Point and Shoot Cameras (P&S) versus DSLRs
Tuesday 09 June 2009 Filed in: Views
Like many, I have been
patiently searching – oftentimes, impatiently waiting
– for a small, carry everywhere camera that can
deliver great image quality. I’ve looked at most of
the likely contenders, principally those from
Canon, Panasonic and
Leica -
but they all came up short in the image quality
stakes. For a while (which proved to be
considerably shorter than the time it took for
the DP1 to write files to a card), I
thought that Sigma had answered my prayers to the
Camera Gods. Alas, usability – or rather, a lack
of it – let down the Sigma DP1 as surely as the
ham-fisted way Panasonic, in a misguided attempt
to deal with noise, smeared detail in images taken
with their cameras.
All those manufacturer’s have put out recent successors: Canon G10, Panasonic LX3/Leica D-lux 4, and Sigma DP2. And, while they are all improvements to some extent, the basic problems with each manufacturer’s offering remains: the Sigma is still as slow as a dead tortoise and the Canon et al are, truth be said, still victims of their tiny sensors – unable to deliver DSLR-like quality when the going gets tough; which in photographic-speak means, when the light levels drop below anything that would have you reaching for your sunglasses.
I await with interest and something bordering on desperation for the imminent release of the Olympus micro four-thirds (m4/3) camera, the E-P1. It is my one last hope that the possibility of a small Decisive Moment Digital camera (DMD), as Mike Johnston refers to this elusive photographic tool over at The Online Photographer, is a reality and not just a dream.
In the meantime, however, I was struck by another thought: perhaps this search for peak performance in a small camera is not so important? That it’s like concentrating on the top speed that a car can do when we mostly drive it at 60 mph or less. What got me thinking this way was reviewing some of my images taken with a Canon G9 and being pleasantly surprized at how good some of them were: admittedly, they had all been taken at low ISOs (the equivalent of keeping well within the speed limit) and in good light – but for the resolutions one would typically use to display them on the web or for prints up to, say, 14 x 11 inches, I wondered whether we were not agonizing unnecessarily. Perhaps, under such circumstances and for such purposes, which would cover the way the majority of us use our photos, these top-of-the-line point and shoot (P&S) cameras were already delivering results that were essentially indistinguishable from a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera (DSLR)? Read More...
All those manufacturer’s have put out recent successors: Canon G10, Panasonic LX3/Leica D-lux 4, and Sigma DP2. And, while they are all improvements to some extent, the basic problems with each manufacturer’s offering remains: the Sigma is still as slow as a dead tortoise and the Canon et al are, truth be said, still victims of their tiny sensors – unable to deliver DSLR-like quality when the going gets tough; which in photographic-speak means, when the light levels drop below anything that would have you reaching for your sunglasses.
I await with interest and something bordering on desperation for the imminent release of the Olympus micro four-thirds (m4/3) camera, the E-P1. It is my one last hope that the possibility of a small Decisive Moment Digital camera (DMD), as Mike Johnston refers to this elusive photographic tool over at The Online Photographer, is a reality and not just a dream.
In the meantime, however, I was struck by another thought: perhaps this search for peak performance in a small camera is not so important? That it’s like concentrating on the top speed that a car can do when we mostly drive it at 60 mph or less. What got me thinking this way was reviewing some of my images taken with a Canon G9 and being pleasantly surprized at how good some of them were: admittedly, they had all been taken at low ISOs (the equivalent of keeping well within the speed limit) and in good light – but for the resolutions one would typically use to display them on the web or for prints up to, say, 14 x 11 inches, I wondered whether we were not agonizing unnecessarily. Perhaps, under such circumstances and for such purposes, which would cover the way the majority of us use our photos, these top-of-the-line point and shoot (P&S) cameras were already delivering results that were essentially indistinguishable from a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera (DSLR)? Read More...