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My opinion as a complete newbie, for what it's worth - art or science?

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Many thanks for that.

I suppose it was becoming a 'nightmare' coming here - honestly, a read a review of the I think it was the XF10 and on the forum it got a right slagging off and here am I looking at spending lots of money (to me), getting told that a GRIII, and I quote, 'is a toy'! What am I to think?

It hadn't occurred to me that this is really a gear site and one that's owned by Amazon (I had no idea!).
 
Aagh, give the Takamine to me, as long as it's an MIJ guitar! I have one already (c.yr 2000) and it's a great gigging guitar - best pick ups for live playing, especially the Cool Tube! Got to be made in japan, though. Vintage guitars go a for a fortune if you have the right year/era - try picking up a 1959 Gibson Les Paul, it'll cost you a fortune.

Manufacturing could be hit and miss for guitars back in the day, though - no doubt that quality control these days is better, for sure, although fender in the 1980s were better MIJ than USA, without a doubt. I have a thinline Telecaster MIF Fender and it's amazing, c1986.

I wish I'd never started the guitar/camera thing - as someone else pointed out, a fairer comparison would be piano - synthesizer. Try selling a stand up piano nowadays - I had to pay someone £100 just to come and take ours away around 15 years ago. I would imagine that very expensive cameras from the 80s are pretty worthless now but obviously I stand to be corrected!
 
I won't disagree. With music it takes a tremendous amount of practice to get the technical expertise needed to really express yourself.
 
yardcoyote said:
My guess is they want to.market the camera as truly pocket sized/the smallest ever. Personally, I sacrifice zoom for a great prime lens and a crop sensor and carry a Fuji X-M1 with the 27mm-- not much bigger than the RX100 with a grip.

But it's all a matter of personal taste.
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You are a candidate for multiple camera ownership. For me it takes a minimum of 3 different types of cameras to make me happy. I have the RX100 M1 for walk around portability, Sony RX10iv and it's 25x, 24-600mm equiv zoom for all in one convenience and a Full Frame 42mp Sony A99ii with 7 lenses for low light and high quality. Of the 3 cameras the RX10iv is the one I use the most by far.
 
Who knows? Who cares? I buy almost all my cameras used, most of them are discontinued, and I have never needed parts for any of them. It's just not something I worry about.

I have only had a camera fail on me once, and that was a camera I bought new. By the time it failed it was out of warranty, discontinued, and I was already using its replacement, so I just took a loss and moved on.

Every new camera will soon be out of warranty. Every current production camera will soon be a discontinued camera. You can buy yourself some protection by buying new, but it's only temporary. Eventually the person who buys new will end up in the same boat as those of us who buy used.

If you want to have the latest thing and have the money to pay for it, that's great. Consider the warranty protection a bonus.

I like buying on the trailing edge because I can avoid cameras that turn out to have problems, or deliberately buy later versions where the problems are corrected. I also find that many of the current latest features (dozens of focus points, super fast AF and burst speeds, touch screens, video) are not important at all to me. The money I save by buying older, simpler cameras that give me everything I need can buy me a replacement if something fails, or even a parts camera if I decide to have it repaired.
 
Scratch out "candidate " and replace with "poster child". I currently own 8 cameras across three systems. (Only one of them is a model currently in production, so there is that.)
 
What are you going to take photographs off? Landscape, Portraits, Concerts ... ??

If you are not going to going to print them, you might as well stay with the phone, which is one instrument that you are familiar with.

If you are going to shoot band concerts, which is usually in less than optimal lighting, you will indeed need expensive camera equipment .... if you want to print it, or use it for advertising (commercial) purposes.

So what do you plan to shoot ... ??
 
Definitely not concerts. Why does it need to be anything specific? Is it not sufficient justification to just want my photos to have far better image quality than they do now? I'd love to take photos of the grandkids that are far better than the ones I have on my iphone - and if they were good enough then I would print them off, frame then and give them as presents?

Using my guitar analogy, the amount of time I spend actually out and gigging nowadays is negligible (I'm 62 now) but I want a beautiful guitar that I can play even when I'm sat at home noodling, or just practicing. It's like someone else said on this forum earlier - why don't they just get a $25 guitar to play on because they can't play very well - the answer is simple. It will be rubbish, that's why. My first guitar, bought for me by my parents over 50 years ago, had an action on it (the distance between the strings and the fretboard) that was so high it was unplayable. It was cheap rubbish. At the time, I just thought it was me! If you want to learn to play the guitar, take advice, get a good one, the best you can afford, have it set up professionally, your fingers will thank you and you won't be able to blame the equipment for any lack of progress.

