Last year I started teaching high school students photography. I wanted to recommend an inexpensive P&S that could shoot in Manual, and found the Canon A590IS. Just over $100, shoots manual, great image quality. Perfect!

I will be teaching again this fall, but Canon has discontinued this camera. None of the replacements I see offer Manual shooting mode. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jeff

One of the classes I teach is beginning digital photography and this issue came up recently. One of my students is using the below Canon and it seems to fit the bill. It is more than $100 bucks but the IQ looks very nice for a cheap P&S and it does offer manual exposure control:

Canon Sx110IS

Here is Canon's answer to me:

Actually, you are correct the A1000IS doesn't have a manual mode like
the A590IS as you have noticed and stated. I am not sure why the Manual
feature was removed. To set these features manually you will now need
to turn the mode dial to the P mode. Once in the P mode you can
manually set the ISO, Aperture, or Shutter.

jcbradshaw wrote:
Here is Canon's answer to me:

Actually, you are correct the A1000IS doesn't have a manual mode like
the A590IS as you have noticed and stated. I am not sure why the Manual
feature was removed. To set these features manually you will now need
to turn the mode dial to the P mode. Once in the P mode you can
manually set the ISO, Aperture, or Shutter.


That does not make any sense. If you are in the P mode, would not the camera automatically set the other parameters so the exposure would always be perfect? Not much of a learning nor manual mode if that is the case. Canon probably just hopes to get more money out of the more expensive model I mentioned.

At one time, I had put together a list of inexpensive digital cameras that offered full manual exposure control. I will try to locate it and post as Canon is not the only brand out there!

Check this Panasonic out. I have not used it but it appears to offer complete manual control for $99!

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-DMC-LZ8K-Digital-Optical-Stabilized/dp/B0011Z23XK

Tariq Gibran wrote:
Check this Panasonic out. I have not used it but it appears to offer complete manual control for $99!

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-DMC-LZ8K-Digital-Optical-Stabilized/dp/B0011Z23XK


Wow. You are right. I must have missed that one. I went to B&H, sorted by price (lowest to highest) and the first fully manual one I found was the Fuji Finepix S1500 for $185. I'll be able to offer one very low price option, then some more expensive ones.

It even gets some decent reviews.

Get a s/h Canon G6......

anthonygh wrote:
Get a s/h Canon G6......

I was looking at that, but only for my daughter. I can't ask an entire class of students to go out and find used G6's. Actually, for my daughter, I think she'd get a lot out of a used G10.

Used cameras can also introduce other issues for beginning students. If the camera is malfunctioning, the student might not even know or think its something they are doing wrong when the issue turns out to be with the used camera. As the teacher, you end up having to check out the camera yourself. For a whole class, that would be a nightmare waiting to happen.

Manual mode for a p&s digital doesn't get you all that much except for bugs and flowers. The optics are ultra-wide and so for a short zoom you'll not see so much oof background anyway.

You'd be better off with a p&s that has a dedicated control for EV adjustment and also a live histogram. Also get them to make hoods for backlight sunlight shots.

If you are teaching girls, however, then they'll be interested in flowers and may benefit from aperture control.

Lorriman,

I understand your point. I am teaching boys and girls, but the bigger issue is I want them to think about all three exposure controls. It just does not seem to me that EV adjustment really makes them think about it, but I am open to correction on that.

Jeff

In that case you might be better off spending on cheap film cameras but getting them to share (which is what we had to do at school).

Minolta MD and Canon FD/FL are obsolete mounts whose lenses can't be used for digital.

I picked up a Minolta XG-M with an 50/1.4 for £22 (inc. postage) off ebay.

You could get a variety of these kinds of cameras quite quickly, although of course some will be duds but at such a price that's no real problem. They bring their own film and get it devved for themselves (off-loading the cost which in anycase is for their own photos), and you get them to make notes for every shot and provide the scanner.

The XG-M, for example, has full manual as well as AV and an EV dial and, most importantly, a dof preview button.

We devved out own negs and printed (B&W).

I should add that you will need to spend 30 minutes replacing the light seals on most of these older cameras. But it's not hard and a light seal kit can be bought off ebay for less than £10 and do several cameras. A class of 20 might be 10 cameras. That's 5 glorious hours replacing light seals.