I noniced a camera listed in a couple peoples EDC list when I searched. I'm interested in knowing if you EDC a camera and if so what model.
My wife EDC's our Nikon CoolPix 5600 but its only 18 months old and the battery door ir cracked and its all scratched and worn so it hasn't held up very well. Then it takes videos in quicktime format and I tried to download and install the quicktime player at my parents house only to be forced to install itunes and so much other crap that I gave up after the 12th reboot. Its also slow, the flash can take 10 seconds to re-charge which seems to be a common complaint among the <$200 P&S cameras.
So I bought her a nice high end camera, but qiality comes at a price and the price is size, she can't edc it in her purse any more. We have a pair of camera phones and the pictures are OK but low resolution, thek kind of look like the pictures you get from a Sony camera so they are not working real well as a supplement to the big camera.
So I'm going back to thinking about small pocketable cameras, maybe like the Canon digial Elpf series but all those use a propritary Lithium Ion battery so you have the up front cost of a spare battery and then have the ongoing cost of replacement batteries in a couple years. Maybe a better camera phone, are there any, most I see are VGA resolution.
So wat does everyone else use?

Actually, in a manner of speaking, I do EDC a camera. I have a blackbery pearl cell phone, and it has a camera function built into it. It isn't the greatest; the resolution is pretty good, but the flash is rather weak, and night shots can get pretty grainy.

I use it quite a bit, since it is always with me, and it interfaces with my laptop via a USB plug in. I can also use it to email or MMS the pics I take to other people thanks to having enterprise access to my business email service.

Ain't the 21st century grand?

It is 640x480 like most camera phones? Thats the resolution I'm at now so I'm looking for something whose resolution looks like its from this century
I'm finiding this Samsung A990 which has a 3.2MP camera but reiews say it lacks in useability and I had a samsung phone whose hinge broke and aparently it was a known issue with a lot of Samsung models at the time yet they refused to do anything about it.

This will be for every day use and not a use once and throw away. Though I have heard of people opening those disposables and soldering on a USB port so they could pull the pictures off themselves at home and turning it into a re-useable camera.

As a die-hard Nikon fan, I never thought I'd say this, but I EDC a Cannon Power Shot SD400 digital Elph and it takes great pictures. It is small enough to put in my pocket and comes with a nice leather case. I've been carrying it for over a year without a problem.

It does use proprietary batteries. I bought two third-party "Power 2000" batteries for about the same price as one Cannon battery. So far they are working great. I get just as many shots as with the Cannon battery.

We became a little dispointed with Nikon after this 5600. The pictures are not really any better than our old 2MP HP and its not holding up very well.
I had always stayed away from propritary betteries but am finding that the smallest cameras are too small for AA's. I don't know why they can't make them run from AAA's the mAh of those super expensive Lithium Ion's isn't any better than the 850mAh or so of an AAA. Thats why I'm wondering about the phone/camera combo, if there are any decent camera phones since phones all have the propritary battery anyway.
Then canon annoyingly uses a different prioritary battery for their camcorders which we have. Even though the specs are the same (V and mAh) its physically shaped differently so those won't interchange.

Just make sure you change them every so often. I did that, and eventually grabbed it and took some shots. They were terrible: poor resolution, grainy, muddled. I'm guessing the heat doesn't do the film any good.

I replaced it with my previous digital camera (it's not great, but oh well).Some fresh batteries are in the glove box with it.

I don't know that I would call it EDC, but I often carry a Pentax optio A10. I've had it for about a year, and so far I've been pretty happy with it. It is very small and takes good pictures, however, it sometimes had problems in low light situations. My cell phone also has a camera on it, but at only 640x480 res, it is barely worth having, but could do in a pinch.

I carry an Olympus D425 in my Jumbo. It's not very large and it takes decent pictures. It uses 2 AA batteries, which I like.

What's film?

My blackberry pearl can be set for resolution up to 1280 x 1024 and a "Superfine"??? picture quality, whatever that latter one means. Looking at the pictures I get from it with adequate lighting, it is pretty darned good on my laptop, and prints fairly well pics too. The camera even has a zoom function, which is pretty good up to 12x I think. Again, the weak link is the flash. Anything beyond about 4 feet and the flash does nothing.

