Digital Cameras

[JESSU]

I'm looking to buy a digital camera. I want something with a lot built in special effects to make pictures look fish eye or black and white and what not. It mostly just going to be used to take pictures of friends and my aquariums. I took a photography class and failed it so I don't care for manual stuff. Its going to be more of a toy. I still want to be able to take a great picture though.
I was using a Cannon PowerShot A***...don't remember the numbers.

Any suggestions?

[Protagonistics]

Whatever camera you choose, be careful upgrading to Gutsy- my camera stopped being recognized as soon as I upgraded. I have a lumix tz3- fantastic cam with great zoom- but i do all my editing on the compy with picasa which is good enough for me.

[JESSU]

I have been searching the net but I haven't decided on anything yet,

[Unicycle]

I've got a Canon Rebel XT. Sick camera, for sure, although not quite in the "toy" category.

[Tundro Walker]

When I was shopping around for one, there was a web-site I stumbled across that talked about a lot of Linux-compatible cameras, pricing, and types. A plain-old digital camera will usually take ok pics that need some touching up in software. The compacts and mini's will set you back about $200 for a good one. (Anything less, and you truly get what you pay for...a POS). But you can get up in price, like $500, and get some professional-grade digital cams that will take very nice pics from the start...like photo-quality pics, with nice lighting, etc that require little to no touch-up.

Most cameras will work with gtkam. It uses a back-end lib that recognizes most USB cameras. But still, you should google "Linux Digital Camera" or something to make sure what you get has good compatibility.

SIDE NOTE: I tried CraigsList to see if someone was selling one for cheap, but folks on there and other "for sale" sites are smoking something...they're charging the same amount you'd pay for a new camera for their used camera...plus, they usually don't have all the gear, manuals, cards, etc.

If you're going to plunk down the money, you should plan on popping another $20-40 for a second memory card, since the one that comes with most cameras won't hold many pics.

[EmilyRose]

I've become a HUGE fan of Olympus's Stylus line... I'm on my second (first, I think it was a 410 or something, lasted through trips to Peru, and all over Spain/Europe before getting sat/stepped on at a party on my last night in Spain...), and they're wonderful. Takes great pictures, mine has a 5x optical zoom (which is awesome), water resistant/water proof (depending on model) and shock resistant. They don't have very many 'effects' like you talked about, but you can do so much of that stuff on the computer now, I don't see it as a huge deal..

And both of mine have worked perfectly on all sorts of computers, some running Linux, some running Windows 95/98/ME/XP/Net, some running OS X... internet cafe's in europe/peru have RANDOM operating systems!!;)

[jespdj]

I have been searching the net but I haven't decided on anything yet,

Have a look at http://dpreview.com

[ellis rowell]

Don't bother with whether the camera is compatible with Linux, get yourself a card reader and the card will work as another disk. I use a card reader/writer so that I can also send files on a card in the post if required. SD cards are easily included in a normal envelope.

The advantage with a card reader is that it does not require it's own power supply (which implies problems due to power failure), as the power is supplied via the USB port.