Which camera to buy?

SeilerBird · Aug 6, 2018

docj said:
With all due respect, the primary thrust of this article is to show that smartphone cameras have devastated the camera market across all categories, with the greatest damage being done to sales of point and shoot cameras. Yes, DSLR sales are down but, as the article notes, they have stabilized to some degree. Mirrorless alternatives to DSLRs account for only a limited number of sales.

Here's a quote from the article:

Photographer Sven Skafisk took the latest 2016 CIPA camera production data and created the chart above showing that compact cameras have continued to decline while DSLR and mirrorless camera sales seem to have stabilized a bit.

IMHO, smartphone cameras are a reasonable replacement for compact, point and shoot ones. Many inexpensive compacts used plastic lenses with limited optical capabilities and few had the pixel count of today's smartphone cameras. For people mostly interested in taking snapshots of friends or "I was here" photos to share on Facebook, smartphone cameras are wonderful. Heck, my Pixel 2 even lets me include Augmented Reality artifacts such as R2D2 in my photos if I want to spice them up a bit.

However, the principles of optics remain the same. no small aperture lens can compete with a large aperture one if your objective is cropping a small section out of a photo and blowing it up to fill a screen. Nor will a lens with a "couple" of optical elements compete with a modern zoom with more than a dozen elements made from a mix of different optical glass in order to ensure a minimum of chromatic dispersion and a flat focusing field across the entire frame.

I'm not a pro photographer by any means, but I like my photos to be more than just "I was here" shots. On our Facebook travel blog, I carefully select what I photos I post and I crop and Photoshop many of them. Sure, I could blog with my smartphone, but, to me, that would take away the "art" aspect of photography that I enjoy.

So, I'll continue to lug around my "dinosaur" camera with its 18-400mm zoom because, for me, it makes photography more than just a snapshot.

Joel, I am telling you to ditch your dslr. Keep using it forever if you wish. However DSLR sales did level out for a bit but the fact remains they are still way below what they used to sell. Your arguments about plastic lenses sound like the type of logic used twenty years ago by the film crowd who kept telling me that film would never die. Film had better definition, better saturation, better signal to noise, blah, blah, blah. They had a hundred reasons why they would never switch to digital. Ten years later film was as dead as a doornail. And then film cameras became worthless in the resale market. In a few years dslr sales will be so bad that reselling one will become almost impossible. But as always, the people who have spent money on dslr systems refuse to see the future because it effects them financially.

My photography is a lot more than a snapshot with my cell phone. It is just as legit as the ones I took with more expensive cameras.

hedhunter9 · Aug 6, 2018

My wife takes action shots of our MX races... So she needs zoom... fast focus... continuous shots... etc... So DSL was our choice..
We bought a Canon Rebel kit with the 70/300 zoom that gets the most use for her.. and it works great.. She doesnt know a thing about cameras.
I put it on sport mode and she just clicks away... With its fast auto focus, it does a very good job...
It has more features than I can even think of using..

Bob

docj · Aug 8, 2018

hedhunter9 said:
My wife takes action shots of our MX races... So she needs zoom... fast focus... continuous shots... etc... So DSL was our choice..
We bought a Canon Rebel kit with the 70/300 zoom that gets the most use for her.. and it works great.. She doesnt know a thing about cameras.
I put it on sport mode and she just clicks away... With its fast auto focus, it does a very good job...
It has more features than I can even think of using..

I suggest that she look at the Tamron lenses that fit the Canon Rebel. I have the 18/400 second generation Tamron zoom which is a big improvement over the 28/270 first generation. Much faster and more reliable auto-focus. I don't think Canon even offers a zoom with that much range and, if they did, I probably wouldn't have been able to afford it. With the "multiplication" effect of using a less-than-full-frame sensor, the 400mm translates to >600mm. I've been able to take some remarkable pictures with it and my Rebel T5i.