I like the fact that I can view the pics I take on the lcd screen and tell fairly well if the pic will turn out okay or not.

That blackberry pearl is a heckuva phone.

Film is that stuff I have to keep wiping off the lens of my digital camera(s).

The Nokia N73 has a 3.2 Megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. If you want to shoot DVD quality Video also then the Nokia N93 looks quite promising.

I have my camara phone and a pair of binoculars/digital camara that I carry.

The binocular camara has no memory card and loses the stored photo's if the battery dies.

All electronic camaras will be null & void in the event of an EMP occurance.

I EDC a very good camera in my cell phone and occassionally drop a small Nikon with a high pixel count in my backpack.

If an EMP occurs the loss of my digital camera will be the least of issues. No one but a few Pulitzer wannabees will be taking their film in for developing either.

Due to the nature of my work (reviewing construction sites) I carry my digital camera with me in my daypack. It's a Canon A-series 5 megapixel. Back when I bought it, it was about $450 Cdn but now you can get similar spec cameras for under $200. I also carry extra memory and batteries and I really should be carrying my telephoto and wide angle lenses but never got around to adding them to the pack.

I also have a VGA resolution camera in my cell phone for those critical times... ie catching a buddy with his pants down.

I've carried a camera built into my Palm/Treo for years now. I often shoot a quick snapshot rather than writing something down. (Prices, interesting books, license plates, phone numbers, hours of operation, etc.) I've taken a few good candid shots over the years but the camera is so poor and slow that I rarely capture what I'm trying to. For that I keep a Canon in my laptop bag.

I don't EDC a camera, but I very, very often have a camera nearby. I love my Nikon D70 DSLR and bag o' lenses, but it's definitely not pocketable.

As much as I like Nikon DSLR's, I've not been overly impressed with their P&S digicams. I've had a Canon PowerShot S100 2 MPx camera for 6 years and it's still going strong, despite being horribly obsolete. It also has that proprietary battery problem.

I recently bought my daughter and my brother's family Canon PowerShot A550's. Small, light, inexpensive, relatively rugged (a teenager hasn't destroyed it, yet), takes good pictures, and uses AA batteries. Worth looking at.

Kevin B.

Exactly the same story with my PDA. The big screen of PDA allows that. Otherwise it almost impossible to read on a tiny camera- or phone screen. But I do carry an old batteryless analog camera in my car and refreshing the film every 6 months.

My Samsung flip-phone has a camera. I've taken thousands of pictures with it. Unfortunately, they're all of the inside of my pants pocket.

Due to some braindamaged engineering design, when the flip cover is closed it locks the keypad (which seems silly since the closed cover COVERS the keypad). But it does not lock the side buttons. Which are used to take pictures and "dial the last number and put it on speakerphone". It's a crap-shoot whether you'll be walking down the hall and hear someone unexpectedly saying "Hello? Hello?" from your pants pocket, or get yet another picture of some pocket lint. Occassionally you'll hear the robotic voice telling you to "Say a command!", and you know the voice recognition side button must have gotten pressed. Then it's a REAL crap-shoot as to what it will do next, as it thinks it recognized some unknown instruction you commanded it with.

Yeah, I EDC a camera. I wish I didn't!

Yes, I do. Olympus 720SW, which I picked because it's shock resistant (withstands drops to 5 feet), waterproof (submersible to 10 feet), 7mp, and very pocketable. Has a big screen on the back of the camera, though I do miss an optical viewfinder.

Of course, like all small cameras it uses a proprietary Li-ON battery. Oh well, that's the price for all the features in a nice, small package!

-=[ Grant ]=-

I almost bought that cam for the same reasons. I *sort of* EDC a camera when I have my pack with me, which is almost every day. Anyway, that Olympus has great features, but everything I read said the optical quality was lacking to say the least. I'm curious what you get for shots? I went with the Canon SD800 IS Digital Elph both for the 3.8x optical zoom and the built-in Image Stabalization. It's been taking great pictures and is super convenient. So much so that I haven't taken my Canon EOS 20D out of the pack in a while.