price for the camera alone — and the price down at the local Wal-Mart — is within pennies of $400.00. We saved over a hundred twenty dollars by shopping smart. It’s even a better deal than I could find trying to get it through Amazon, or off eBay.
The experience showed me that, many times, there are much better ways to shop than your standard “run down to Wal-Mart and buy one” approach. They may advertise “always low prices”, but there are ways to get high-quality products from reputable dealers for substantially less than the Mart.