SeilerBird · Aug 8, 2018

docj said:
I suggest that she look at the Tamron lenses that fit the Canon Rebel. I have the 18/400 second generation Tamron zoom which is a big improvement over the 28/270 first generation. Much faster and more reliable auto-focus. I don't think Canon even offers a zoom with that much range and, if they did, I probably wouldn't have been able to afford it. With the "multiplication" effect of using a less-than-full-frame sensor, the 400mm translates to >600mm. I've been able to take some remarkable pictures with it and my Rebel T5i.

) I love Tamron lenses. I had a 150-600 that I used on my Sony A55 and it knocked my socks off. Very reasonably priced and the optics were just as good as the L lenses I used.

docj · Aug 8, 2018

SeilerBird said:
Joel, I am telling you to ditch your dslr. Keep using it forever if you wish. However DSLR sales did level out for a bit but the fact remains they are still way below what they used to sell. Your arguments about plastic lenses sound like the type of logic used twenty years ago by the film crowd who kept telling me that film would never die. Film had better definition, better saturation, better signal to noise, blah, blah, blah. They had a hundred reasons why they would never switch to digital. Ten years later film was as dead as a doornail. And then film cameras became worthless in the resale market. In a few years dslr sales will be so bad that reselling one will become almost impossible. But as always, the people who have spent money on dslr systems refuse to see the future because it effects them financially.

I agree that improved plastics may eventually make the plastic vs glass issue moot and today's CCD's have effective ISO speeds so high that the light gathering ability of a larger lens isn't all that much of an advantage. But nothing can change the principles of physics which result in smaller apertures exhibiting greater diffraction effects than do larger apertures at equivalent f-stops. The net effect of diffraction is to reduce image sharpness.

Diffraction affects each lens differently and as pixel size decreases diffraction usually shows up earlier. Therefore, the very small CCDs and lenses used in smartphone cameras will exhibit these effects more than will larger DSLR CCDs and lenses.

Here's an article that explains and demonstrates diffraction effects: https://fstoppers.com/studio/fstoppers-original-what-lens-diffraction-and-when-does-diffraction-happen-6022

SeilerBird · Aug 8, 2018

Joel I understand diffraction. I studied it in my college photography classes. If I showed you a photo you could not tell me if it was taken with a cell phone camera or a dslr just by looking. If the images are that good then diffraction isn't an issue.

jymbee · Aug 8, 2018

SeilerBird said:
They had a hundred reasons why they would never switch to digital. Ten years later film was as dead as a doornail. And then film cameras became worthless in the resale market. In a few years dslr sales will be so bad that reselling one will become almost impossible.

IMO that's not an applicable analogy-- film vs. digital. That was a revolutionary change while the merits of today's systems being discussed here are more evolutionary. Smartphone camera systems have had a dramatic impact on the number of people taking images. Today, the saying that "everybody is a photographer" is by and large true. People that never even owned any kind of camera are clicking away and sending billions of images around the world.

By she virtue of the numbers alone the portion of market share attributable to entry level camera systems will continue to grow and outpace DSLRs, but DSLR systems will be around in substantial numbers well beyond a decade.

steve-n-sueC · Aug 22, 2018

OK, many thanks to all for your thoughts, opinions, and explanations. I should have known that there are some photography experts on here, same as any other subject! LOL!
I did pull the trigger on the refurb Canon PowerShot SX530 HS. Been playing with it for a few days. So far the most intricate shot I have pulled off is a zoomed in picture of hummingbirds at our feeder. Also took a movie zoomed in of them. Both came out surprisingly well. I think with practice, I will be extremely proud of my purchase. It is certainly capable of much more than the operator is!!!!!

Thanks to All for your replies!

Larry N. · Aug 22, 2018

Steve, if you haven't already, look through the pinned topic at the top of this segment, the Photographic Tips topic. There's a lot of stuff in there that can help your understanding of photography.

blw2 · Aug 22, 2018

50x optical zoom, wow. My old Nikon is only 42x and it seems incredibly long to me....that thing must zoom in like the Hubble...you must have been counting the lice on that bird!

Roy M · Aug 22, 2018

8Muddypaws said:
They will have to pry my DSLR out of my cold dead fingers.

