Re: The "Oh no not another Burpday Moot" Thread


Ron Clark wrote:
On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 10:12:38 +0100, Guy King <guy.king@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote this (or the missive included this):

You'll not find many cameras of any sort that'll take good pics indoors
without flash. It's why flash gnus exist.

The problem comes at you from several directions. To get a reasonable
picture you need either an amazingly sensitive recording device or lots
of light. With film you could trade sensitivity for quality - as the
film got "faster" it got grainer and contrast lessened. With fingery
cams the noise (speckles) get very bad and the contrast and colour all
but vanish

This has some validity of course, but not many of us are trying to
take professional-quality pictures for publication or large
magnification.

Aye, and we're often a bit closer to the action, too. Those lenses
the footie photograpers use cost thousands (literally) and are often
leased or rented per-wbo by pros who don't spend all their time at
footie matches but need occasionally to take piccies of little things
a long way away in (relatively) ubggre-all light.

My DMC-FZ5EB has a large, superb Leica lens,
adjustable white balance for various light temperatures, optical image
stabilization and ISO settings Auto/80/100/200/400.
I am more than happy with its ability to take acceptable images
without flash indoors, either with ambient daylight or at night using
normal tungsten or fluorescent lights, (and not confined to still-life
subjects either).

Wot Wonk says - that Panasonic, in common with many of the
Leica-lensed Panasonics, is an exceedingly good digicam for the
zbarl. Y'can just about get a DSLR body for not a huge amount more,
and enjoy a larger sensor and general SLR qualities like a decent
range of interchangeable lenses (including the theoretical facility to
rent or borrow one of the megabucks humungous feckers) BUT an
SLR isn't always what you want.

In Seville last week, for example, I got some much better candid
shots of pointy-hatted, robe-wearing types (during the Semala Santa
madness) using a coolpix compact than using an SLR - it's just
vastly less intrusive, which in those circs outweighs its failings in
the
resoultion, controllability, sensitivity and response-time departments.
(in all those respects the D70 beats the crap out of it, but you shove
a D70 with a sizeable lens on it in someone's face and they most
definitely know about it.) And the compacts will fit in your pocket
and be with you when you want 'em.

(There are, in fairness, some DSLRs which are nearly as compact
and agreeably cheap - the EOS350D and the Pentax *istDS are
both pretty tiny. Y'can get a "pancake" 40mm lens for the Pentax
which makes the whole thing very pocketable indeed, and as such
it effectively becomes a biggish compact. But although one of they
would give cracking photos, it wouldn't offer a wide zoom range or
image stabilisation without using a suitable, and much bigger, lens.)

Don't be fooled into thinking that "more pixels is always better",
either. The results from 8M pixel compacts are hardly ever, it seems
to me, appreciably better than those from 4, 5 or 6M pixel ones,
often worse because of the correspondingly tiny light-gathering
ability of miniscule pixels. Many of those sports photogs with the
5-grand
lenses, you might be surprised to learn, are happy to trade pixels
against speed and use things like the Nikon D2H or EOS1D, which
only have about 4 million pixels in the same sized sensor as their
6 or 8 Mpixel stablemates, but are appreciably low-noise in low light
and go like the clappers, shooting 8 frames per second. (The D1H
the sports pros used to use only had 2.7 million pixels.)

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: To all 4/3 detractors
    ... It's contract is to hold motion that's four times ... be more than a few pixels off; and that really is within very ... There will be a lot more dithering in the image from a long lens than ...
    (rec.photo.digital.slr-systems)
  • Re: More pixels are better, much of the time
    ... so a sensor the size of the 20D with pixels the size of the F828 ... But what you did is shoot the 828 tests with the 828 lens, ... not a medium telephoto (WA lenses are difficult to design due to ...
    (rec.photo.digital)
  • Re: Rumblings about huge megapixel offerings...
    ... on the sensor would be round... ... record all the image that was being received from your lens... ... concentric circles of other pixels around it perhaps... ...
    (rec.photo.digital.slr-systems)
  • Re: Bob Hatch, camera gear
    ... that I'd buy the highest pixel count (making sure it has a lens to use all ... The problem of finding a camera with the lens to use all those pixels isn't ... open the iris fully and adjust the shutter speed to match ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
  • Re: Rumblings about huge megapixel offerings...
    ... on the sensor would be round... ... record all the image that was being received from your lens... ... perfectly orienting the camera with respect to the horizon to ensure ... concentric circles of other pixels around it perhaps... ...
    (rec.photo.digital.slr-systems)