Now that the festive season is upon us, we'll probably have lots of posts of people asking for P&S recommendations. I noticed that DPReview has begun a series of P&S group tests, here
My wife has a Fujifilm F30 and while it's great at well-lit shots when it has time to focus, it's these occasions where it's most likely to be used that it lets us down. Let me give an example; I was at a wedding a few weeks ago, the only camera we brought along was the F30. It was great for the shots outside the church (forget the ones inside the church, the ISO kept going up to 800, and besides, the official photographer had it covered)
Where we really needed it to perform was in the reception afterwards, indoors, with a mixture of lights, but mostly quite dark. I tried other peoples P&S cameras while I was there, and the common issues I noticed were;
- Searching for focus. Either it couldn't find focus so it refused to take the shot, or it focussed on the wrong thing, resulting in OOF faces.
- Red-eye... You'd think at this stage red-eye would be a thing of the past, but about 80% of the shots where flash triggered have red-eye. And yes, I tried the different flash modes, but nothing helped. Incidentally, one of the problems I found with the red-eye reduction where it fires a pre-flash is that people think that's the shot taken, and they move before the actual shot goes off.
- Auto mode forcing to ISO400 / ISO800. Okay, I can understand the ISO bumping up to 800 in dark situations. But why does it need to bump it up when I've told it to trigger the flash?
- Messing about with settings. The last thing I want to do in the middle of a party when I'm drunk is to start navigating scene modes or trying to find the menu option to force the ISO to stay at 200. I want to set it to auto and press the button.
- Wide angle. It's about time we saw some more 28mm P&S's on the market. When you're sitting across the table from people, or are trying to take a group shot of some friends, that's when you really need it. I'd love to know what end of the zoom range gets used most in P&S, I'd bet that most people zoom it all the way to 'wide' and then get frustrated cause they can't squeeze some more out of it.
The only P&S at the party I was impressed with was a Sony Cybershot - responsive, focussed correctly, no red-eye, and nice colour reproduction.
This probably belongs in rant. But the point I'm trying to make is that P&S cameras have been around for so long now, you'd think manufacturers would come up with some way for them to just take the shot as quickly and cleanly as possible.
I think I've mentioned before the idea of a 'just-take-the-shot' button (like my old Nikon FM2 used to have!) - Something that would tell the camera "okay, you've been trying to get focus for 0.5 seconds, people are getting bored waiting, so just focus to infinity, F8, 1/30 shutter speed, and fire the standard flash" That way at least the exposure can be rescued in post-processing. But most importantly, the shot is captured! |
