Point 'n Shoot Recommendations

[Clactonian]

SAMSUNG I hear you cry - you must be joking.

I bought my wife a Samsung WB650, it produces fantastic images.

[MrB]

As a matter of interest the LX5 has a lens with a Leica badge on it and not a Leica lens. It is a Panasonic lens that Leica have licensed - possibly designed for them - but it is not a genuine Leica optic.

You are correct, Robin, but the collaboration between the two companies enhances the advancement and quality of their products. The Panasonic LX5 is almost identical to the Leica D-Lux 5 and, as in your linked review, is always highly rated.

Here are links to two interesting pages relevant to your comment -
http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/leica/leica1.html
http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/leica/leica2.html

Philip

[Black Pearl]

I'm not knocking the LX5, its fantastic. I've experimented with the LX range right from the off and been impressed with them all - the 5 certainly has the best sensor as its a multi-format one that doesn't sacrifice many pixels when switching. From what I have been able to gather over the years the main difference between the LX and the D-Lux range is that Leica remove all the bumps and make the camera a bit classier looking and they use their own firmware. The Leica rep (when pushed) said the firmware in the D-Lux is a Leica version with a less vibrant saturation and a softer tone curve....he also said you can force either of the firmwares onto either of the cameras.

The Leica version is about £200+ more in the UK......BUT......it holds its value very, very well. A mate bought the D-Lux that was a LX3 clone and after nearly two years pretty much got his money back....the Panasonic would have been worth a fraction of its original cost. He's got a X1 now and loves it.

Look at his recent trip to the States with it: User Report

[purplehaze]

Look at his recent trip to the States with it: User Report

A great lesson in the value of working within limitations and making the most of what you have. Thanks for the link, Robin.

[MrB]

Getting back on topic for Frank, I forgot to mention that the LX5 does record RAW and/or JPEG.

Philip

[JAMcCready]

1. Flat enought to fit in a shirt pocket or clip to a belt like a cell phone. I have a Sony DSC-H1 (12X zoom) but it won't fit in a pocket.
2. Shoots RAW.
3. Has a wide zoom range.
4. A good 'all around' camera to address the unexpected opportunities.

Hi Frank,
There are 2 choices from Nikon that meet all of the above except for #2. Those models are the Nikon P300 or the Nikon S9100. Both models are small enough to fit in a shirt pocket or could be clipped to your belt with a carrier. I am not sure how important RAW is for you. I personally own the Nikon P300 and get great results from the JPG format. The P300 has a fast lens F/1.8 with what I would call a "Portrait Zoom"(24-100mm lens in 35mm [135] format), where as the S9100 has a slower lens at F/3.5 with a BIG A** ZOOM(25-450mm lens in 35mm [135] format). The P300 has some great exposure modes including AUTO, Aperture-Priority, Manual, Programmed Auto and Shutter-Priority where as the S9100 only offers Programmed Auto. Both models has the standard Scene Modes. Hope this helps you.

Kind Regards,

Jerry M.

Since others are adding photos.... Here is something that I took with the Nikon P300 and I used the High Contrast Monochrome setting


“A Spilt in the Tracks” © 2011 JAMcCready

[Dave Humphries]

I have been hankering after something along these lines too, so this thread is very handy, I think you've all saved me a lot of time sorting the wheat from the chaff, as they say.

One major disadvantage I see with all(?) these is the lack of an eye level viewfinder of some kind, for when the bright light is behind you falling on the LCD, I have owned such a camera and it was a major PITA.

That brings me to the Canon G12, but oh boy, nearly twice as heavy and definitely chunkier, possibly to the point of defeating the object - too big to always carry? (and more expensive too)

I wonder, for those cameras with a hot shoe, is a slide in 'aiming scope' a possibility?
Such a device would obviously be fixed focal length and suffer parallax at short distances, worth having? anyone any thoughts on this?

