Point & Shoot - RAW capable?

[BSea]

I read several recommendations for buying a camera capable of taking pictures in RAW mode. Do any point & shoot cameras have this capability? If so, what would be your recommendation?

I'm interested in a camera that I won't outgrow, but I'm not ready to invest in a digital SLR.

I would primarily use this camera on trips, but would want it to be able to be used as an everyday land camera. I want to eventually be able to use a strobe, but in the beginning, I just want to take "Vacation" pictures.

 

[diversteve]

The Olympus SP series has RAW. So any of the SP500 series are possibilities. (SP-550/510/500) I have an SP350, it's an 8MP camera and does RAW. Just recently discontinued so you might still be able to find one sub-$200. I like it, there's virtually no focus/shutter lag. It is a little slow storing RAW images though. And I have one of the higher speed cards. There's an Olympus housing for it and Ikelite makes one also.

The Canon A series cameras that I've seen/used - the A620 and A630 - don't do RAW.

 

[HowardE]

If you can still get a Canon S70 - it does RAW, and it's a pretty nice little camera to boot. It's 7 MegaPixels, and also has an underwater housing. It's a good starter digital camera.

 

[dhokens]

You can also check out the Fuji E900. It has RAW, and full manual controls. It's been out for over a year now. Housing choices are limited to Ikelite. The Digital Camera Review Matrix http://www.photoxels.com/reviews-matrix.html is a good source of different reviews for cameras.

 

[BSea]

Thanks everyone. This has been very helpful

 

[herman]

In addition to RAW, look for one that has full manual control. Most of the ones above do but IMO given the choice of RAW or full manual mode, manual is the more important feature of the 2.

 

[jigo]

am also looking for a good point and shoot and am deciding between Oly sp-550 and Canon's a640 or G7. while Oly has RAW, Canon is supposed to have simpler controls compared to Oly and thus makes it easier to operate underwater. does this refer to the manual controls?

 

[DesertEagle]

The Olympus SP-350 has pretty simple control. They're very intuitive.

If you can, wait a few weeks. See what's released at PMA. The SP-350 is already 18 months old. See if something faster comes out.

 

[undefined]

Just for what it is worth - the Canon A610/A620 and the S2/S3 can in fact do RAW. I posted a thread in the Canon forum with links to explain how to accomplish this. Unfortunately, Canon just disables this by default and it requires a bit of a work around to make it happen. This is nowhere near as good as the Oly SP-350, which allows RAW without any special hacks or tricks.

 

[randini]

There's a rumor floating that at PMA this March, Canon will release a firmware upgrade for the G7 that will enable it to shoot raw. If you're interested in buying something serious it might be worth the wait to see if it turns out to be true as the G7 with raw IMO would be about perfect (it just needs a wider lens).

There's also a rumor that Nikon will be coming out with something to compete with the G7 and various other camera manufaturers (just about all of them) will be pulling out all their new releases. By all means wait until PMA to decide. Everything that is available now will still be available then, just cheaper since even newer stuff will also be available.