I am - among other things - the director of a Summer School in the UK. During the Summer holidays, when the children (and normal staff) at my school are away on holiday we run a summer course for foreign students, who come to learn English and do various other educational/leisure activities. We need good-ish quality photographs of the kids and what they do, for our website gallery and next year’s publicity materials.
(Yes, we always obtain consent…)
So…
Some years we hire professional photographers for this kind of thing, but they are expensive - and they don’t go out on excursions with the kids - which is a big part of what we do. It makes sense for our own staff to be taking photos.
The rules re: safeguarding are that staff are not allowed to take photos of the children using their own personal devices - so their own mobile phones are out (even though mobiles can produce some pretty marketable photos).
We therefore need ~3 cameras which belong to the school, which can be assigned to staff to take pictures.
Budget is about £500 or less for each camera
We won’t be bothering with buying additional lenses - the camera model should come with a good all-rounder lens, and it needn’t be detachable. Wide is more important than long zoom. We don’t need macro. There might be some low-light indoor photography, and/or pictures of things happening at speed - so a fast-ish lens would be good. That and/or good ISO with not too much noise.
The people taking the photographs will not necessarily be trained or experienced in photography; the camera needs to be simple enough for a novice, but better than your average PAC.
We don’t need RAW, as no-one here has time for PP.
We won’t need video
The staff will be taking the cameras out on excursions and various rough-and-tumble activities - so they need to be not-too-cumbersome to carry and able to withstand a bit of a knock around. Water resistant would be a big plus. So, hulking full-frame DSLRs are out - even if we could afford them.
Battery life isn’t a deal-breaker - people will be taking occasional snaps, as opposed to going out to do a full day of photography.
Just an EVF is fine.
The photos, frankly, do not need to be high-end professional quality - they just need to be good enough to put on the website gallery and print out (in small sizes) in our brochures. No-one will be scrutinising pixels for slight chromatic aberrations or whatever.
Examples of things/scenes to be photographed: children in classrooms, on the beach, doing sports, in museums/galleries, performing on stage, eating meals, posing in front of tourist attractions, etc…
This isn’t urgent, as I won’t bother buying them before next summer - so I’m not so much thinking specific models now as much as the type of camera to go for.
At the moment I’m leaning towards something like the Canon G series or something mirrorless - but I am open to pushes in other directions.
For your purposes I wouldn’t get a DSLR. One of the big advantages of a DSLR is interchangeable lenses, and you’re not going to buy extra lenses.
Also, my impression is that the people taking the pictures won’t be professional photographers, or even serious amateurs. You’d do best with a camera that has a good point-and-shoot mode.
Have you looked at DPReview? Some research there could really help you figure out what to buy. The reviews are extensive, but you can learn a lot just by reading the summary page at the end of each review.
I like my relatively inexpensive Samsung WB35F. Great thing about this is that a rechargeable battery is included, as well as a USB cord. Recharging is as simple as connecting to a computer for an hour or so.
Ignore technical specs. Any camera will give you decent pics that can be enlarged to A4 size paper or fill a computer screen.
You need an easy to use, idiot-proof and sturdy camera.
Go to a camera shop, tell them what you just told us…and then physically use whichever model they show you.
Take pics of the staff–to simulate taking pics of kids in a room.
Drop down on one knee and take pics of some other customer’s baby, i.e…a close-up.
Step out the door, look at somebody out in the parking lot 50 or 100 yards away. Imagine that the person was one of your kids on an outing-- would you have wanted to shoot a pic of him from that distance? --if so, you need a 10-times zoom. If not, you probably only need a 2 or 4 times zoom.
Take a few pics with zoom and decide which fits your needs.
But above all—make sure there is no need to fiddle with buttons or menus!
The teachers on your staff need a simple, point-and-shoot mode that works instantaneously; so when outdoors, they can grab the camera off their belt, and take an un-posed pic of people acting naturally.
The camera will have dozens of settings–make sure the simple one is the only one you need, and that it is clearly marked on the dial. Panasonic uses a red-heart symbol for “simple” mode, which is on a physical dial–no need to press multiple buttons and hunt through menus.
Set it and forget about it.
You want to concentrate on catching natural smiles on people’s faces—not saying "wait a second, please, and then fiddling with buttons and settings, then “okay, look up at the camera now” —and then discover that the people are no longer smiling at you.
There’s hardly such a thing as a camera shop any more. The ones that do sell mostly pro-quality DSLRs. For MrLee to find the best camera for his purposes, he’ll probably have to do his research and purchase on-line.
Since no one’s mentioned it yet, you don’t have to buy three of the exact same model, do you? You’ve described several different requirements, so you might get a basic small consumer DSLR as the “good” camera for when you need better resolution and the ability to make manual adjustments, etc. An average point-and-shoot would do for ordinary daily use, and a waterproof one for those circumstances. All readily available for less than $500, to say nothing of £500.
If you stick with the same brand, the controls and menus will be similar enough to make it easy for your users to switch between them. Personally, I like Canon.
I agree with almost all of the “doesn’t matter” stuff with one exception:
Based on what you described, I feel that your camera should be able to do good portrait shots. One very basic difference between good and great people shots is the background. Look at this portrait
Notice how the woman stands out from the blurred background (bokeh). It’s not a pro portrait and she is a little blurry, but the photo still looks great. That is a desirable effect that can enhance people photos. And it doesn’t need to be full-on like that example. A little bit can separate the subjects (the kids) from a messy background.
Bokeh is affected by a few factors, any combination of which can be used:
…longer focal length lenses have better bokeh
…larger apertures have better bokeh
…larger sensors have better bokeh
Look for a camera that has as wide an aperture as possible (as others have mentioned) and as large a sensor as possible (prefer m43 or APS-C over the grain-of-rice sensors present in many smaller cameras).
The Panasonic FZ300 and Fujifilm FinePix S1 are both “weather sealed,” which means moderately water-resistant. They should do OK with splashes and moderate rain, but may not survive being dropped into a river. I think these cameras fit all your requirements adequately.
There are also waterproof compact cameras like the Olympus TG series. They also tend to be very durable. But you sacrifice image quality, zoom range, etc. Still, if your “excursions” include things like kayaking and rafting, it might make sense to buy one of these for those occasions.
Your requirement for “wide” is the killer for point-n-shoot’s - in terms of 35mm, which most specs can give you:
For focal lengths of lens:
a “normal” lens was 50mm
a low priced “kit” SLR + lens had either a 50mm fixed or a roughly 30-90mm zoom
the standard professional portrait lens was 100-130mm
if you want to get a close-up of a bear in the zoo, use at least 200mm - 500mm is much better.
My wide angle is 20mm - it makes some killer shots
When you check out a camera, notice the display area and judge where a classroom-sized area would be - can you get all of it without getting more than that?
Now find a customer or clerk about the same distance as your student would be for a location shoot - how close to "just the stuff we want to see, but “all of what we want to see” shows up.
“Optical” zoom beats “digital” zoom - the digital is like using a darkroom enlarger to compensate for a bad negative - there is only so much emulsion, and enlarging too much makes for a crappy print. A “digital zoom” throws away part of the captured image and stretches it to fill the frame.
Quality is lost in the process.
I’d go with this approach. There are a number of ‘rugged’ cameras out there that are waterproof enough for pool/beach use & are also drop-proof to 4’-5’ which means they won’t break when one of your klutzier teachers/counselors has butter fingers. These are all well under £500 which means you can buy a more expensive one for one of the others if you desire.