Sunday, December 19, 2010

Should you spend on an expensive P&S camera

It is silly in my opinion to compare and complaim about noise at 400ISO in small ompacts when after all one buys a camera for what it will do and not all cameras do everything. For me there are the other considerations about usefulness as a tool and cost of getting the capabilities. So I don't compare the compacts you choose but rather the long lensed flagships of each brand which are a better deal for the less affluent than a DSLR. To get a reasonable range of focal lengths with the DSLR costs big money and you loose the compactness of a long lens pro-sumer. I rarely shoot at anything other than 100ISO becuase I know I will not be happy with the results, prefering to get the 'emulsion' speed in editing on the rare occasions it is needed for what I do. That is the other consideration, what sort of photography you want the camera to do, probably I don't shoot what you do :-). In your case you are on the slippery slope of the DSLR owner wanting top IQ but not prepared to sacrifice it for compactness ... I carry my 0.5Mb cellphone for compactness but know it doesn't give me the IQ for larger sizes ... my son's phone results in much better IQ but isn't as compact as my phone. As suggested above perhaps you should look at 4/3 which will give you IQ but not the compactness of the P&S. A side issue which my cellphone taught me ... what comes out of the camera is rubbish until it is post processed when it is quite satisfactory. Probably applies to all small sensored cameras.

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