Migrating to a good digital camera

ukcarper

m5rcc wrote: »

Today's DSLR's are far too complex for what the OP requires compared to a 35mm SLR. A good compact will be more than sufficient, surely?

The main problem I have with my compact compared to my DSLR is the lack of an optical viewfinder the screen on the compact can be very difficult to see in bright sunlight.

Mr_Toad

jeanniefaethecarse wrote: »

I am NOT a photographer, however I do like being able to take good photographs that I feel satisfied with when the mood takes me.

I've had a couple of digital cameras, both around the £100 mark, but have always been dissatisfied with the prints in the end, particularly with landscapes or close up photographs of flowers/birds, that type of thing, with the result that I've gone back to my trusty Pentax, MZ30, it's 35-80 lens with a polarising filter on it, plus, of course traditional film.

Processing and film are getting a tad too dear for me now, and I wondered if anyone could recommend a digital camera that would give me similar, or better results to the Pentax.
I've a budget of up to £500 as I don't envisage buying another camera in the next few years. Can anyone help as I have no idea of what I ought to be looking for in a digital camera.

In pre-digital days I had a Pentax SLR and an Olympus trip. I then bought a digital camera.

After years of small digital cameras at the cheaper end of the market I decided to get back into photography and got myself a DSLR, the then brand new Canon D400. I love it.

There were times when I didn't want to lug the DSLR round with me so I started to look for a good compact that offered either point and shoot auto or manual setting of aperture and shutter speed etc.

I eventually bought the Canon G9 that had started out at over £500 but with the release of the G10 I managed to get new for £256.

It has everything I need including a good optical zoom range and manual/auto control.

I think the current model is the G12 and prices have dropped from what they were, you can get a new one for around the £360 mark.

I'm thinking about buying a Fuji X10, they are around the £400 mark. This is loosely based on the old Rangefinder cameras. It has a zoom lens, full auto or manual and get good reviews.

Not because I need to replace either of my cameras but simply because I have fond memories of using a Russian Rangefinder as a teenager in the early 70s and then getting a Contax Rangefinder for my 16th Birthday.

To be honest with a budget of £500 there are many excellent cameras for that sort of money.

Finally, the painful part. Some of my best pictures have been taken on the G9 so don't buy a more expensive DSLR thinking you'll get better pictures.

I'm in a photographic club at work with members all over the country. Each month they run a competition and our most prolific winner uses a Canon D350 with the kit lens. Much to the frustration of those members with thousands and thousands of pounds worth of kit but little talent!

I've never won :rotfl:

ajuk

It's refreshing to see someone who's obviously not a camera expert who actually can appreciate the difference in quality there.
Depending on how good quality film and scanning/printing you get, unless your going to get a digital camera with an APS-C or bigger sensor you're not going to get the kind of results you get with an MZ30, So that's either a DSLR or one of those new interchangeable lens compacts, I would recommended a DSLR. Maybe try and get a second hand K100d.

With the film be sure not to get ripped off on film and processing prices.

Dave_C_2

I used to have a Pentax ME film camera and moved to Nikon D40 digital (now replaced by D3100) and well worth the swap. Quality easily as good as film. So I would recommend the D3100 route.

Still get the same "Problem between viewfinder and shutter release" that exists on all cameras.

Dave

competitionscafe

jeanniefaethecarse wrote: »

I tend to take a lot of wildlife/landscapes that type of thing, as I do a lot of hillwalking, but don't know which- compact/bridge/DSLR would fit the bill.

Hi - I used to lug an slr around on my hillwalking trips back in the day (35mm film day). When digital became more popular dslrs were initially very expensive so I got a compact digital and have been through about half a dozen compacts since then (last 12 years or so).

I then recently decided I wanted better quality and considered a dslr but knew that I would be unlikely to lug around a big heavy dslr when hillwalking or in other situations where I take a camera.

That led me to the Sony Nex and the Micro Four Thirds options. I got a Nex at a really good price about a year ago and like it a lot but the main downside is that while the camera body is tiny, the lenses not so much and more importantly - the selection is very poor - a couple of zooms, a 16mm pancake (24mm equivalent on a 35mm full frame dslr) and a new 50mm 1.8 which is the same size as the 18-55 kit zoom lens (ie: huge, relative to the size of the body!).

