Camera's - where and what..........

[Wendy 0]

I am looking to buy a camera in the next few weeks and wondered if anyone can assist.

 

Does anyone know of a good Camera Shop, max 1 hours travel from Banbury - so Coventry, Leicester, Birmingham, Oxford areas ish.

I am after a shop where there is normally good varied stock and knowledgeable staff. I don't mind large nationals or independants.

 

Camera requirements - Compact Digitial - to fit in my pocket - or very close to doing so.

I like travel and to some out of the way places, so need to be very discreet and not appear to touristy by carrying larger digitial SLR's.

 

Camera Spec - Brilliant zoom facility for distant landscapes is my greatest criteria. Good make of manufacture. Ease of use.

Cost is not such an issue - the criteria is far more essential. I have been saving up and want something that is durable, reliable and will last.

 

Thanks in advance for any assistamce in the right direction

[craigowl 0]

Canon Ixus is impressive, Wendy, IMO.

Ours is about 3 years old now, so it will have been updated.

My wife uses it at rambling outings.

I am miffed, because I went into Canon DSLR from 30D to 5D Mk2 and her pics look as good as mine, technically, at a fraction of the price and in a neat small package of a camera.

Dr Mat knows a lot about cameras IIRC.

Best regards

Iain

[dr_mat 0]

Panasonic TZ20. End of story.

 

Cheers! :)

 

---------- Post added at 3:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 3:43 PM ----------

 

And BTW, if the Canon IXUS takes better shots than a 5D mk2 you need to look a little closer at your photos... I'll guarantee that on a per-pixel resolution and noise level basis (printing/viewing large or doing heavy crops of images) the 5D mk2 absolutely destroys the Ixus.

 

My experience of a class-leading compact versus my very own 5D mk2 show that in 99.9% of situations the 5D takes a technically better picture - more detail, more dynamic range, more colourful, more accurate colours. The class-leading 10-12MP compacts really only provide about 2-3MP of actual image information, the rest is lost to noise and sharpening artifacts. The 5D Mk2, however, provides 22MP of real information (assuming you spent enough on your lenses!).

[easypops 8]

Canon S95, great wee camera :)

[Jim 2]

Panasonic TZ20. End of story.

 

Think the good doctor is on the money there - I think the TZ20 Lumix is about as good as you'll get in the compact category for the money..

[craigowl 0]

Panasonic TZ20. End of story.

 

Cheers! :)

 

---------- Post added at 3:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 3:43 PM ----------

 

And BTW, if the Canon IXUS takes better shots than a 5D mk2 you need to look a little closer at your photos... I'll guarantee that on a per-pixel resolution and noise level basis (printing/viewing large or doing heavy crops of images) the 5D mk2 absolutely destroys the Ixus.

 

My experience of a class-leading compact versus my very own 5D mk2 show that in 99.9% of situations the 5D takes a technically better picture - more detail, more dynamic range, more colourful, more accurate colours. The class-leading 10-12MP compacts really only provide about 2-3MP of actual image information, the rest is lost to noise and sharpening artifacts. The 5D Mk2, however, provides 22MP of real information (assuming you spent enough on your lenses!).

 

I was talking of Ixus merely as a compact holiday snapping camera, with potential for some enlargements. Without knowing the stats on paper, to others viewing the images from both cameras on a large flat screen Panasonic tv, they will look broadly of similar quality. Maybe you can criticise the specification of my telly now!

 

A professional photographer picked one of my wife's Ixus efforts as a favourite on flickr.

You dont need to lecture me on pixels/lenses cropping etc. Herr Doctor.

 

At the end of the day, all the technical power of a big DSLR can mean nowt if you have not had years of experience and clicked off thousands of shots.

Edited May 11, 2012 by craigowl

[Wendy 0]

Ok chaps - Keep calm please.

 

Thanks for the advice on camera choice, I will look into these.

Are these pretty regular camera's to be in stock at the majority of larger stores ?

 

Thank You

Wendy

[craigowl 0]

You are a right stirrer, Wendy! x

[dr_mat 0]

Messirs Owl, sorry, I didn't say anything about your photos, just the camera's potential .. I was only trying to offer some advice myself.

Though I'm sure pictures do look broadly similar to the Ixus (they're both canons after all, they strive for the same image processing results) .. and I'm also sure that for non-critical viewing the Ixus produces images that are totally good enough for even medium sized prints (you can't zoom in on your panasonic telly - I know, I have one too). But if you ever take the time to look up a bit closer or attempt to eke a little more out of your photos in e.g. photoshop/lightroom you'll get sooo much more out of the 5D images. Even JPGs straight out of the camera should be printable up to about A1..

