Woman Fisher

Buying a more capable camera

If you are using a point and shoot (P&S) camera by which I mean any camera that uses the LCD panel on the back as the primary method of focusing and composing, and are feeling constrained then this post is for you. Cameras that you might come across fall into several types:

Camera types:

• Point and Shoot
• Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR)
• Digital rangefinders (RF)
• Medium Format Digital (MF)

There are actually large format, viewfinder type digitals available but I assume no one reading this has a hundred thousand or so to buy a camera with. The prices of these cameras runs from $100 or less for P&S, $500 to $8000 for DSLR, $1000 to $7000 for Digital RF and somewhere over $15000 for a MF Digital body without a lens.There are still film cameras out in the wild and they can be found in each of the types above. And there are vendors that sell used cameras in good condition. You can pick up a DSLR for $300 or so from them.

My primary experience is with P&S and DSLR so I’m not going to talk about the rest of the types. I have owned a series of P&S cameras starting with a Canon A40 and ending at a Canon A95. Prior to owning those cameras I had owned a number of film SLR cameras, Exacta and Minolta bodies. I had a darkroom set up and did my own B&W prints and tinkered with a color system.

The problems with P&S cameras

I had stopped taking photos for well over a decade when I bought my first P&S. I enjoyed those cameras, but by the time I got to the A95 the charm started wearing off. What finally made me decide to make the move to a DSLR was a very frustrating series of shots I took out in the desert at Kodachrome State Park in Utah. My daughter and I spent an hour trying to get a good close up shot of a single flower in the middle of a desolate plain. I could not force the A95 to focus on what I wanted it to focus on. And since we live in Florida I don’t get the opportunity to go the Kodachrome State Park when I would like to.

The Canon A series of cameras is actually very capable for a P&S camera. It has manual controls and Aperture and Shutter priority modes. It theoretically has a manual focus mode but it was worthless. Basically it, just like every other P&S camera cuts the photographer off from full control of the photographic process.

Photographic control

The photographic process amounts to controlling the amount of light that reaches the camera film or sensor in our case. We control that by changing:

• Aperture
• Shutter Speed
• ISO

Aperture is the opening inside the lens, called a diaphragm, that lets light pass thru the lens. The more the diaphragm is open the more light gets to the sensor. Shutter speed is how long the shutter remains open to let light get to the sensor. And I like to think of ISO like the volume control knob on your stereo system. The more your turn that knob the louder the sound gets, but at some point the sound begins to get noisy with hissing and squeals. The more expensive your stereo is, the louder you can play it without distortion.

Briefly speaking point and shoot cameras have a limited aperture control. Often you will see them with a control range of f/2.5 to f/4 or so while a DSLR will generally run from f/2.8 to f/22. That depends on the lens and you may be confused by the f/stop terminology but just note how much wider it is on the DSLR right now.

P&S cameras will often have a limited shutter speed range, maybe from 1 second to 1/1000th a second. DSLR cameras are unlimited on the slow end but have a setting at 30 seconds and normally run up to at least 1/3000th of a second.

And P&S cameras have a very limited ISO range. Many are only usable at ISO 100 or 200 while DSLR cameras are currently usable up to ISO 3200. The P&S may have higher ISO settings shown but they are rarely usable since the images would be terribly noisy.

So that is enough for one post, I’ll continue this with more details on the next post.