So looking into micro four thirds (which has a much bigger selection of lenses and most of which are compact in size, some amazingly so!) I got an Olympus E-PL1 on the cheap (£140 for a body only) and picked up a 14mm lens (28mm equivalent as micro four thirds is x2 crop factor while Nex is 1.5) on ebay for £120. So £260 all in.

Very happy with the picture quality of both the Nex and the Olympus (I doubt you could tell the difference between them and a consumer dslr unless you were making huge prints). So much so that I am saving up for a current model Olympus micro four thirds camera (E-PM1 or E-PL3) and another prime lens or two (45mm 1.8 and 20mm f1.7). The latter lens is made by Panasonic but as both Olympus and Panasonic use the micro four thirds system, you can use lenses made by either of them on either body.

I found this forum very useful for micro four thirds advice, info reviews, sample pictures and the like:
http://www.mu-43.com/f102/my-epm1-review-18929/
http://www.mu-43.com/f56/

There are also some good micro-four thirds groups on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/micro4thirds/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/micro_four_thirds/

So in short, you may want to also consider the micro four thirds cameras. You can get an Olympus E-PM1 with a kit lens for about £300 (after £50 Olympus cashback). The 14-42mm kit lens it comes with is the equivalent of 28-84mm, so similar to your 35-80 lens, but wider, which is good for landscapes. The E-PL3 is very similar but £100 more expensive - so only worth it if you really want the tilting screen - (but I do have a tilting screen on my Nex and find it very useful).

Or a Panasonic GF2 or GF3 with 14mm lens costs under £300. But if you don't shoot raw, then most people tend to think that Olympus has better jpegs.

Hope that helps, rather than confuses you with further choices!

If you just want a compact then look at the Olympus XZ1, Nikon P300, Panasonic LX5 and Canon S95 or S100 for good quality, high end compacts.

Entry level dslrs - personally I think Pentax K-r offers the best value for money (under £400 with kit lens), but I quite like the D5100 too and the Sony A33 and A55 (okay technically mirrorless cameras not dslrs but close enough to dslrs to call them that). Not really looked into any of them in too much detail though - as I said I went off the dslr idea and decided on something smaller and lighter.

ajuk

If you were happy with the quality of a compact digital 12 years ago, I don't understand why you used an SLR in the first place.

Mrs_Arcanum

If it is to be a lifetime purchase then a DSLR is the way to go. Lenses can be added as and when affordable (good lenses do make a difference). A good & fast sensor is helpful and more pixels can mean a slower sensor. Being able to shoot in RAW means you have more scope for editing which is where digital is so much more flexible than film. What may be a so so picture can be tweaked to be better than expected.

If however you just want something that takes fuss free pictures with loads of options my DD would suggest the Pentax Optio S1 - a simple compact that does most things easily.

pcunite

They don't make the camera you want: small, cheap, good. The closest thing seems to be the Fuji x100

rygon

ive just bought the canon s100 and ilove it. very good quality, easy to use and i can dable in manual properties easily. only downside is the battery life of 200 shots, although i dont take that many pics a day so no problems for me.

bought it from digitalrev (online in hongkong) which was very fasst delivery (3days) and much cheaper thsn uk stores

competitionscafe

ajuk wrote: »

If you were happy with the quality of a compact digital 12 years ago, I don't understand why you used an SLR in the first place.

Sorry, not sure what you mean? I used a film slr from the mid nineties, then got my first compact digital in around 2000 (but maybe a year or two later - can't remember). Digital slrs were very expensive 10 or 12 years ago so a compact was the only digital option I could afford and I did not like lugging my film slr around so a compact suited me better anyway. (I had been using a film compact for 3 or 4 years by then anyway, in preference to the slr due to size).

I have never owned a digital slr as when I thought about getting one a year or so ago I decided micro four thirds and/or Nex offered the best compromise between quality and size (better quality than a compact, smaller than a dslr, interchangeable lenses like a dslr and almost as good quality as a consumer/entry level dslr.