Need to spec out a P&S to use at work

Molotov Everything

Edit and preamble: all the pictures this camera will be used for are for internal use at the company, mostly to say "this is a picture of a good product, this a picture of a defective product"

So here's the situation: at my job, we have a company camera, a nikon coolpix 4500 that gets passed around. I won't bother listing the things I don't like about it but suffice to say most of our cell phones get better pictures than this camera with less effort.
I talked to my boss and he said he'd be down with getting a new camera but not to go nuts with it and really, I have no idea what's available on the P&S markets these days beyond what Ashton Kutcher tells me. I figure I should try to keep the price range at under $300.

So here's some quick info that should shed some light on what I'm looking for.
My company makes cables and cable assemblies for medical/industrial/electronic applications, mostly on the very small side. A typical product of ours might be a cable about 0.02" diameter made up of 20 to 200 individual wires with some kind of fitting .02-.05" wide. So we're getting in to a macro range there. One thing we like with the 4500 is the threads on the lens mate with an attachment to connect it to a microscope we own, making it possible to get detail shots of things on a thousands of an inch scale. I was poking around a little bit on Nikon's site and their P&S cameras I saw didn't say anything about lens threads in the tech specs. I don't know if this microscope compatibility is a complete necessity, but a nice bonus.

But at the very least, I'm looking for something that a monkey can use to take pictures of small objects, preferably without a flash. I'm thinking something with good ISO/noise ratio would be good because a lot of our products are polished metal that produce a lot of reflections/highlights under a normal flash.
I feel like there's always going to be an eternal battle between me and some of the other people that use the camera when they take a bunch of unusable pictures and I have to say "no, you want the little tulip mode, not the woman in the hat mode" but I guess I just might have to live with that.

Snowgirl

Molotov Everything wrote: »

Edit and preamble: all the pictures this camera will be used for are for internal use at the company, mostly to say "this is a picture of a good product, this a picture of a defective product"

So here's the situation: at my job, we have a company camera, a nikon coolpix 4500 that gets passed around. I won't bother listing the things I don't like about it but suffice to say most of our cell phones get better pictures than this camera with less effort.
I talked to my boss and he said he'd be down with getting a new camera but not to go nuts with it and really, I have no idea what's available on the P&S markets these days beyond what Ashton Kutcher tells me. I figure I should try to keep the price range at under $300.

So here's some quick info that should shed some light on what I'm looking for.
My company makes cables and cable assemblies for medical/industrial/electronic applications, mostly on the very small side. A typical product of ours might be a cable about 0.02" diameter made up of 20 to 200 individual wires with some kind of fitting .02-.05" wide. So we're getting in to a macro range there. One thing we like with the 4500 is the threads on the lens mate with an attachment to connect it to a microscope we own, making it possible to get detail shots of things on a thousands of an inch scale. I was poking around a little bit on Nikon's site and their P&S cameras I saw didn't say anything about lens threads in the tech specs. I don't know if this microscope compatibility is a complete necessity, but a nice bonus.

But at the very least, I'm looking for something that a monkey can use to take pictures of small objects, preferably without a flash. I'm thinking something with good ISO/noise ratio would be good because a lot of our products are polished metal that produce a lot of reflections/highlights under a normal flash.
I feel like there's always going to be an eternal battle between me and some of the other people that use the camera when they take a bunch of unusable pictures and I have to say "no, you want the little tulip mode, not the woman in the hat mode" but I guess I just might have to live with that.

I bought a Canon S95 P&S as my pocket worthy walk around camera. It has complete manual controls, which is nice. Picture quality is great. Only downsides (being used to a 1DMKIV DSLR) are: 1) no viewfinder (I hate trying to compose with the screen on the back - although you can see what you are getting); and 2) a little shutter lag (although I gather it's significantly less than other P&S models).

Definitely worth a look. Not sure what the US price is. I paid about $450 CDN.

divamum

+1 on the S95. It has a bunch of automatic modes all of which work very well.

That said, it's SMALL, and if you're dealing with folks who aren't terribly camera savvy and would do better with something chunkier, what about one of the G series on auto? I believe it's the G11 (or is it G12) that has the same sensor as the s95.

slpollett

I recently got the Canon SX30-IS. You can use the viewfinder or the lcd screen. It takes pretty good pics plus has an incredible zoom for a p&s. Examples of pics in this thread: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=199897

Examples showing zoom capability:
No zoom:


Zoom to the frieze:


Zoom to the dome painting (800mm)


It takes great video also. It may be a little out of your price range though. I think it costs $375-$400. Probably worth the extra money however. We are really pleased with it so far. It's not like having a dSLR, but it is way more convenient to carry around and very versatile!

Sherry

Molotov Everything

The S95 does look like a good choice, I just don't know if I can sell my boss on spending $400. I'll see if I can find one at a store to play around with.

Edit: I don't see anything anywhere about the lens mount threads. Is that just something they don't do anymore?