Which compact zoom camera is good for the night street and theater shooting?

[compiler]

Do you know which compact zoom camera is good for the night street and theater performance shooting? I hope the camera has fast focus and good low light shooting performance.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi "Compiler",

Compact zooms almost all have small sensors and small sensors give noise, especially when shooting contrasty and shadowy subjects like night street scenes and theatre.

I'll leave suggestions to those who may be practising with what you require, but you'll help them by giving us a budget (and Location).

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[Manfred M]

This is the reason people spend large amounts of money on DSLRs and their large sensors (high ISO capabilities) and fast (large aperture), professional lenses. If you are shooting night scenes, chances are you are looking for a camera with a fairly wide angle lens, and for theatre shots, you are looking for a reasonably long zoom lens

Can this be repeated with a compact camera? To some extent the answer is yes, but there are tradeoffs, but it depends on what you plan to do with your shots. Look at the Panasonic FZ200. It has a constant f/2.8 lens throughout the focal length range and ISO range up to 6400. The sensor is a bit small, but it getting there. Zoom range is decent too. It might give you results that are acceptable to you (posting on the internet, should be okay, don't expect to produce large, high quality prints.

[jcuknz]

Although I thought your question as an oxymoron on second thoughts I would suggest an Olympus Pen camera whuich can use a fast lens in low light conditions and need not cost that much ... mine 2/h for the body was US $178 and used with a fast prime lens and adaptor could cost a similar amount for a lens if you are prepared to work manually. On the other hand and a bit bigger but still quite small there are cameras with fast fixed lenses from Canon but being small sensored they do not take that kindly to high ISO, though they have them. From brief experience, neither of your situations appeal to me, the MFT camera does permkit you to use the higher ISO.... against that is the fact that cameras are getting better with every year as R&D goes into improving their ability to shoot at high ISO. I suggest you go to www.dpreview.com and look at the test results for the current lot of cameras and you could find satisfaction that I didn't with my older cameras.

A side issue is how sensitive you are to noise. If you are not that bothered by it and do not enlarge the images too much quite acceptab le results can be obtained working at 6400 ISO with a Panasonic G3 as I discovered to my delight working by ambient light in a tent at 2am [ too much = more than 50% on my monitor which gave me about a 10x8 inch picture ] It is also fast to focus in low light working on the contrast in the subject.

Finally there is the question of what Post Processing can do for you and an adjacent thread "Blurry Pictures" have examples of lifting badly under exposed files to acceptable levels .... it seems my monitor is badly out but Manfred's rescues are good.

[compiler]

...The Panasonic FZ200 is not pocketable. I do not want the very long zoom but about 5X is enough. The Sony RX100 is the one that many people may think about first but it has undesirable color tone, over-situated red. I just hope the camera has fast focus, good low light shooting performance and pocketable. Can anyone continue to share your experience in the use of the compact zoom camera such as Canon G, Fuji X, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic etc to shoot the night street and inside theater pictures?

[tao2]

Do you know which compact zoom camera is good for the night street and theater performance shooting? I hope the camera has fast focus and good low light shooting performance.

Hi Compiler,

Have a look at the Fuji F900 EXR...https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Fu...OsS80QXvkIGoBQ

Contemplating buying it. Ah owned the F200 and F300 EXR both excellent compacts and very good lowlight. In particular, ah regret selling the F200, Fuji's CCD EXR sensor was excellent and a shame it wasn't continued. Went on tae buy the F550 and it was a disaster of a camera. Production of this model had been moved tae a new facility in China and apart from all the teething troubles, they just couldn't get it right. After returning my 4th one, gave up on it. Bright sunny days on LARGE - great photos, anything else - forget it.

Lost my faith in Fuji for a long time after that but this F900 looks like it may restore it. Uses phase detect AF.

[Manfred M]

Compiler - if you are looking at the point & shoot lines and are looking for a tiny camera; they all have the same basic limitations. Small camera = small sensor = poor low light sensitivity. The way that the manufacturers get around this is heavy noise reduction; which is a nice way of saying that they smear the image and effectively lower the resolution.

The second issue is the the small cameras tend to have fairly slow lenses (small maximum aperture = low light gathering ability) and this decreases as the focal length increases, making it more difficult to handhold and get a sharp image. I've had small cameras from Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus and Sony (at different price points), and while they performed reasonably well in well lit situations, they were terrible in low light situations. To get the small size, the manufacturers have had to make trade-offs on performance. Shooting night time scenes and theatre (harsh, but low level lighting) are something that they don't do well.

If you are looking at the same class of cameras as the RX100, then consider both the Panasonic LX7 or the Canon Powershot G1 X, as these are effectively going after the same user. I think the Canon might be a bit better fit (larger sensor) than the LX7 might be a bit too large for what you are looking at; but of the three, I would probably go with the Sony.