what to look for - dig camera?

donnajunkie

i am curious now. i always thought the lens purpose was to focus. well you can see whether it is in focus after the lens has adjusted. yes it is important but most lens do whats required really dont they? unless you want to become a paparazzi and get a good shot from miles away. with megapixels isnt it the more the megapixel the more lines you have and therefore the better clarity and detail?

Sultana

donnajunkie wrote: »

i am curious now. i always thought the lens purpose was to focus. well you can see whether it is in focus after the lens has adjusted. yes it is important but most lens do whats required really dont they? unless you want to become a paparazzi and get a good shot from miles away. with megapixels isnt it the more the megapixel the more lines you have and therefore the better clarity and detail?

Cheaper zoom lenses in particular can suffer all sorts of optical aberrations (eg colour fringing) while still being in focus, which is impossible for camera software to process away. Also the more expensive lenses have a lower 'f number' which means they let in more light so you can use a faster shutter speed (=less camera shake). And on a small sensor, more megapixels mean more noise which actually degrades the image. Unless you are making poster size prints 6-7Mp is as much as you will ever need.

espresso

donnajunkie wrote: »

i am curious now. i always thought the lens purpose was to focus. well you can see whether it is in focus after the lens has adjusted. yes it is important but most lens do whats required really dont they? unless you want to become a paparazzi and get a good shot from miles away. with megapixels isnt it the more the megapixel the more lines you have and therefore the better clarity and detail?

A good lens is hard to produce and the end result is much more dependant on the quality of the lens than the number of mega pixels. More mega pixels won't give you better image clarity and detail if the lens is of inferior quality!

The following are all very important qualities of a good lens:

Sharpness
Contrast
Colour fidelity
Colour balance
Tonal separation
Flare control
Distortion Coverage
Flatness of field
Evenness of illumination

See here for more of an explanation. Don't get conned by the more mega pixels the better sales pitch used by the manufacturers marketing departments.

BillScarab

No, A cheap camera will have a cheap lens, it won't focus so accurately, it may distort the image and it may not let as much light through. Also some cameras with very high megapixel counts have problems due to trying to squeeze so many pixels into a tiny sensor.

There's lots of info on this on the web, have a look here for starters. It explains it better than I can.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

Oh, the other important thing is the size of the sensor, the ones in compacts are tiny, just a few millimetres square. The one sin SLR's are much bigger so they receive much more light.

donnajunkie

i have always wondered why my jvc mini dv camcorder was worse than my 8mm samsung camcorder in some aspects. it will struggle to focus sometimes and in low light conditions it would be a lot worse than the samsung. yes it has night vision but when that is on movement causes the picture to blur. it does have a alot of settings that i dont have a clue about and the instruction booklet doesnt really explain properly.

isofa

Lenses really are the key, there are so many items which affect picture quality via the lens, espresso covers many, I'd add Chromatic Aberration which is so often found and which plagues cheaper lenses, giving rise to images with purple (and sometimes other coloured) fringing near object edges, a real bane of digital photography.

It's a massive topic, but many of us have indicated: if you had the choice of two cameras, same price, one with 6 mega-pixels with a top-class optical Canon/Nikon/Leica f/2.8 or f/4 lens, or a 10 mega-pixel camera with an inferior optical quality and "slower" f/5.6 or f/8 lens, there would be no contest. The camera with the better lens will always resolve better pictures. The extra pixels are complete waste, you'll have a bit more image to play about with, but it won't be such a good image in the first place!

The "slower" the lens (i.e. a lens with a smaller maximum apeture say f/5.6) the worse it'll be in low light conditions, whereas a "faster" lens, (say one with a f/2.8 max apeture) will let much more light in, and allow better performance in low light conditions. There are also many other advantages which will fill pages of text.

The smaller the "f" number the wider the aperture, f/4 lets in twice as much light as f/5.6 for example.

Lenses which have a constant apeture throughout their zoom range are very desirable (and expensive), many cheaper lenses may be rated something similar to: 15-55mm f/4-f/5.6 which means that the maximum apeture will vary depending on where the lens is zoomed too.

chaucer

now that I've got my new PC sorted ...

time to begin the research into a new camera ...

I am not a photographer ... and I have just spent a wad....

so, unlike the OP with £300 I am looking at spending about £100 or so on a good quality but easy to use digi camera to replace a Kodak easyshare cx7300 that has served tolerably well for a couple of years but is not good enough really

any suggestions in this area would be good .....

sorry to make a minor hijack

donnajunkie

well my dad just got a fujifilm a825 and it seems decent enough. i am sure i have seen the a800 which is virtually identical for £80 online. the a900 and a920 which ar a bit better are £100 online in a couple of the usual places. i think play.com is one of them. i only cant remember because my dad being old fashioned he just bought his from an actual shop in the end and paid more the div.

angelavdavis

chaucer wrote: »

now that I've got my new PC sorted ...

time to begin the research into a new camera ...

I am not a photographer ... and I have just spent a wad....

so, unlike the OP with £300 I am looking at spending about £100 or so on a good quality but easy to use digi camera to replace a Kodak easyshare cx7300 that has served tolerably well for a couple of years but is not good enough really

any suggestions in this area would be good .....

sorry to make a minor hijack

You can pick up some really good refurbished compact cameras either on eBay or at a local camera shop for that sort of price. I, personally, would go for something like Canon IXUS which would normally retail at about £250 but second hand, you could pick up for about £100. Just my opinion anyway.

BillScarab

You may be able to pick up a bargain from the Canon outlet on ebay.