 

The 24-105L is a superb lens, I love mine. The colour and contrast retention is just amazing - this is what makes those out-of-camera JPGs look brilliant. It's also breathtakingly sharp at times (not always, but hey it's a zoom, you can't have everything can you?). Now in my ideal world the camera would actually expose and do the white balance right every shot.. but it doesn't.. that's the biggest issue - canon's slight tendency to overexpose, coupled with a tendency to make the white balance a little too "blue" and cold (except in low light where they go the other way).. This is the main reason I always shoot in CR2 raw format so I can fix up the white balance on the computer (Lightroom) and correct any minor exposure issues along the way without any losses in quality.

 

Wendy - you'll find a TZ20 almost anywhere, they're very popular and Panasonic sell through all the standard retailers. Probably even Argos will be carrying them soon (it's a fairly new camera).

[craigowl 0]

OK dr-mat - no hard feelings.

re CR2 Raw - one writer/expert on 5D mkii says he never uses it. Others say do use it. I am trying everything. At the end of the day you can make up your own mind. Doing things seriously today means spending hours stuck at your pc getting a numb backside.

I can tell you, life is too short to do all that is recommended by the "experts". You will all find that time speeds up exponentially as you get older! Fact.

Will you be lying on your death bed saying "I wish I had spent more time sitting at my pc/ipad, flymo-ing the grass, etc." No - certainly not.

You can read hundreds of reviews on cameras on several databases if you want to spend a few valuable hours at it. Based on above posts Wendy, I would have a look at TZ20 review and perhaps save yourself a lot of time.

[dr_mat 0]

I guess I'm not a good enough photographer to make photos that don't need post-production. Or I'm too picky, focusing on the technology over and above the art. Or something like that ...

 

---------- Post added at 8:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 8:09 PM ----------

 

(For example my avatar shot has a two-stop grad filter applied to darken that moody sky .. to be fair, that's how I saw the scene when I was there, it's not actually "cheating" in my book .. :) )

[craigowl 0]

Yes, there's a wide spectrum of how much time one may wish to put into post-production. My wife doesn't do any - she doesnt have time - just shows the pics to the rest of us on her laptop, as they are. You have to envy someone happy enough to ensure they enjoy that kind of freedom.

I pick some of my images I think are the best but have to spend a considerable amount of time tweaking.

 

Something I read made me realise I am a "forensic photographer" - little or no art in the mix at all!! It is true and I can handle it.

The truth struck me that from first owning a junk box camera in 1964, what I wanted to capture was the reality of the outdoors. Some of that fuzzy waterfall stuff done with long exposures and HDR seems like cheating to me, and I do not really like the results, but presumably an "artist" will. Each to his own.

[RW1 0]

Wendy,

 

Just gone through the same thing at Christmas. Bit fussy about what I wanted to replace trusty 10 year old Nikon 4300. The 4300 produces bob-on pictures straight out of the camera which has suited me for so long. And I don't think I'm going to stop using it despite the new camera below.

 

http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/nikon/coolpix-4300/nikon-coolpix-4300-review-7.html

 

Long gone now, but so good I even bought a spare which is still in the box new upstairs, when Jessops were selling them off at £150 reduced from £400.

 

At Christmas, rejected over 40 compact camera's in the price range £150 - £400. I was qute shocked how poor their lens were and how much chromatic abberation was present when compared to the 4300. (http://mansurovs.com/what-is-chromatic-aberration). This will be important with taking shots of views or high contrast changes in areas of the image. The other aspect I looked at was colour balance as I didn't want to be messing around in Photoshop correcting every single photo I took.

 

I was interested also in having full exposure control of the image being taken, which would then allow me to override like my old film cameras do.

 

The only two that passed on lens performance were........

 

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/panasonic_lumix_dmc_gf3_review/

 

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/nikon_coolpix_p7100_review/

 

Both are a little bit bigger than a standard compact digital holiday camera but not overly.

 

Being brought up on Pentax and Nikon for 40 years, you can guess which I finally bought. It has all the controls built into the bigger DSLR Nikon cameras but without the messing around of separate lens and bulky camera body. And it met my zoom range of a standard 35mm film camera - 28mm to 200mm. No frills camera but has all the controls a serious photographer wants when travelling lightweight.

 

Didn't buy it in Manchester, just used the shops to get touchy-feel for all the cameras I had listed.

 

Eventually went to Big Norman in Gibraltar. They take care of all the customs charges, so no worries there. Knocked £75 off the lowest UK price and delivery was as advertised within 48 hours. http://www.bignorman.com/DigitalCompacts Looks to be still the case despite UK price drops. And if it goes faulty, you deal through the UK with them to sort it out.

