I Hate Digital P&S's

[Tim]

There, I've said it.

Sure, they have their place, and frankly I'd hate to be without ours for the family happy snaps. But trying to do anything apart from that kind of thing is an exercise in frustration........

grumble grumble grumble

OK, I'm done now. I feel better!

🙂

tim

 

[nwcanonman]

Tim,
We're so glad that you've gotten that off your chest.
Now, put some rum in the egg nog and have a round of Christmas cheer!!! ~ ; - )
BTW- I love my little Olympus D550; for it's intended purpose, that's all I use it for and don't expect it to be more than a P&S.

 

[Tim]

dunno about rum in the egg nog, but I have Bailey's in my coffee at the moment......

Yeh, I agree with you about the intended purpose. I was trying to make it do things it's not suited for, and getting very frustrated when it didn't. Caveat Emptor......

tim

 

[sfaust]

I will second that!!! You are not alone!!

I think the digital P&S are great for casual and family snaps, but are a great disservice for photographers. When I hear photogaphers talk about how much they hate digital, I ask them why. 95% of the time its the same issues. Shutter lag, no manual overrides, slow autofocus, slow menu access to the features, poor exposures. All digital P&S issues.

So, I take my S2 pro, put it in manual mode, and hand it to them saying, "Give this a try". After taking a few images, their eyes light up and they say, "Now thats what I'm talking about!". No required menu access to change controls, familiar manual controls for shuuter/aperture/ISO/metering/etc, real manual focus lenses, excellent martix metering, traditional SLR feel and control layout. Turn off the LCD and they would swear they were shooting film.

Then I turn on AF-C, Dynamic Tracking, focus priority, and go to 5fps mode and tell them to follow a car down the road and hold down the shutter button while it passes. They get a series of perfectly exposed and focused images. Rarely ever a miss. Sweet, traditional manual AND automation that actually works in the same body.

But their eyes go dim again when they hear to cost to ante up 🙂 But with time, thats coming down also as the technology progresses.

 

[Nikon Bob]

I'll third that. My Oly C5050 is capable of doing a lot more than I use it for but I hate the operating controls. I guess that is what makes the RD-1 so attractive to me except for the price. That is ditto for DSLRs. I think I will wait for the value to price ratio to close a bit more before I jump on the digital bandwagon though.

Bob

 

[Rob]

I have the Nikon Coolpix 2100. It is very easy to use and works
well for snapshots and pictures for Ebay, email. It is very small
and has a very good lens. It does macro down to 2 inches!
Flash give excellent exposures also. It has some built in
memory that I have not exceeded yet or takes a SD card.
They also make the 3100(3mp),4100(4mp). I like the fact I can output pix directly from the camera to the large TV with the included cord. Makes it easy to do a slide show that everyone can see. pix look great on the tv.

 

[oftheherd]

I have the Toshiba 4300. Wonderful P&S. I can also select AP or SP modes, fully manual with histogram, and select focus. Of course, on P&S, there is a lag problem the greater the less light. But all in all, a nice camera. It takes SD cards and I have yet to fill up the 256MB card before I can get to my laptop. Only about 38mm - 100mm equivalent canon lens, but hey, I find myself reaching for it more and more, especially as a family snapshot camera, and for my carry anywhere camera.

Now, if I can just figure out how to mate it to my Mamiya Super Press 23 ...

 

[Doug]

Just being a P&S is a pain... I have a film Canon Elph that is frustrating. Cute li'l thing, but I can't figure how to keep it from firing its flash every shot, and at least on brief acquaintance, the lens seems not very sharp.

 

[Socke]

I had a Canon Powershot G1 but gave it away and now stick to my film Contax TVS. The only small digital tempting me is the Epson R-D1. But hey, I call my Contax G2 a P&S 🙂

 

[nwcanonman]

Doug,
My lil' Olympus D550 has an easy to set flash control - off/always on/red-eye reduction/auto. It even has a decent macro setting. Has a "night" setting, for low light situations but still gives a lot of "noise" then. It's now a hundred bucks less than what it cost me last year.

 

[zuikologist]

It is frustrating. Many digital P&S do not even fulfil their function (ie family shots, kids playing etc) because shutter lag overcomes the AF accuracy every time. I have borrowed a Fuji F4800 in the past - it seemed more suited to travel and general photos and has good macro, but not any subject with significant movement.

