Moving up from my point-and-shoot: Help me choose my next camera?

In My Humble Opinion
1

For a long time I’ve found the limitations of my present Nikon Coolpix s8100 to be a hindrance, and I’ve wanted to move up to a better camera. Now, finally, I’m able to do it so I’m now trying to find out what the best choices out there are.

Some key requirements I’d like the new camera to meet:

(1) Low-mag, wide angle astrophotography. At most times this will mean just the moon, but when I find myself under a dark sky I would like to capture brighter clusters, planets and Meisser objects, like the Pleiades and the Orion Nebula. For those last two items, I’d consider purchasing an additional lens if necessary. OTOH, I see cameras in the stores that offer 50x optical zoom on their stock lenses, and those lenses look big enough to support that. I’ve done moon pictures with the Nikon, but that has only been possible at dusk or dawn, in order that the glare of the moon doesn’t wash everything out, including the moon (See next point).

(2) Better light dynamics than my current camera. For example, if I’m sitting in a dark restaurant and shoot a picture of the lake outside the window, I want both the lake and the interior of the restaurant to show up in the picture. With the current Nikon, everything but the window would turn up almost totally black. In challenging situations like this, I’m hoping that the new camera would produce a photo more like what the human eye sees. Since it won’t be a point-and-shoot, I don’t expect the new camera to solve these problems automatically, but it should provide me with the ability to make necessary adjustments to get the shot I want.

(3) I don’t do much action photography, but it does come up occasionally. The old Nikon is surprisingly good here, at least in sunlight, but I’ll be expecting the new camera to do a lot better. A typical situation: A low flying bird passes the field of view just when I’m taking the picture; even if I didn’t plan for the bird being there I want it to be as well resolved as possible.

(4) Still digital! I’m not planning on going old school and switching to film, at least not yet.

What else? I don’t know yet.

I’ve heard of “bridge cameras” to mean cameras positioned between point-and-shoots and professional level gear–although in terms of price they are much closer to the former. Nonetheless they do seem to have at least some of the optical resources that I want. Based on what I know about how lenses work, the main issue with the Coolpix is the limited aperture of the lens. It’s better than my smartphone, but I’m sure not nearly as good as the better cameras to be found in any electronics store.

This brings up a question I have: When looking at a camera in the store, is the lens you see the lens you get? IOW, is the usable lens about as wide as the cylindrical housing you see on the front of the camera?

Another specific question: I’ve noticed the prices of many of these cameras are quite low; in fact less than I paid for the Coolpix about seven years ago. Is this just because electronics keep getting cheaper and cheaper, or is it because they’re low-quality cameras? For example, I saw this Kodak AZ401 on sale for $125 at a local big-box store. I didn’t know Kodak still existed, much less produced digital cameras, but I noticed a Canon for not much more money, and apparently with about the same optics as the Kodak. I think we paid about twice that for the Coolpix.

I’d be grateful to hear any pointers and advice you may have.

2

I have not gone digital SLR at this point but I would take something like a Canon over maybe a Kodak or off-brand. The real issue comes in when you want to add lenses — this is different from the old 35mm where you could basically adapt just about any lens to any body. Now, because of the electronics and all, matching seems more of a big deal.

3

I have successfully done this on the computer by varying the exposure and using tone mapping. So not automatic, but a digital camera can facilitate this via automatic exposure bracketing. It always helps if the camera outputs raw image files rather than only processed or compressed image files.

Lenses are usually sold separately to the camera, are easily more expensive than the camera body, and the entrance pupil can be much bigger than the hole in the camera housing.

4

ETA the “usable lens” diameter is determined by the f-number (where f is the focal length) which is prominently engraved on the lens. A lens above f/1 is going to be expensive! f/1.4 or something is more typical.

5

Thanks to all who’ve answered so far.

I’ve always thought this was true for higher-end equipment, but is it also true for bridge cameras you’d see in a Best Buy store? I’m talking about models in the $150 to $300 range.

I thought as much, since I do know that the whole point of the lens is to converge the light rays to a point.

What exactly does the term “entrance pupil” refer to?

6

Wide angle: Perhaps you could start with a good body and a general purpose lens for now and later, when you have more experience with photography and your kit, add a lens that’s optimized for astrophotography.

You may also want to have a tripod* and a lengthy long exposure mode coupled with a low ISO setting.
Better light dynamics: Make sure it has manual mode. It should also have the option to shoot in RAW format which will enable you to do HDR photography which can prevent the too-dark-or-too-bright situation you describe in the restaurant. Also, you might enjoy the look of HDR.

