SP-100ee vs. Nikon B500

OzRay wrote:

All the decent super-zooms are going to 1" sensors, I don't see the point of having a 1/2.3" sensor in a body that's as big as a DSLR. I guess Olympus doesn't see the point either.

However, there are no 1" sensor super-zoom cameras. Only 3 cameras have the equivalent of 600mm focal length (Sony Cyber-Shot RX10 III/IV and Canon PowerShot G3X). I personally already have that focal length covered with my current micro 4/3rds setup using the Panasonic 100-300mm mark II lens.

What I'm looking for is a camera to use on a vacation where I want more reach than what I have right now. And as I said, I would prefer to not pay all that much.

All of the super-zoom cameras that reach at least 800mm equivalent zoom use the 1/2.3" sensor. And all of them are limited by that sensor and the physics of light transmission. If you look at the lenses, all of the super zooms have lenses f/5.9 and smaller at the telephoto end (and most start out at f/3). Pretty much with these cameras, you need to shoot at base ISO and maybe up to ISO 400 or the noise will kill you. These are not generally cameras you use in bad lighting conditions. And in fact, a common complaint is that the pictures are soft when shooting telephoto in bad lighting.

One of the areas where I want more reach is in a wetlands that is used by the the utilities for treating the waste water before it goes into the ocean. There are various paths that you can walk along, and you can snap photos of the alligators, heron, etc. that live in the area, but you can't get off of the walkways. With alligators around, I would not want to leave the walkways in any case. In addition, my wife currently has back problems and needs a wheelchair to get around, and we would need to stick to the walkways.

As I mentioned in the original article, I looked at the pictures I took there in 2011, and about 1/2 of the pictures were at the long end of the camera I had with me at the time (E-3, 50-200mm mark I lens, EC-14 teleconverter), and most of those pictures have been cropped to achieve the shot that I wanted. If I had had more reach, I would have needed to crop as much.

Here are the pictures I caught back then:

• http://www.the-meissners.org/2011-small-albums/2011-florida-wakodahatchee/index.html

The other place is we are going to do an Everglades tour. On these tours, you are on the air boat, and you have limited time to get the picture, before they go to the next spot. There the issue isn't necessarily maximum reach, but ease of taking a picture where it might be wide angle one moment, and telephoto the next, and you only have seconds to get the shot.

As a thought experiment, the Nikon P500 retails for about $250 US right now new ($165 for refurbished and/or used) and weighs 0.54kg. It can cover a 23mm to 900mm equivalent focal length in one camera.

To cover roughly the same territory in micro 4/3rds, with a minimum of lenses, I would need 2 lenses (Olympus 12-100mm and Panasonic 100-400mm), which gives an equivalent focal range of 24-800mm. The current cost of these lenses new is $3,100 US (plus a body if you were starting from scratch), and the weight of the lenses alone is 1.9kg.

Given I have a good kit already, I would only need the Panasonic 100-400mm lens ($1,800 US) and the weight penalty would be 1kg.

Sure, the micro 4/3rds combo will produce a better picture, but is it worth it to spend 7x times as much for vacation snaps? Yes, if I was doing birding or nature photography more, then it would be worth it. But I'm not. I just want to capture pictures to remind me of the trip, and possibly put a few on the calendar I make for family at Christmas time.