What newbies look for in a camera....

I was in a camera store today and overheard a couple of people looking for a new camera. Here is some of the comments I heard.

"What about this one it is small."
"Yeh but look at the price, that's too much."
"How is this little one but man it feels heavy"

I just find it interesting that the majority of people looking for cameras have absolutely no idea of what to look for.

This is the reason why the manufactures focus so much on mega pixels, high ISO and the look of the camera rather than they quality of the pictures it takes.

A sad fact for us who want better quality rather than 5,000 ISO and 10mp.
--
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Me flying
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It's not just cameras . . .

But cars, trucks, food, furniture, clothes . . .
--
J. M. Daniels
Denver, Colorado
Panasonic FZ10, FZ50 & Fuji S602Z owner & operator



Remember . . . always keep the box and everything that came in it!

no text

You mean 'noiseless 5000 ISO' ... right?

--
J. M. Daniels
Denver, Colorado
Panasonic FZ10, FZ50 & Fuji S602Z owner & operator
Remember . . . always keep the box and everything that came in it!

in my lifetime, so I'd like to have ISO 5,000 noise at the same level my current camera exhibits noise at ISO 3200. I can deal with that, happily.

relate22 said:

I was in a camera store today and overheard a couple of people
looking for a new camera. Here is some of the comments I heard.

"What about this one it is small."
"Yeh but look at the price, that's too much."
"How is this little one but man it feels heavy"

I just find it interesting that the majority of people looking for
cameras have absolutely no idea of what to look for.

This is the reason why the manufactures focus so much on mega
pixels, high ISO and the look of the camera rather than they
quality of the pictures it takes.

A sad fact for us who want better quality rather than 5,000 ISO and
10mp.

Click to expand...

Seems to me, you are forgetting that they are buying a camera for themselves, not you.

They know exactly what to look for, in order to please themselves. The exchange you quoted above sounds quite reasonable for people looking for a small, lightweight camera that they can take everywhere with them.

Many people assume, quite correctly, that the camera manufacturers are quite capable of producing cameras for their intended purpose. i.e. snapshots printed to roughly 4X6 inches, and the occasional 8X10 enlargement.

The harsh reality is our individiual wants and needs are irrelevant, the world only responds to the needs of many and even then, it's response is imperfect at best.

--
Never trust a man who spells the word 'cheese' with a 'z'

Glen Barrington said:

Seems to me, you are forgetting that they are buying a camera for
themselves, not you.

Click to expand...

The thing is they are still thinking of the film days where their photos were corrected in the processing and not every digital camera takes a photo as good as their old film camera.

Glen Barrington said:

They know exactly what to look for, in order to please themselves.
The exchange you quoted above sounds quite reasonable for people
looking for a small, lightweight camera that they can take
everywhere with them.

Click to expand...

And then they get home and realise what bad photos it takes.

Glen Barrington said:

Many people assume, quite correctly, that the camera manufacturers
are quite capable of producing cameras for their intended purpose.
i.e. snapshots printed to roughly 4X6 inches, and the occasional
8X10 enlargement.

Click to expand...

Where were you 7 or 8 years ago when the camera manufacturers could only do this with a $2,000 camera.

Glen Barrington said:

The harsh reality is our individiual wants and needs are
irrelevant, the world only responds to the needs of many and even
then, it's response is imperfect at best.

Click to expand...

You are right there but without people like me pushing the envelope we would still be back with a 1.3mp camera the size of a brick.

--
http://www.pbase.com/reelate2
http://www.pbase.com/relate2
Me flying
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hY8VhR4gI3w

relate22 wrote:
[snip]

relate22 said:

And then they get home and realise what bad photos it takes.

Click to expand...

I don't think there's a digital camera on the market today from any of the major brands that takes bad photos. Lots of photographers, though.

(Not talking about the twenty-buck no-brands, of course.)

[snip]

Petteri
--
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/primejunta/

relate22 said:

And then they get home and realise what bad photos it takes.

Click to expand...

Actually, I don't think they get to this point very often simply because they never push the camera to its limits. A $100 Canon or Kodak of any sort is more than capable of producing pretty good happy snaps. After all, that is what they were designed to do.

