What I find curious in this thread is the fact that those who admit to have bought from this sleazy merchant just happen to be new FTers. By the way, welcome to FlyerTalk!

Anyone looking for a camera in the near term, this or next week should head over to goodguys.com. I just noticed they are having a fathers day sale, and are offering 10-15% off all cameras. Not to mention the fact that they do NOT charge sales tax in any states and shipping is usually FREE.

I was encouraging a friend to buy the new canon S60, and it came in at less than 440$ for that camera delievered.

Sad to hear you've been taken so badly. I had good luck with Butterfly on a Nikon CooPix4300. Usual attempt to sell add-ons, but not a major hassle. Camera was delivered promptly and in good order. No complaints.

With 2 megapixel camera phones coming out soon, why would anyone buy a single function digital camera?

Several reasons...

(1) My ancient (1999) brick phone is indestructible, whereas most people I know who have a cam phone seem to have trouble with it. (Either the camera part or the phone part or both.)

(2) With the cam phones, you rely on the network and (in most cases) pay to send your pics through the network. I like to take my digicam, fire off dozens (or hundreds) of pics, sift through them after I've gotten home, and keep only the good ones.

(3) The midrange digital cameras have a full feature set that the phones will probably never have. (Whether the shooter knows how to use them is another story.) I can see a day where the cell phone might replace the point-and-shoot party-pic camera, but I think I will want to have a more powerful photography tool. I say "I think I will" because I haven't bought one yet and I am still trying to decide if I want to commit the effort/time needed to learn how to use a good camera.

I am lusting for the Leica Digilux 2.

Too steep for me, especially as I'm on my third digicam in the past 18 months (Casio Exilim left in rental car, and Panasonic Lumix dropped at a Cubs game. Too many Old Styles).

I did very much like the Exilim. I had the model with the 3x optical zoom, 2" LCD, about the size of a credit card and less than an inch thick. Pictures were clear, shutter and save time were fairly speedy.

A while back, there was a discussion in another thread about people not being permitted to use camera phones at all, as they were working or visiting places where cameras were not allowed. Makes me wonder if TSA might get concerned (paranoid?) about anyone using a cell phone near security, with their no photos policy.

I haven't seen any quality problems, but I'll accept that they exist since these products are early in the market. Next year those quality problems will not exist.

Sending pics over the air? Well it's free with Bluetooth or a USB cable.

As for features, the V600 has 4x zoom and next years models will have loads more features. However phones will not necessarily replace professional digital cameras. OTOH, when will professional digital cameras start adding Wifi, Bluetooth or 3G? Next year I predict.

I too bought from these slimeballs. I contacted my credit card company yesterday and they reversed the charge and are investigating it . Mine is the same story, I bought from them on May 18th. My card was charged the following day... it seemed legitimate, I even talked to them on the phone. On May 27th I received a UPS tracking code.... Yesterday I started getting concerned. I was sucked in by the extremely low price... for the Olympus C-5040 I purchased for $365... I compared shop and couldn't pass it up. But as time went on I started to get paranoid.... maybe it was too cheap considering best buy and circuit city were at $850-899. I am not at all experienced with this technology and it was a gift for my husband. I got online yesterday to try to figure things out and their website was gone... the only link it gave me was to this website and to find others with the same problem... well I thinik we were duped big time. I am soo bothered by this that I am not sitting back if anyone could give me more info on who to report them to It would be greatly appreciated.......

Lisa
McHenry, IL

At this time, I don't think any of the Sprint PCS (my crappy carrier) phones have enough built-in memory to allow me to store a lot of pics in the handset and then download them (or "Bluetooth" them) to another device later. PCS offers a new PDA-type device that has a camera in it, but everybody I know who has one of these (without the camera) always has trouble with it, so I don't think I want to go there.

That would be awesome to get a good digital camera with WiFi capability. Imagine being in just about any city in the world and zapping a couple gigs of data from your cam to the Internet while you sit and have lunch. Cool! ^ (Okay, so it might not be that easy until late in the decade, but it'll happen eventually...)

Couple of reasons. First, I dont think 2 megapixels is enough. I currently have a 3+ megapixel Canon and it is barely adequate in terms of image quality. I wouldnt consider anything less than 3 megapixels and I cant wait to move to six or more. Secondly, the phones typically have vastly inferior lenses when compared to standalone cameras from good manufacturers like Canon, Nikon, Lieca, etc. Third, the amount of control one has over exposure on the phones is virtually zero while on a good stand alone camera it is substantial.

I've had my Canon powershot S500 for 2 months now and am very happy with it.It has a really good 5 megapixel lens. It prints clear and crisp pictures.


For $499, it's a great deal!

James