[Snarkbyte]

Dave, I had an opportunity to borrow a G12 for the weekend last week, and I must say I'm impressed with the image quality. It isn't "pocket-able", but I found it fits very nicely in a small belt pouch. OK, I admit I don't like carrying anything bigger than a pen in my shirt pocket, anyway, so that's not a big deal to me. On the other hand, the G12 viewfinder is a disappointment - the image quality thru the viewfinder is only fair (at best), and just doesn't hold up to the quality of the rest of the camera. Apparently, this is par for the course regarding viewfinders in bridge cameras like the G12, so in practice, it's seems easier to hold the camera lower, using your body to shade the screen (another place where the articulated LCD comes in handy). Overall, I was quite impressed with the G12, and I'm seriously considering purchasing one in the not-too-distant future. It isn't perfect, but it's smaller and lighter than a micro 4/3 camera (and no lenses to buy), it has a great lens that doesn''t sacrifice image quality for "super-zoom", and the shooting controls like exposure, aperture, ISO, and EC are large (for a compact camera) and intelligently placed. But, yeah, I do wish the viewfinder weren't so cheap and worthless.

[FrankMi]

I seriously considered a fixed focal length alternative, as I often go out with just a 35mm prime on my DSLR. The exercise gained in trying to frame a shot is allegedly good for me!!

Hi Mike, indeed there are a lot of shots for which a prime is, well, prime! The point of having the P&S is to have a chance to get the ones that 'got away'. Certainly any P&S worth its salt should be able to get really nice pictures. My hope is to fill in as many opportunistic 'holes' as I can, hence the need for RAW and desire for reasonable zoom. So far, it appears that about a 4x zoom is the most I'll be able to get in a RAW P&S. <sigh> Maybe the zoom isn't as necessary as I felt it was. On the other hand, with a great zoom, maybe the RAW isn't as critical? Except in low light and contrasty shots.... decisions, decisions.....

[FrankMi]

The S95 is nice but have you considered the Samsung EX1.

SAMSUNG I hear you cry - you must be joking.

Nope. Give it a Once Over and you'll see what I mean. Lovely f1.8 lens, shoots RAW and has a flip-out AMOLED screen which beats anything - and I mean anything - that you will find on other cameras, its well made and from the play I've had the results are excellent.

Hi Robin, from what I read, it shoots JPG or RAW & JPG, which it seems, is fairly slow. You don't often need to shoot continuous but I suspect the additional disk space needed to store both RAW & JPG for every shot could start to add up. Nice fast lens though! Thank you for pointing this one out to me.

[FrankMi]

S95 tested against the LX5 - http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q420...dcompactgroup/

Hi Philip and Robin, yes I had looked at the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 and the Nikon Coolpix P7000 and found both to be excellent camers but fairly thick and may be difficult to carry in a shirt pocket. I haven't checked any of the 'thicker' P&S to see if there was an effective alternative for having them 'at the ready'. There may be an easily accessable belt clip or something similar that would work. In my mind, I'm thinking about a P&S that would be as accessable as a cell phone and still be able to shoot a wide range of natural lighting captures.

[FrankMi]

I bought my wife a Samsung WB650, it produces fantastic images.

Hi Mike, at 12MP and 15X zoom the Samsung WB650 is a great travel camera!

[FrankMi]

Hi Frank,
There are 2 choices from Nikon that meet all of the above except for #2. Those models are the Nikon P300 or the Nikon S9100. Both models are small enough to fit in a shirt pocket or could be clipped to your belt with a carrier. I am not sure how important RAW is for you. I personally own the Nikon P300 and get great results from the JPG format. The P300 has a fast lens F/1.8 with what I would call a "Portrait Zoom"(24-100mm lens in 35mm [135] format), where as the S9100 has a slower lens at F/3.5 with a BIG A** ZOOM(25-450mm lens in 35mm [135] format). The P300 has some great exposure modes including AUTO, Aperture-Priority, Manual, Programmed Auto and Shutter-Priority where as the S9100 only offers Programmed Auto. Both models has the standard Scene Modes. Hope this helps you.

Kind Regards,

Jerry M.

Since others are adding photos.... Here is something that I took with the Nikon P300 and I used the High Contrast Monochrome setting

Hi Jerry, I am still trying to determine if RAW is absolutely necessary. I shoot exclusively in RAW now but if I gave that up, the selections expand considerably and many options become viable.

[FrankMi]

That brings me to the Canon G12, but oh boy, nearly twice as heavy and definitely chunkier, possibly to the point of defeating the object - too big to always carry? (and more expensive too)

Hi Dave and Al, Interesting comments on the G12. The Sony DSC H1 I'm currently using for P&S isn't pocketable and doesn't shoot RAW but it has an excellent viewfinder (or you can use the LCD) for composing (plus it is paid for!).

