Right now I am in there and I see 353 photography courses listed. They cover all aspects of photography from the basics of exposure to a full course on lenses to detailed courses on Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture.
Each course is an hour or four long and broken up into bite sized segments. They let you watch a couple segments from each course for free. Check it out.
That’s just a tiny sampling. Where else can you go and find a four hour video tutorial just on night and low light photography, among hundreds of other courses, for an all-you-can-eat $25/mo?
And if you Google it, you should be able to find their 7 day free trial. It’s an excellent resource.
In 1976, Minolta made an SLR in the 110 format. Alas, it’s rather limited. The lens is not interchangeable, and it only has aperture-priority automatic exposure. But it’s a very compact design, easy to carry, and easy to handle.
If the demand was there for it, there’s no good reason that I can think of why some company couldn’t manufacture a DSLR in a very similar format. No reason why it would have to have the limitations of the 1976 Minolta; no reason why it couldn’t have interchangeable lenses, and all the sophistication of a full-sized DSLR. It wouldn’t have the resolution of a full-sized DSLR, of course, but it could certainly be at least as good in this respect, as any of the non-DSLR compact cameras that have been mentioned so far in this thread.
For some consumers, I think this might be the perfect compromise between the quality and sophistication of a DSLR, and the compactness of an otherwise-lesser camera. It seems to me that such a camera would be perfect for the OP.
By the way, the picture in the Wikipedia article on the Minolta 110 Zoom SLR is mine. It’s my camera in the picture, and I’m the one who took the picture. I’ve not got it very strongly in my head, since I now have a much better camera than the one I used to take that picture, to take a new picture and put it there in place of the existing one.
Nothing wrong with compact cameras, but some cameras with interchangeable lenses (e.g. Olympus Pen series) are quite compact.
Zoom is nice, but if you want to learn photography as an art form or hobby, it tends to make you lazy. Sometimes it helps to limit your choice (e.g. charcoal sketch vs. oil painting). Also, everything else being equal, zoom lenses are slower (i.e. smaller aperture) and not good for low light conditions.
Depends on your budget. The SONY RX-1 probably has the best image quality of any compact camera, but it has no zoom, and costs $2800. It has a full-frame sensor.
A couple notches down from that, the SONY RX100-II has a 1" sensor, which is more than twice the size of a 1/1.7" sensor found on the Sony S series. And the sensor is back-illuminated, which means it has better sensitivity than conventional sensors, which helps in low-light conditions. And it has a zoom. It sells for about $750.
I have the older version, the RX-100, which is still the best compact camera I’ve owned. (Fuji X100s is better but I don’t consider it a compact camera.) I think it’s still sold.
The only advice I would add is to choose a camera with a viewfinder. LCD screens appear to be very nice in the shop but out in the glare of daylight, they are often difficult to see. Impossible at times. Holding a camera to the eye gives you a solid stance and tells you what you are photographing.
If you want a camera that is compact and gives you reasonable manual controls without going into dSLR territory, I would also have you look into the Fuji X10 or the Sony DSC RX-100 (both of which have already been mentioned in this thread.)
There is a large and growing class of cameras that fit in this category. They are the mirror-less interchangeable lens cameras that have been mentioned in this thread. The only thing they’re really missing is the optical viewfinder but they otherwise are exactly what you are talking about.
Plus the latest Canon DSLR is small enough to compete in this category.
The SLR-type optical viewfinder is a rather important, defining attribute of an SLR. To say that these compact cameras are just like a DSLR except for the fact that they lack an optical viewfinder really rather misses the whole point. It’s a bit like saying that a rowboat is just like a high-performance motorboat except that it lacks a motor.
I like an optical view finder. You like an optical view finder. But the vast majority of people out there who take pictures don’t seem to mind. It’s unfortunate but if that’s the market you are targeting they will take the convenience of smaller size over the view finder.
And the fact is, people who use the LCD are perfectly capable of taking amazing shots. Photographers work with the tools at hand.
I have a DSLR, but as a sidekick camera I also have a Canon Powershot S95, which gets more work than the DSLR nowadays. It has all the features of the larger, heavier camera (except for additional lens capability), plus zoom, plus movie. It will shoot in all the same modes as a DSLR, is instant on/off, flash/no flash, low light, etc. It’s truly a versatile camera. I think there is at least one newer generation of this camera, the S110, but I can’t imagine how they could improve it. You can pick one up for under $400.
I don’t know if anybody covered it above, but pay no attention to the megapixel ratings. Unless you’re going to enlarge your photos to poster size or do very detailed after-shoot manipulation, anything over about 6 MP is somewhat meaningless. The cameras I mentioned above are 10-12 MP.
Check out the Canon SX-50. It’s a compact (I guess) one-lens super zoom that’s fully automatic but with aperture/shutter priority and macro settings if you want to use them.
I bought an SX-30 a few years ago, so my expertise with the SX models doesn’t extend to the SX-40 and SX-50s, but my 30 doubles as a high-def video cam with sound.
It has its limitations when comparing it to a full 35mm-size Nikon or Canon (I have a Nikkormat 35mm film camera with four lenses from wide angle to telephoto that I haven’t used in three years — and a Kodak Brownie II made in 1931) but I don’t complain, because of the SX-30’s price and handiness.
The SX-30’s still shots are jpg only and I’ve noticed minor fringing, once in a long while.
I think it will accept a larger flash than its built-in, which would come in handy for bounce flash, but what the hey.