My wife could never get comfortable with my Canon G3, and was totally intimidated by my DSLR. so she told me she wanted my help in buy a Kodak camera. I guess I helped with moral support, but man! She wanted this $150 Kodak, and their cute little printer/charging stand real bad, so I lied and said I thought it was a good camera.

Well, the thing is, it does a pretty good for the uses she puts it to. Simple snapshots. The printer is pretty good too, actually. It's a dye sub printer so the quality is pretty high but so is the cost. It doesn't get much use anymore when you can get prints for as little as 19 cents a print.

Frankly, I'd use that little Kodak for certain situations.
--
Never trust a man who spells the word 'cheese' with a 'z'

Corkcampbell said:

in my lifetime, so I'd like to have ISO 5,000 noise at the same
level my current camera exhibits noise at ISO 3200. I can deal with
that, happily.

Click to expand...

You are being pretty lieniant in your ISO wants . . .

Most here on the forums expect 1,000,000 ISO (yes, that is one million) quality that is the equivalent of todays 100 ISO high end dslr's in a pocket point and shoot for under $200 right now!

--
J. M. Daniels
Denver, Colorado
Panasonic FZ10, FZ50 & Fuji S602Z owner & operator
Remember . . . always keep the box and everything that came in it!

MusicDoctorDJ said:

You are being pretty lieniant in your ISO wants . . .

Most here on the forums expect 1,000,000 ISO (yes, that is one
million) quality that is the equivalent of todays 100 ISO high end
dslr's in a pocket point and shoot for under $200 right now!

Click to expand...

We might want it, but a few here are vaguely aware of the laws of physics, so we don't expect ISO 1,000,000 in a pocketable camera. You need to capture a lot more than one photon per pixel to get good quality images.

Some very rough numbers. A good DSLR sensor might operate close to 50% quantum efficiency and saturate at 100,000 photons/pixel. If this occurs is at ISO 100, then at ISO 1,000,000 on average we collect between 1 and 2 photons/pixel. Reduce this if you opt for a smaller sensor so your pocketable camera can have a zoom lens.

Cheers
--
Alan Robinson

My wife isn't interested in photography, but wanted a camera for a trip to the UK last year. We bought a Canon A610 and I was pretty amazed by the results - all shot on Auto or Programme. The soft light in the UK probably helped (we live in South Africa), but I ended up buying an A640 for myself and I'm delighted with it. I'll get round to buying a DSLR someday, but I can't afford it right now.

Ok, I am going to bite. I am not so proud as to look stupid.

Is price not important?

Size matters, depending on what you are doing (that leaves me open, yikes). I do a lot of wilderness trips and travel. An extra pair of underwear is too much or too heavy most of the time. People spend thousands more for gear to save weight and space. If that is the only reason, then that is brutal. But there are a lot of things to consider.

I have been looking at DSLRs for awhile. You are right, put a light D40X in my hand and I am thinking wow! Cheap and light, but then I look at some other stuff and I am thinking I sure would love all those features cheaper and lighter.

How do you assess image quality personally? There are so many elements of a good quality image what are you looking for? (This coming from someone who is giving up Velvia for digitial only just now). I want to know cause I am looking at digital and I don't know where to start.

its the same on forums

they involve themselves in supercilious nonsense rather than a camera based on their skill range and needs
--
Riley

not all that counts, can be counted

Ignore all the free advice these forums provide. Most of it, even the stuff I agree with, is nonsense offered by people with very little experience.

Look at the kind of photos that you think you want to take. Hundreds of them. Note what cameras the most successful photos were taken with. I should think that would indicate the cameras and systems that best lend themselves to the kind of photos you want to take.

I would suggest, that if no one or two systems stand out with this method, then just go buy something. It probably won't matter, even the least of the name brand cameras are still VERY VERY good. If this weren't true, the endless pixel peeping and arguments in these forums would have ended long ago and a general consensus would have formed.

What I'm saying is, don't get too caught up in the endless cycle of reading spec sheets. It'll suck all the joy out of photography for you. It's better to be taking photos with a camera that is 'not quite right' than it is to not take photos at all because you're still looking.

--
Never trust a man who spells the word 'cheese' with a 'z'

I once worked photo retail, and can back this up - a lot of times, the one thing that Joe and Jane Consumer ( generally as bright as a bag of hammers ) didn't concern themselves with was image quality.

there are more of these type of people that dominate the market than those that educate themselves before going out to buy things.
--
Christian
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