[inkista]

One major disadvantage I see with all(?) these is the lack of an eye level viewfinder of some kind, for when the bright light is behind you falling on the LCD, I have owned such a camera and it was a major PITA.

Olympus XZ-1, then. You can use the same EVF (electronic viewfinder) add-ons that you can with the micro four-thirds cameras (EP-1, EPL-1, etc.).

I have a G9. The optical viewfinder is next to useless. Only 85% coverage, not corrected for parallax and blocked for the most part if I use something like a lensmate on it. A lot of folks who had 'em were using slide-on optical viewfinders (Helios seemed popular and cheap) on the hotshoe instead.

[Black Pearl]

I have been hankering after something along these lines too, so this thread is very handy, I think you've all saved me a lot of time sorting the wheat from the chaff, as they say.

One major disadvantage I see with all(?) these is the lack of an eye level viewfinder of some kind, for when the bright light is behind you falling on the LCD, I have owned such a camera and it was a major PITA.

That brings me to the Canon G12, but oh boy, nearly twice as heavy and definitely chunkier, possibly to the point of defeating the object - too big to always carry? (and more expensive too)

I wonder, for those cameras with a hot shoe, is a slide in 'aiming scope' a possibility?
Such a device would obviously be fixed focal length and suffer parallax at short distances, worth having? anyone any thoughts on this?

Or....go for the Samsung EX1.....not only does the screen articulate but its an AMOLED one which is about as good as they get.

[Black Pearl]

RAW?

A very contentious issue and when it comes to a DSLR its a vital feature for those who want and/or need it. I say want and/or need as the vast majority of people who buy a DSLR will never use the RAW function and will never need to.

The SLR is no longer the tool for the serious photography buff who has the time and will to fiddle or the pro who needs every edge they can get to keep on making a living. More and more every day folk are going out and buying a DSLR because they want the quality jump you get with a bigger sensor....and thats the final step. They don't need a RAW file to get this and don't want the hassle of having to convert this meaningless clump of ones & zeros into an image that will in all probability never go beyond their laptop screen.

Us forum users and fellow amateurs who take the odd snap and have the time to play with it love a RAW file. We feel we are in control and that it is us that is making the decisions as to what we will do with all that data. The thing is, quite a few will run this 'God File' through a RAW converting software without making any adjustments and while the end result will have a little more detail and it will have a little more exposure range it could just have easily been done in-camera. But we did it, we made the decision and it wasn't some preset stamped out by a programmer in a far off land. What do they know about what I want from my image.....Eh? Yes the camera's processor may spit out the odd duff WB shot and yes the multi pattern exposure system may be a bit wayward from time to time but there is a dirty great big screen on the back of them all to check for these and for more years than even I care to think about we did without any of this and still managed to get great pictures.

So do we need RAW capability in our Point-n-Shoot cameras?

Not really no.

It should be small.
It should have a good lens as we may enlarge one in a thousand of them.
It should have a degree of manual control as we may have the time to fiddle with the settings.
It should be well made as we like to have nice toys.
It should have the right badge on as we're an odd lot and this matters.

What else?

This will typically be a camera that goes in a pocket and gets use to grab a shot when we are doing something other than actually taking pictures.

Think about it.

[MrB]

RAW?
So do we need RAW capability in our Point-n-Shoot cameras?
Not really no.
It should be small.
It should have a good lens as we may enlarge one in a thousand of them.
It should have a degree of manual control as we may have the time to fiddle with the settings.
It should be well made as we like to have nice toys.

As has been mentioned, the Panasonic LX5 has all this and RAW - it just might be needed one day!

It should have the right badge on as we're an odd lot and this matters.

OK - As one of the Odd Lot, it's a great pleasure to have the Leica badge on my LX5!

Philip

[Letrow]

RAW?

A very contentious issue and when it comes to a DSLR its a vital feature for those who want and/or need it. I say want and/or need as the vast majority of people who buy a DSLR will never use the RAW function and will never need to.

The SLR is no longer the tool for the serious photography buff who has the time and will to fiddle or the pro who needs every edge they can get to keep on making a living. More and more every day folk are going out and buying a DSLR because they want the quality jump you get with a bigger sensor....and thats the final step. They don't need a RAW file to get this and don't want the hassle of having to convert this meaningless clump of ones & zeros into an image that will in all probability never go beyond their laptop screen.