You’re just nitpicking about the terminology. Yes, an optical TTL viewfinder is the defining characteristic of a DSLR, but for many people, that’s not the reason they buy a DSLR. Other reasons include: large sensor, low-light sensitivity, image quality, interchangeable lens, dedicated controls for various functions, and many features that aren’t found on typical compact cameras. In all these aspects, a mirrorless camera is just like a DSLR. The only difference is that the viewfinder is an LCD display rather than an optical device.
Keep in mind that the LCD viewfinder is still TTL (through the lens). Which means it looks through the same lens that you’re going to take the photo through, so you know exactly what the picture will look like, how the filter affects the view, make sure the hood isn’t obscuring part of the image, etc. Back in the film days, the only way to have a TTL viewfinder was to use a reflex mirror, hence the popularity of SLRs. Now, we can have all the benefits of a TTL viewfinder (i.e. you see exactly what you’re going to get) without a bulky and complicated reflex mirror.
The only disadvantage is, the viewfinder image has a finite frame rate and a slight lag. So a DSLR is still better for sports & action photography.
Ultrazooms like the SX50 are great for certain applications, but they have serious limitations as a DSLR replacement. The lenses on those cameras are very slow because of the size requirements. Also, to get that much zoom you end up with a very small sensor meaning relatively poor image quality and awful low light performance. I own an ultrazoom and it’s great for outdoors sports photography but not for artistic work.
It ain’t the greatest, but the results are good for the price. I’ve seen worse.
The lens barrel is marked in 35mm equivalencies. At 24mm equivalency, it’s wide open at ƒ5.6. At its maximum optical zoom, 840mm, it’s wide open at 5.8.
The camera stops down to ƒ8 max, which disappointed me, but its depth of field surprised me. You can see purple fringing, though, on the vertical line of the prow of the boat on the left. I shot this one, using aperture priority, at ƒ8.
I shot the bridge somewhere between 500mm and 700mm equivalency.For whatever reason the Canon made the sky red. I didn’t manipulate it, and it didn’t happen again when I tested it elsewhere a few days later.
I shot the same scene the next day with my Nikkormat and 200mm Vivitar prime, Kodacolor ISO 400. Maybe at such an extreme telephoto the sun overpowered the Canon’s little brain, making the pic red.
I’m not really talking about what kind of photographers need what kind of cameras to take what kind of amazing pictures. Consider the Lomography movement—built around the artistic use of intentionally-poor-quality cameras.
I was addressing your statement that these mirrorless cameras can, aside from the lack of an optical viewfinder, be “exactly what [I am] talking about”, when I was talking about an SLR. The optical viewfinder is an essential defining characteristic of an SLR. It defines how the camera works, how it interacts with the photographer, everything. It is what distinguishes an SLR from every kind of camera, with every other kind of optical viewfinder, or with no optical viewfinder. It, and nothing else, is what makes an SLR exactly like an SLR.
A camera that is “exactly like an SLR” except that it has no optical viewfinder is nothing like an SLR.
I disagree that an optical view finder is the defining characteristic of an SLR. You can do everything you need to do with an LCD even if it’s a slightly different experience. I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
The unusual hybrid viewfinder of my Fuji X cameras really shows me the difference between optical and electronic viewfinders and which is better in any given situation. I love having both with me at all times.
I have found myself gravitating more toward the electronic viewfinder in most shooting scenarios, just because of the fact that I am seeing the photo exactly as it will appear (though with shallow DOF, as the aperture is always wide open when composing).
The biggest exception is when the action is too quick. I flip the switch over to Optical Viewfinder in these situations and it performs perfectly.
The reason for this is twofold: the electronic viewfinder has an inherent lag, and it only shows what is in frame. In comparison, the optical viewfinder is completely lag-free and always shows lots of stuff outside of the frame, allowing you to predict when something will come in frame to time your shutter press.
A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s daughter’s marching band practice, and I had the x100 with me. I used the EVF for a few photos and then turned to OVF and was amazed at how easy it was to freeze batons in mid air and catch the flags waving just so, things I couldn’t do with the EVF alone.
And for those who feel that an SLR viewfinder is the perfect tool, they don’t show you everything. Go ahead and try to take a nice sunset photo over a tree-lined lake. You will see beautiful sunset in your viewfinder, with green trees. Your photo will have black trees or blown-out sky. Without a special graduated filter in front of the lens to knock down the brightness of the sky, you can’t get those trees brighter. This is all painfully visible in the electronic viewfinder, but not in the optical viewfinder.
Folks in SLR land know how nice it is to have both choices available depending on the shooting situation, hence the availability of Live View mode, where the lens picture is shown on the camera back.
I eventually went to buy the camera yesterday. I envisioned the Canon S120, Canon G16 or Sony RX100.
Unfortunately, neither the S120 nor the G16 are available in France yet. So, I looked up the RX100 but was convinced by the nice sales clerk that I should rather buy the Canon G15 which according to him was much better than the RX100 I, especially in dim light conditions.
Now, I realize that the G15 is more cumbersome and has a significantly smaller sensor than the RX100 I, and I suspect that I was misinformed. I even wonder if the point wasn’t to get rid of the G15 cameras before the arrival of the new G16 (I noticed there wasn’t any Canon S serie left, presumably because they’re waiting for the S120).
So, I have a new question : do you think that my suspicion might be justified? That I was clearly wrong in picking the G15 instead of the RX100 I? Or is it a valid choice? (FTR, both camearas were sold at about the same price, possibly even exactly the same)