 

And of course, things have moved on a little so also have a look at the .....

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/canon_powershot_g1_x_review/.

 

And this looks good for lens performance http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/fujifilm_x_pro1_review/ for a comparison reference. Shame about the price though. I also used reviews of the DSLRs to compare the compact camera performances even though I wasn't buying. That way you can assess detail of the lens using the same photos.

 

The photographyblog website is good cos all the reviews are the same set of comparisons so if the camera has been reviewed you can compared like with like immediately. And uses the lens in all sorts of focal lengths so you can really assess performance and colour. This one they use is very useful for assessing the Chromatic Abberation http://img.photographyblog.com/reviews/nikon_coolpix_p7100/sample_images/nikon_coolpix_p7100_14.jpg becasue the erected structure is black on a bright background.

ETA: Link doesn't work so its the middle photo on the 5th row down next to the red phone box's top section here http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/nikon_coolpix_p7100_review/sample_images/ in the first of the two sample sections.

 

.

Edited May 12, 2012 by RW1

[dr_mat 0]

I'm surprised to hear a discussion of chromatic aberration! - most of the compacts have code that automatically removes all trace of it, along with any geometric distortions present in the lenses (of which there's quite a lot!). And if the camera doesn't do it, numerous post-processing apps can correct it similarly perfectly. I wouldn't worry about that too much in practice. In my experience there's very few lenses that don't show some CA, including lenses with eye-watering price tags.

 

My personal favourite review sites are http://www.dpreview.com and http://www.imaging-resource.com/, for what it's worth.

 

So realistically, if money is genuinely no object then you'd choose to read up on the subject, find a list of the must-have features, then produce a list of suitable cameras that tick all the boxes. Generally you wind up doing this exercise and deciding it's too expensive .. :)

The other way of doing it is to figure out how much you *really* want to spend and work from that - take a look at cameras in that price range (count the online retailers and your choice will widen), make you choices based on reviews and your personal requirements within that shortlist.

 

Also remember that your budget should include a few quid for a big memory card or two, probably a tripod or monopod, a soft or waterproof case of some sort and a spare battery. You might also want a card reader or a portable card copier device for backing up the cards on long trips.

[RW1 0]

I'm surprised to hear a discussion of chromatic aberration! - most of the compacts have code that automatically removes all trace of it, along with any geometric distortions present in the lenses (of which there's quite a lot!). And if the camera doesn't do it, numerous post-processing apps can correct it similarly perfectly. I wouldn't worry about that too much in practice. In my experience there's very few lenses that don't show some CA, including lenses with eye-watering price tags..

 

Not so about the software, they still haven't made headway since 10 years ago, its rife in the digital compact cameras as its always has been for poor correction and I was most surprised to find it in some of the DSLRs from the mainstream camera/lens makers. Its why those 40 odd cameras at Christmas failed for me. I didn't want to spend hours correcting photos when the camera should be doing it in the first place. But that is my choice to insist its done in camera.

 

They all had this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chromatic_aberration_1_14_2009.jpg, some chronic to the point of despair I wouldn't find a camera replacement as a compact.

 

.

Edited May 12, 2012 by RW1

[dr_mat 0]

Though this is a bit off-topic really, I'd agree that the sort of stuff shown in the wikipedia link is incredibly common, but in my view that's as much to do with normal lens flare or "blooming" as it shows CA, and flare isn't going to go away when you're trying to over-expose a dark foreground against a massively bright background. Chromatic aberation is normally considered to be a coloured fringe around a black/white transition (this photo *could* be an example of this, but you'd need a little more context), and occurs radially from the centre of the image outwards, being at its worst at the image edges. Very few lenses can optically correct for CA at all zoom/aperture/focus settings (prime lenses included), though high quality lens coatings can reduce the impact of blooming and flare. You can't easily fix the latter electronically, but true CA can be entirely 100% corrected for all lenses, and most compacts (and current gen SLRs) do correct for that.

 

At least with an SLR, or a camera with some manual controls, you can take over and operate the lenses in their best performing aperture ranges at all times. For compact cameras there is often only one real aperture setting, so you don't have such luxury and have to assume the lens designer optimised it for that one setting.

 

Take a look at the following for another view on this:

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/Optical/chromatic_aberration_01.htm

 

---------- Post added at 10:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 AM ----------

 

To clarify, what I mean is that the wikipedia example above is a pathological case that almost all lenses fall over on, including almost all professional SLR lenses. Where possible professional photographers attempt to avoid such scenes, they rarely work out looking good anyway.