It really depends on what you shoot.
Sports, nature and certain type of comercial photography is typically made with full frames. Photographing kids, food, human interest stories for the local newspaper? DX is plenty fine. Lots of pros have DX as backup cameras.
Like my college photog professor used to say: “it’s the lens behind the camera and the lens in front of the camera that makes a picture”.
I suspect many people are using different definitions of professional. I suspect a studio photographer would have completely different requirements from a photojournalist.
Read this article on page 11. It looks like a full frame sensor costs about 20 times as much as a APS-C sensor.
I’m not talking about those guys. I’m talking about the guys that said they would switch to digital when you took their 35mm out of their cold dead fingers.
:rolleyes:
There’s this thing called microeconomics. You make a thing, you have demand, you price that thing at what the demand will allow.
They are allowed to price their product at a price that creates the product, funds the R&D, and makes profit.
Profit, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Really. It’s not like they’re floating mortgages people can’t afford.
Being bitter at the price of something, because you can’t or are unwilling to afford it, is not the fault of the manufacturer.
Those rat bastards, how DARE they prevent a race to the bottom, the only end result of which is bankruptcy!
Priced a RED camera lately?What do you suppose makes them so expensive? The unicorn dust?
What you fail to recognize, is just how amazingly expensive it IS to make something like a CCD or CMOS sensor. You need a clean room, You need adequate yield, SOMEONE (perhaps not the camera manufacturer, but they are a client) needs the up-front cash to build the facility. Someone needs to fund the R&D to take the next step in sensor design to jump in density, or light detection, or packaging.
If you REALLY want something to bitch about, complain about the severe loss in value for prosumer cameras. I had about $2500 in a Nikon N70 (film) and it’s glass. I got about $900 for it when I converted to digital. The digital equipment I got for that $900 is worth near diddley squat.
This.
For example, while noise is generally intolerable in studio, product and commercial photography, it is not as big a problem in photojournalism and sports photography. You do not want to lug around a $60K Hassy shooting high school basketball, but if you are shooting BK burgers for billboards, heck yes. War correspondants probably suck at food photography, and I would suck at running around in Iraq trying not to get shot myself.
Photographers are not generalists.
A professional sports photographer would sooner shoot with an EOS 1D (APS-H - 10 fps) or a 7D (APS-C - 8 fps) or a 50D (APS-C - 6.3 fps) than an EOS 1Ds (full frame - 5 fps) or a 5D MKII (full frame - 3.7 fps).
When you want to catch action, frame rate matters, not sensor size.
May I introduce you to the Olympus XZ-1? f/1.8 - f/2.5. This was the camera I took along on my recent trip to Europe when weight restrictions forced me to leave my DSLR behind. It makes a fine pocketable travel camera. I just wish it had a dedicated AEL button.
It seems that the camera manufacturers have finally figured out that these days, the market for small cameras isn’t the casual consumer (who’s happy with his cell phone camera), but more serious photographers who don’t always want to carry a full DSLR kit around. It’s about time!
Holy crap! That’s awesome! Just show the amount of development happening in photography these days.
Actually the David Pogue review I referenced earlier raves about the Canon Powershot S100 which is about the same price online (low $400s). After reading this review of the S100, I wondering if S95 isn’t a better deal. It is discounted to $290.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/23/2578710/canon-powershot-s100-review
I’d be happy with a viewfinder of any kind. I think this one has an optional electronic add-on, but it makes the camera bulkier.
There are a bunch of these on the market now. The Canon S100, the Panasonic LX5, the Nikon P300, and the Samsung TL500 all have larger sensors, fast optics, and full manual controls. None have built-in viewfinders, grrrrrrr. I wonder how many of these actually get sold, I think the market is fairly small compared to the market now being served by cell phone cameras.
I’ve heard the S95 is a fine, fine camera, and you sure can’t beat that price. The lens isn’t quite as fast as the Olympus (which I mentioned only because Unintentionally Blank had said the camera companies always favored more zoom over fast lenses), but it’s a very small difference.
Now if they’d just find a way to put a viewfinder on these things…
It does have the option of an add-on electronic viewfinder (two different viewfinder choices, actually - the same ones that the PEN series cameras use). I just got one for mine, but haven’t had a chance to try the camera out with it yet. You’re right, it does make the camera a bit taller, plus, you can’t use an external flash while you’re using the viewfinder, as the electronic finder fastens onto the hot shoe. It would be nice if they’d fine a way to incorporate both the viewfinder AND the hot shoe on the camera, but given the small size of these cameras, that’s probably just not physically possible.
Even with the viewfinder on, though, I think this camera would fit in a coat pocket. If you’d be comfortable with an electronic rather than optical viewfinder, it might work for you.
I’m sure it is, a lot smaller. But I think the more interesting question is what the ratio is between the sales of these tiny advanced point-and-shoot models, the larger but still fairly compact interchangeable lens mirrorless systems such as the Olympus PEN and Sony NEX cameras, and the true DSLRs. We live in interesting photographic times!
(There is one other thing that’s great about these small compacts as travel cameras; to a casual eye, they all look like “regular” point and shoot models. In other words, cameras that are not worth stealing - as opposed to a big DSLR, which can’t help but draw attention to itself and marks you out to every pickpocket as a tourist. Now if someone could just find a solution to the viewfinder issue…)
Well, what a difference two years makes. My Sony DSC-HX1’s lens is 2.8-5.2
That said, with the processor magic it’s got, I’ll take some pretty amazing low light no-flash photos.
I think thieves are probably more likely to steal smaller things than larger things.
Not if the smaller things have no street value. A thief will be able to fence a DSLR for at least a few hundred dollars (depending on the exact model of body and lens); ordinary point and shoot cameras, on the other hand, are practically worthless as second-hand merchandise (especially since they’re not as convenient to carry as a cell phone camera, so fewer and fewer average people are interested in using them). That’s why a “serious” camera that doesn’t actually look like a “serious” camera can be a nice thing to have. To the average person, the Canon S95 or Olympus XZ-1 look like cheap $100 point and shoot cameras, hardly worth stealing, and they don’t make their owners look like people who must have Serious Money (as expensive DSLR kits do).