 

[sfaust]

I know exactly what you mean. When I was looking for a small P&S digital to carry with me daily, the way I started to narrow the field was this. I went into Best Buy, Compu USA, etc, and would walk down the line of the P&S digitals on display. I would pick it up, turn it on, and fire a shot. If there was any significant delay, I would move on. I did this for about a year, then one finally clicked (pun intended 🙂 ). It was the Sony P100 (not also a P150 at 7mp). There is a slight delay, but very managable. I then checked out the rest of the cameras features, etc, and ended up buying it.

I've been very happy with it so far. There is still a delay with the AF in bad lighting, but thats expected with any AF system under those conditions. I would then just use manual focus instead. Setting my the manual focus requires going through the menu, but is fairly easy and quick to get to.

After checking many different cameras, there are very few that I would consider acceptable with regard to shutter lag. I can definitely understand all the complaints with the P&S crowd, and even to some extent the fixed lens SLRs too.

If only they could get a handle on this and fix it, there are a lot of nice P&S cameras that I wouldn't mind having as a daily carry camera. Especially if it fits in my shirt pocket easily.

 

[zuikologist]

I am not fully up to date on the digital market and this may have been mentioned elsewhere (apologies if it has), but a "hyperfocal" program or option on a digital would seem to be a good idea. This would reduce one large component of shutter lag. It would probably only work on higher spec cameras with manual controls, but the camera could calculate optimal focus for any given aperture/shutter spped/sensitivity combination.

 

[GeneW]

I am not fully up to date on the digital market and this may have been mentioned elsewhere (apologies if it has), but a "hyperfocal" program or option on a digital would seem to be a good idea. This would reduce one large component of shutter lag. It would probably only work on higher spec cameras with manual controls, but the camera could calculate optimal focus for any given aperture/shutter spped/sensitivity combination.

As an Oly owner, I like your name, Zuikologist!

I find my P&S models -- Canon G2 and Canon S45 -- quite useful as carryaround cams. At wide angle (roughly 38mm equivalent) they're actually 7mm with all the DOF of 7mm. Both these cams have manual focus and manual aperture. I set aperture to 5.6 and focus to 10', and there's very little lag at all. It calculates exposure pretty quickly -- it's the focusing that causes most of the lag. I could go full manual on exposure, but haven't found the need to.

Gene

 

[matu]

Maybe it´s us that we don´t get it to Digital P&S cameras, how many rangefinder where bound to be P&S also?
When I was at school, the Olypmus XA was just an old Lady camera (no intention to ofend), and everybody were using SLR´s.
Today I look to it in a different way, becouse I´ve learned that it´s a terrific camera.

 

[Bob R]

I just bought my daughter a Canon A75 for Christmas.

Well, I had to put batteries in the gift, you know. 🙄

So, I loaded the software on the PC and took a few shots. Quite nice for a P & S. My girl always complained about buying two pics of every shot and only liking say 7 of 26 shots.

This way she can view the pics on the PC and only print out what she wants.

Sorta like the way you guys do with a strip of negatives and a light table.

Also, being able to adjust brightness and contrast on the software gives the P&S'rs a second chance.

did I just blaspheme ?? 😱

Bob 😉

 

[marlinspike]

I learned photography on digital first, and even I say that I hate digital point and shoots, they're worthless in my opinion unless you want a small camera, but then just use a rangefinder😀 However, I love dSLR's. It's nice to have a very useable iso 800.
Richard

 

[zuikologist]

Gene

Thanks - it took hours to think of that one.

Glad to see someone applying analogue techniques to digital equipment.

 

[kuvvy]

I use a Minolta Dimage X digital camera. Extremely pocketable in size and the results are pretty good. I still prefer film cams though and my little digicam is being sold to raise funds for something else. Digital just wins on pure convenience when it comes to viewing the shots. Not just when out and about but when you return and the pix are there on your pc ready to be played with. For qualty though I prefer film. I have never used a DSLR so can't comment on those.
I agree with Zuikologist that they struggle to be a decent family/kids type shooter. I find I never take my digicam to a party anymore, I usually take a Ricoh GR1v or a Stylus Epic.

Having said all that I have a number of pix taken with the Dimage X at www.fotolog.net/kuvvy if anyone cares to look.


Paul

 

[nwcanonman]

For a carry in a pocket PS, I found an Olympus Trip 300 on Ebay for $3.00 - LOL. Uses 35mm film, has a built in flash and 35mm fixed lens that actually takes decent pix - "most" of the time.
"The only bad photo, is the one you didn't take because you didn't have a camera with you"