Camera for Someone With Shaky Hands?

[anonymous]

I am an elderly woman and my husband and I love taking pictures. We have 2 grandchildren in sports and we love to take pictures. I have a compact digital camera now, but I cannot take pictures at a very far distance and when I try and make them larger, they become fuzzy. I want to buy a camera around $400, but I am totally confused with what to buy.

Would it be asking to much for someone to help me in some way, figure out the zoom and digital or what I want. Some people say if you are a little shaky, you shouldn't use 12 zoom or whatever..

[McQ]

If you want to avoid blurry photos (fuzziness), here’s a quick list of things to look for:

1) An image stabilized lens (also known as IS or vibration reduction)

2) A large max aperture lens (such as f/2.8, f/2.0…the smaller the number the better for your purposes)

3) A camera with low image noise to enable high ISO speeds

For Sports: A high zoom range to enable easy close-ups in sports (but beware that zooming in too much makes hand-shake more prominent, as others have told you). Image stabilization helps with this greatly.

Ignore cameras with digital zoom; this will not enable sharper zooms in your photos, but will instead just effectively crop the image. Also check out this website's page on understanding camera lenses.

Don’t pay too much attention to the megapixels. Around 6 should be plenty and I would not recommend looking for higher unless you are doing so because the camera happens to have some other feature you want. When you have a better idea of what you are looking for, you might also want to look at dpreview.com to evaluate a few different models.

Hope this helps get you started.

[Adrian]

I second the advice above, and wonder if you are willing to purchase a used (pre-owned) camera.

Many photography enthusiasts trade up for newer models and so excellent small digital SLR cameras become available in camera shops, eBay and Craigs List cheaply. This can deliver excellent value for money. Something like a Canon EOS350D (for example) with a kit zoom lens (because they are light and will be better to hold if you are a bit shaky) may well suit you very well and be in your budget range.