A few years back I bought a Sony “bridge” camera from 2008. Good price, 15x zoom, 9.1mp; basically all I need. But before I could try it my life fell apart and it spent three years in the box my wife’s ashes came in, sitting on the dryer. Now I’m bored and my kids brought it in, sans the sad box. It’s a complete kit: camera, strap, memory card, charger, and three batteries.
A bridge camera bridges the gap between a point-and-shoot and a digital single lens reflex, including a larger fixed lens and styling and size like a DSLR. I plugged in a battery and started teaching my way around it.
Why I hate it:
The interface is uncomfortable and non-intuitive.
There is a delay between pressing the button and taking the picture.
The interface is uncomfortable and non-intuitive.
The colors are not true, and finally,
The interface is uncomfortable and non-intuitive.
I have a friend who shoots professionally and swears by Sony, so I expected better. Instead, it’s going back on eBay.
Having a time delay between pressing the button and taking the picture seems like a fatal mal-feature for a camera. Especially if the interface is uncomfortable and non-intuitive.
I’m used to a lag of a fraction of a second; with this one I can press the Go button,fix a sandwich, go to the bathroom, and come back and find I still have time for a quick cigarette.
My daughter is bringing in my even older bridge and maybe a P&S, depending on what I have stuffed in that camera bag. And maybe I’ll set up an online gallery to show off some shots I don’t hate.
This is a question I used to ask AllTheTime when someone complained that their camera would not snap a picture: Are you pre-focusing?
Which is to say, are you pressing the shutter halfway down until the camera successfully focuses on your subject, and then fully pressing the shutter? Because you pretty much had to do that in 2008, and still have to do that with many cameras.
Please excuse me if the answer to my question is, “No shit Sherlock” or “Well, duh” or “Don’t teach your grandma how to suck eggs.”
I recently bought a mirrorless micro 4/3 camera (Panasonic G85) and it may be too complicated for me. I broke my full-frame Nikon and had always thought the little Panasonics were very cute. The kit price with 2 lenses was great, and it shot decent video. But…while the camera will do a thousand tricks, I haven’t found a way to conveniently control the 6 or 7 things that are of prime importance to me.
Focus point. Aperture and shutter speed. Sensitivity (ISO). Exposure compensation. Flash function (slow speed, fill, compensation).
The camera has about 10 customizable function buttons, plus a touch screen quick menu, plus several buttons to recall custom settings, but so far it is not coming together. Each of the function buttons can be assigned to any of a dozen different options, but that may be more versatility than I can handle. I may need basic non-customizable controls.
Many moons ago, Jr. was playing soccer. I had a Kodak PHD camera that I tried to use–by the time it took the picture, the kids had run to the far end of the field. I got so peeved I broke out the Nikon F2 I had, loaded up the film and went to the next game to discover the battery had died at some point in the last decade of non use. Simple–1/ASA at f16. Pictures came out good, but it was expensive. Eventually transitioned to a DSLR, but today that is what a iPhone is for…
For the longest time I’ve wished for a digital version of my favorite film cameras. I’m thinking interchangeable lens SLR, but can ask for the same thing in a bridge camera.
Let the focus, aperture and shutter be manually set. Include a light meter, but only for information’s sake (and when you can move to subject position for an incident light meter, there’s little better than that anyway).
And hyperfocus when you’re just walking around, anyway. Pick a fairly narrow aperture that still makes shutter speeds practical for the ambient conditions, and focus so the lens infinity marker is against the corresponding f/ stop marking on the long end of the focusing scale. For many shots, you can point the camera in the right direction and shoot, even before you get it to your eye. You don’t have to adjust anything as long as the subject distance is above the corresponding f/ stop marking on the short end of the focusing scale.
Light is completely cool and fun to play with, and there are all these simple degrees of freedom to do it with. It was always easy to understand – and I can’t make much sense at all of the 20 or 30 different modes on the last digital camera I bought, much less the little icon language they use to mark them.
It’s a 2008 - well, duh.
I’d get a point and shoot, or an SLR, and just skip the bridge entirely. The SLRs are pretty easy to use at this point. Get a lens that goes from 35-110, or similar, and you’ll be set. No need to swap out lenses for most purposes.
ETA: Napier I took the plunge 2 years ago and moved to digital. I’ve really enjoyed it, after I learned how to get the manual settings the way I wanted them. It sounds like you wouldn’t have any problems.
I have a distressing number of point and shoots, mostly Fujis with 4mp to 5mp. They take nice pictures if I don’t need poster-size prints, and are super easy to run, though the lenses can get stuck. Maybe powdered graphite will help, if I can make sure it doesn’t get into the electronics.
Because I want to sell it and don’t want this thread to show up in searches, you silly goose!
If anyone on this thread wants to give away any (working) 2001 model Sony F707s, I’m right here. (Despite its limitations from today’s perspective, I really, really loved that camera, my second digital.)
Yeah, this is what drove me to a DSLR (EOS 300D) in 2003. Taking anything but landscapes and posed photos (and sometimes even then) was impossible with any lesser camera back then, solely because of focus speed. This remained true for many years after I went DSLR.
The last straw for me ( after missing many pics of my kid) was being in Hawaii, on a boat surrounded by a pod of breaching whales, and I got almost no decent pictures of what was an incredible photo opportunity. The DSLR was bought right after.
My church has a monthly non-food bank for stuff that’s not covered by food stamps. I could donate it to that. Someone with more patience than I could have some fun with it.
Usually because its hunting for its preset focal point. At the time, the only thing those cameras really had going for them, is the size and weight. Sony camera is not a camera company, its a division and to compete with Canon, a lot of the things that canon and nikon could do with glass, Sony was doing with software.
And then Cellphones came out with better camera’s and those bridge camera’s went the way of the dodo.
Thankfully, I’ve never experienced that, but I was just fed up with the low battery life of integrated lenses without battery packs, both of which made non-DSLRs intensely annoying. I only vaguely knew that a DSLR was better. I still, 90% of the time, just think of it as a really beefy camera that has a great battery life. Maybe I’m just forgetting how flat most of the pictures were on my almost-bridge non-DSLR.
