I hope lot of you guys are in photography too. I had a Sony cybershot w-150 and was recently got lost from my cousin. Now i need a new camera. I have a budget of 15ks. I need a camera which is good with portrait, close and low light images. I have found all budget cameras are good with images under natural light but fail in low light and close images. Will i get a camera within my budget which gives good result if not excel under these conditions.
Regard
Vasu
Since you are specifically looking for a compact camera that performs reasonably well in low light situations, you need a camera that has a fast/bright lens combined with a large sensor size with a low-ish pixel density (which makes the pixels in the sensor more sensitive to input light). This combination will give you the best performance in low light situations where you will have to crank up the ISO setting on your camera (or your camera will automatically do this for you). In fact the low pixel density of DSLRs due to their huge APSC sensor is the singular reason why you can take photographs even in ISO1600 but almost any budget compact will start producing really noisy images at ISO400 and above. The lens makes a big difference too but many compacts also have decent lenses nowadays.
The Powershot SX120IS is actually quite decent for the price, and has a decent lens. However, it has a fairly small sensor of 1/2.5" that is standard size for most budget compacts.
The only compacts that have a largish sensor, to my knowledge, are the Canon S90, Panasonic LX3, and Fujifilm F200EXR (1/1.6" sensor). The S90 and LX3 are very expensive however, but the F200EXR should be within your budget, or only slightly higher. Do note that the lineage of the F200EXR stems from the Fujifilm F31fd which had a cult status for being the only compact camera around capable of somewhat rivaling DSLRs in taking low light pictures.
In fact, the megapixel war has effectively ensured that no budget compact, apart from the
F31fd and its brethren, can lay claim to this in all these years. See the
ISO 800 comparison between the F31fd and the Canon SD 800 IS. No contest. Or the
comparison with the Nikon D50 DSLR, in which the F31fd gives it a very good fight even in ISO800!
For a more modern comparison, you can see the comparison of the
F200EXR with the Canon IXUS 110 IS (PowerShot SD 960 IS).