I like my Nikon D60 after having some issues with the shutter sorted out. Yes, it is bulky and a bit heavy so not suitable for quick snapshots but it is so flexible with interchangeable lenses and picture quality is only limited by the operator. The best feature is the image stabilization, I have a congenital tremor which makes a cell phone picture out of the question although newr versions may have the feature. The cell also doesn't have zoom. The Canon p&s gets the majority of the use but it has it's limitations.

SeilerBird · Aug 23, 2018

blw2 said:
50x optical zoom, wow. My old Nikon is only 42x and it seems incredibly long to me....that thing must zoom in like the Hubble...you must have been counting the lice on that bird!

That is out of date. Nikon's new P1000 is 100 x zoom.

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-digital-cameras/coolpix-p1000.html

3000mm optical zoom?the most powerful zoom lens ever put on a Nikon COOLPIX camera
4K Ultra HD video with HDMI out, stereo sound and an accessory hot-shoe
Rock-steady Dual Detect image stabilization and great low-light capability
RAW (NRW), time-lapse and Superlapse shooting plus great creative modes
Full manual controls along with easy auto shooting

Only a grand.

SeilerBird · Aug 23, 2018

But wait....

Nikon just released their new Z7 mirrorless beast. It has a 45.7 megapixel sensor. Only 4 grand. :

docj · Aug 23, 2018

SeilerBird said:
That is out of date. Nikon's new P1000 is 100 x zoom.

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/compact-digital-cameras/coolpix-p1000.html

3000mm optical zoom?the most powerful zoom lens ever put on a Nikon COOLPIX camera
4K Ultra HD video with HDMI out, stereo sound and an accessory hot-shoe
Rock-steady Dual Detect image stabilization and great low-light capability
RAW (NRW), time-lapse and Superlapse shooting plus great creative modes
Full manual controls along with easy auto shooting

Could I interest you in a slightly used Canon DSLR? ;D

SeilerBird · Aug 23, 2018

docj said:
Could I interest you in a slightly used Canon DSLR? ;D

You could not give me a Canon DSLR. Been there, done that. I love my cell phones.

docj · Aug 24, 2018

SeilerBird said:
You could not give me a Canon DSLR. Been there, done that. I love my cell phones.

I can stop salivating over that 24-3000 mm lens on the CoolPix 1000!

Bert63 · Sep 11, 2018

SeilerBird said:
No one is trying to take your DSLR. No one wants it.

Many might. Anyone who cares about versatility and image quality would surely consider it.

Bert63 · Sep 11, 2018

SeilerBird said:
You could not give me a Canon DSLR. Been there, done that. I love my cell phones.

Sad you insist on limiting yourself and steer others in that direction as well...

Bert63 · Sep 11, 2018

SeilerBird said:
Yes it hurts but it is true.

https://petapixel.com/2017/03/03/latest-camera-sales-chart-reveals-death-compact-camera/

Yeah. That?s why when true capability and quality really count, you see people with cell phones instead of the white lens with the red ring.

Oh wait. That?s right. You don?t.

Show me a professional or advanced amateur who switched from DSLR/mirrorless to a cell phone and you might be believable. You can?t.

Hilarious. The tiny sensor in a cell phone can?t even compete with a crop body, much less a full frame..

Larry N. · Sep 11, 2018

Show me a professional or advanced amateur who switched from DSLR/mirrorless to a cell phone and you might be believable. You can?t.

Actually, you're exchanging views with one. While Tom and I agree to disagree on camera types (has a LOT to do with your use), he very definitely IS an "advanced" photographer, and used to have all kinds of neat gear, but recently changed pretty much to the phone. If you go to his photo pages, and go back more than a couple of years* (or just go back to posts more than a couple of years ago), you'll find that he's done some marvelous work, including some official stuff in a Nat'l Park or two.

You really need to get to know folks before you make such sweeping remarks. In fact, look in the Photo Tips topic pinned at the top.

* Actually, he still does marvelous work with his phone, too, working very well within its limitations.

Which camera to buy?

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