I was out walking in the forest the other day with my wife and daughter and there were moments I wanted to take photos but I missed them because, by the time I'd taken my phone out of my pocket, input the unlock code twice (no, I don't use the thumb print unlocking method), pressed the camera icon, the 'moment' was gone.

Cheers,

Dave
 
Robinson13 said:
Definitely not concerts. Why does it need to be anything specific?
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Because different types of shots will benefit from real cameras far more than others. Landscapes don't move much and are usually shot with wide or modest focal lengths. Birds in flight move a lot and often require very long focal lengths. You can take a halfway decent landscape with a phone. Not so with a bird in flight.
Robinson13 said:
Is it not sufficient justification to just want my photos to have far better image quality than they do now?
Click to expand...
No, it's not.

Getting a real camera isn't as much about getting better image quality as it is about getting good image quality in a far wider range of conditions and situations.
Robinson13 said:
I'd love to take photos of the grandkids that are far better than the ones I have on my iphone - and if they were good enough then I would print them off, frame then and give them as presents?
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If the kids are in good light and you don't mind getting close enough for the modestly wide angle of the phone, then a real camera will not do a lot better. If they are performing on a distant stage in lousy lighting a real camera will absolutely demolish the phone.
Robinson13 said:
I was out walking in the forest the other day with my wife and daughter and there were moments I wanted to take photos but I missed them because, by the time I'd taken my phone out of my pocket, input the unlock code twice (no, I don't use the thumb print unlocking method), pressed the camera icon, the 'moment' was gone.
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Many real cameras can go from off to shooting in under 1 second. But not all.

--
Lee Jay
 
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Lee Jay said:
Robinson13 said:
Definitely not concerts. Why does it need to be anything specific?
Click to expand...
Because different types of shots will benefit from real cameras far more than others. Landscapes don't move much and are usually shot with wide or modest focal lengths. Birds in flight move a lot and often require very long focal lengths. You can take a halfway decent landscape with a phone. Not so with a bird in flight.
Lee Jay said:
Is it not sufficient justification to just want my photos to have far better image quality than they do now?
Click to expand...
No, it's not.

Getting a real camera isn't as much about getting better image quality as it is about getting good image quality in a far wider range of conditions and situations.
Lee Jay said:
I'd love to take photos of the grandkids that are far better than the ones I have on my iphone - and if they were good enough then I would print them off, frame then and give them as presents?
Click to expand...
If the kids are in good light and you don't mind getting close enough for the modestly wide angle of the phone, then a real camera will not do a lot better. If they are performing on a distant stage in lousy lighting a real camera will absolutely demolish the phone.
Lee Jay said:
I was out walking in the forest the other day with my wife and daughter and there were moments I wanted to take photos but I missed them because, by the time I'd taken my phone out of my pocket, input the unlock code twice (no, I don't use the thumb print unlocking method), pressed the camera icon, the 'moment' was gone.
Click to expand...
Many real cameras can go from off to shooting in under 1 second. But not all.
Click to expand...
I'd even go further and say that they need to be outside in good light. I've yet to find a phone that can take a half decent photo of a child indoors.
 
Robinson13 said:
Yep, and that's why I want a 'proper' camera? We appear to be on the same page?
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IMHO one of the benefits of getting a "proper" camera, one that has more capability than you need is that it might actually force you to really fine tune your learning.

I never intended to get into dSLR cameras.

I was happily snapping away with compact cameras, getting shots of my daughter.

I had a bit more advanced compact in that it had aperture priority. So I constantly had it cranked up to the widest aperture setting.

But then the camera stopped working.

As a birthday present, my wife got me a new compact camera. And my dad got me a dSLR camera.

As soon as I started using the dSLR, the pictures I got from it were crap.

Yes. If I kept it on auto mode, the pictures were fine. But as soon as I took it off auto mode and tried to get it to do what I thought I wanted, the pictures ended up not working out.

Looking back, I think it was because the shooting envelope, or ability to change the final image was so big that I was not very good at guessing the settings to get what I wanted or what would work.

For example, on the compact camera I was using . . . I could crank up the aperture setting and never have to worry about having too shallow a depth of field. But now, with the dSLR camera, with its bigger sensor and faster lens, if I cranked up the aperture setting, I now had the ability to get too shallow a depth of field.

So now, it wasn't the case that I just jam the setting to max. I actually had to learn what aperture setting would work for the subject I was shooting.

So, on the one hand . . . getting a "proper" camera can open up what subjects you go after and provide a wider shooting envelope. But on the other hand, it can give you too much control so it presents a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to balance the settings.

LOL. :)

Take care & Happy Shooting!
:)
 
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