I do a lot of off road mountain biking. I carry a small pack and can generally stow a small camera.. Like a Canon SD point and shoot or whatnot. What happens is the cameras get smeared with sweat.. and get condensation inside the lens from being in a damp/hot environment. The image quality suffers due to those areas.. and because they're 'just ok' image quality out of the box.
I'd like the impossible, the quality of a digital SLR the size of a pocket camera that can take a little abuse and weather.
So far the best I've seen is a Sigma DP2. But they claim the focus is slow.. not good for mtb'ing. Other camera types keep getting bigger to the point I might as well carry the SLR... which I just can't risk riding with, unless it's just to do a photo shoot...
My budget is in the 200-1000 range. The less the better.. but the ONLY thing I've found that's perfect on paper is the Olympus 'Tough'. It shoots mediocre photos and costs about $400. I don't mind paying but I want the image quality to be very good in that price range. I also want it to be easy to use.
I've looked around and now I'm thinking I should probably wait (yet another) year or so before looking for this camera. It seems there are some minor break-throughs here and there with digital cameras but they seem like they've been in the same rut as cell phones for the past 5 years... cheezy shiny plastic boxes with crappy lenses taking mediocre images...
The Sigma DP2 is the first digital camera I've seen that produces film-like quality in a small size. If anyone has used one and could catch high speed events with it, let me know!
-C