Us forum users and fellow amateurs who take the odd snap and have the time to play with it love a RAW file. We feel we are in control and that it is us that is making the decisions as to what we will do with all that data. The thing is, quite a few will run this 'God File' through a RAW converting software without making any adjustments and while the end result will have a little more detail and it will have a little more exposure range it could just have easily been done in-camera. But we did it, we made the decision and it wasn't some preset stamped out by a programmer in a far off land. What do they know about what I want from my image.....Eh? Yes the camera's processor may spit out the odd duff WB shot and yes the multi pattern exposure system may be a bit wayward from time to time but there is a dirty great big screen on the back of them all to check for these and for more years than even I care to think about we did without any of this and still managed to get great pictures.

So do we need RAW capability in our Point-n-Shoot cameras?

Not really no.

It should be small.
It should have a good lens as we may enlarge one in a thousand of them.
It should have a degree of manual control as we may have the time to fiddle with the settings.
It should be well made as we like to have nice toys.
It should have the right badge on as we're an odd lot and this matters.

What else?

This will typically be a camera that goes in a pocket and gets use to grab a shot when we are doing something other than actually taking pictures.

Think about it.

I like this, although it is slightly off topic. Very interesting discussion though. I have to admit that I am one of those people who only uses the JPEGs that my D7000 produces. I open them in Gimp and I seem to be able to tweak it to my content.
Have I ever used RAW? Yes, a couple of times, but it didn't make much of a difference in my view and maybe that is because I didn't try hard enough or should know more about processing RAW files first.

What I have always disliked about RAW is the size of the files, the fact that you can't view these files in a standard explorer, it slows up some of the cameras I have used considerably and most importantly: RAW is not a standard but a bunch of different file formats. Every manufacturer has its own RAW, why???

Anyway, I still like to read up on all the opinions on this, because RAW is still seen by many as the better quality/or offering more possibilities.

Having said all this and back on topic a bit more, I did find that cameras that do have RAW often offer more extensive controls (ideal for making the kind of adjustments that I normally make on my DSLR), probably because they are seen as cameras for the more serious photographer (which means that it should have M and A modes at least (+sometimes S mode as well) and RAW of course). So RAW does have its advantages as a selection tool it seems.

I wonder, for those cameras with a hot shoe, is a slide in 'aiming scope' a possibility?
Such a device would obviously be fixed focal length and suffer parallax at short distances, worth having? anyone any thoughts on this?

I have a slide-on viewer for my (old by now, but still trustworthy) Ricoh GX200. Apart from the quality issue (the viewer is not great if you compare it to the normal screen) it is not something that I use gladly. First of all it makes the camera too big to carry comfortably in a pocket (unless you are OK with sliding it on and off all the time) and secondly the camera is too small really to be used with a viewfinder I think. It just does not feel right. On the positive side: you do get a bit more stability I guess, because you press the camera to your face instead of holding it in front of your body.
All in all I use the camera more than 95% without the viewer.

I would gladly recommend the Panasonic LX5 I think, although I don't own it. Panasonic cameras have good menus and from what I have seen in the shop, the LX5 would fulfill most of my wishes.
I never understood the Leica thing really. I mean, it seems that the two cameras are almost identical (apart from the software, but reading the above it seems that you could force the Leica software onto the Panasonic), so why would you pay more for the model with the Leica brand. Even if it holds it's value better, that would only be because of the other badge, right??? Think about it, I can't really get my head around that one.

[accystan]

Frank:
It seems you probably have enough information to proceed at this point but I'll toss in my two cents/pennies-worth and add a vote for the G-12. I'm in exactly your situation (not wanting to always lug the dslr around) and I've had a G-11 for a year or so and I'm very happy with it. It has two extremely useful features - Firstly, the (much criticized) viewfinder. It's true that it's not perfect but it's better than the screen when the sun is behind you (unless you carry a black sheet a la Ansel Adams). Second feature which I love is the pivoting/rotating screen. It's perfect for waist level shots, overhead shots, candid shots etc.

Good luck with your descision. If I had the loot I'd probably buy one of each of the recommendations; they all have enviable qualities. Probably the best plan would be to make a short-list and go in a good store with an open mind and fiddle with them all.

Cheers,

Dave D