Beautiful Homes

Question: What Digital Camera Should I Buy For Real Estate Needs?

I work for 3 Realtors and we're looking to purchase a camera (no more than $350) that will take great pictures of both the outside & inside of homes to include the photos in our brochures and flyers about the house. Currently, we are using a pretty old kodak and the biggest problem we have is with the interior pictures -- if it's a sunny day and we try to take photos of a room with a lot of light pouring in -- the photos are usually really washed out. We also have an interest in doing virtual tours (I have a Nikon Coolpix and I know that it has the Panoramic assist mode that will show a bit of the previous photo you took so you can line up the photos.) I was looking at the Canon PowerShot A700, and also the Nikon P1, but i'm open to other suggestions -- thanks in advance for your help!!

Answer: Too bad your budget precludes a digital SLR.
I ran a search at www.dpreview.com with the following constraints:
* budget < 400
* zoom wider than 28mm (you need that for indoor shots)
I got 7 results. Of these, the camera best suited was over budget (Coolpix 8400) and one of the cameras had just 4MP (FinePix E500). Of the 5 remaining cameras, the Coolpix 5400
has unacceptable distortion at the wide end of the zoom and the PowerShot S70 has unacceptablr purple fringing. This leaves just 3 contenders:
* Fujifilm FinePix E510
* Samsung Digimax A55W
* Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01
I recommend the Panasonic. Here's the review: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfx01/

DB Homes Interior Pictures