Action photography: I think whether the sensor is CCD or CMOS matters a lot here. For a camera where you care more about image quality than cost, size or power consumption, CCD seems preferable.
You mention cameras you’d see at Best Buy in the 150-300$ range. BHPhoto and possibly Newegg might be your best options rather than Best Buy-type stores.

7

Regarding your low lighting photography…

Get a camera that has very good high ISO performance (check DPReview or similar sites). That will serve you well. Most modern cameras have amazing high ISO performance.

See if your new kit can save both (RAW+JPEG) for each shot. That way you have the camera-generated JPEG, which might be just right, and the source RAW file in case you need to tweak it: you have both the baked cake as well as the raw ingredients. This comes into play when you are dealing with badly under or overexposed photographs or photographs in wonky light. In short, a RAW file gives you much more latitude in rescuing a borderline shot.

In addition to shooting RAW, you may wish to consider the Expose to the Right technique: especially with JPEG photography we are encouraged to overexpose (keeping an eye on the highlights) and then readjust in post. This is because of the nonlinear behavior of light brightness levels.
(from Wikipedia) “Although a camera may have a dynamic range of 5 or more stops, when image data is recorded digitally the highest (brightest) stop uses fully half of the discrete tonal values.”

On a side note, as you get serious you will generate way too many photographs. Be sure to cull your shots early. Seriously, in five years you won’t care about the five “almost perfect” shots of your dog catching the Frisbee–keep the very best one and toss the rest. Keep the RAW only for photos that need it; otherwise you are burning up huge amounts of disk space.

8

Good question. I tried a quick search at Newegg for digital cameras $200-300 and found a couple of body + (interchangeable) lens kits, but I suspect they may be used rather than new. A lot more models at that bridge price range have one fixed zoom lens, but that’s OK as the optics seem to be adequate. A decent, versatile zoom lens is much handier (and cheaper!) than carrying around a bag full of different lenses.

That is just the name for the image of the opening you see when you look through the lens. It may be bigger than the physical hole in the camera due to magnification (the lens bending and collecting the light).

Smaller f/ number = larger aperture = more light entering the camera.

(Extreme example: Stanley Kubrick purchased a couple of f/0.7 lenses so he could film scenes by candlelight in Barry Lyndon!)

Typical bridge camera zoom lens: f/3-5

9

Sounds like what you really want is exposure control. Most point-and-shoot cameras do not provide this, but a few do. I have a Panasonic Lumix with a non-interchangable lens, but it is a 30x zoom, and the camera has full MATP (manual, aperture-priority, shutter-priority, program) exposure settings. It is much smaller and lighter than my DSLR, but still lets me take the picture that I want.

Something like this

10

I would recommend that you give serious consideration to the Canon Powershot line. They range from small but surprisingly powerful pocket cameras up to something fairly close to DSLRs.

Check this one out, and if you don’t like it, there are plenty of others.
https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/details/cameras/point-and-shoot/long-zoom-cameras/powershot-sx420-is

11

If your picking up the camera in bestbuy , most likely it will come with a kit lens. For Canon DSLR’s, thats usually the 18-55mm F3-5. People buying a body only camera are likely to pick it up from Canon directly, or a photography store of their choice. Nikon and Sony should be similar.

You should be aware that if your picking up a Nikon, then its sensor is going to be a sony. So if the system you are looking at, has price conciderations, then you might want to give Sony a look see. All the major brands should support what you want.

I would advise that you take the time to visit a camera store and have the staff walk you through whats available, usually from the most expensive and down to what you consider your price range. Besides the technical spec’s of the camera’s, you also want to see the difference in ergonomics. The big iron is not light, and button placement and nomclamenture is different between each brand, but they tend to be the same meaning.

12

I thought I’d come back here to say that I decided on, and bought, a Nikon D5600 earlier this month. It came with a body and two lenses, and should be more than enough to meet my needs for the foreseeable future (well, I could definitely see a telephoto lens somewhere in there).

There’s a lot to learn when it comes to making full use of this camera’s capabilities, but I think I know enough now to shoot the total eclipse next week!

13

Congrats! Post a few of your favorite shots when you get a chance.

14

I totally missed out on the eclipse due to weather. But I’ll post links to some of my photos from the trip in the near future.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

15

Here’s a link to some of my Charleston SC photos; not all of them were taken with the new camera.

Keep in mind I’m still very much a noob in regard to photography, so these are obviously not the best I can do with this camera. You should be able to tell which camera was used by swiping up under the individual picture display.

[Album] DT Charleston SC

And here are a few moon pictures (all from the new camera).

[Album] Sky objects

If you know me on Facebook, you might have seen many of these pics already.