The Pro’s and Con’s of Digital Point and Shoot Camera’s

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Last week I looked at DSLR’s, so this week I thought I would look at the other side of the coin and look at digital point and shoot camera’s.

Point and shoots are extremely popular digital cameras, which means there is a huge amount of models available and therefore a lot of choice out there. You can buy everything from an extremely low end model all the way up to high performance models, which means there’s a model for every pocket. So I thought I would look at this type of camera as a whole, and look at the major pro’s and con’s to these cameras.

Pro’s

great for people new to digital photography, or people who prefer simplicity

easily fits in your pocket

great for snapshots of family, holidays etc…

fully automatic and easy to use, hence the name!

You can buy waterproof and shockproof models

Con’s

the image you see in the viewfinder isn’t the one that the lens will see, and capture

you can’t change the lens

they don’t have manual settings eg. the aperture is set

harder to make creative and artistic photographs

the digital sensor that captures the image is small so the quality of the image is restricted

My camera

When I look at my camera, a Traveler DC-5080 I see how far these type of cameras have come, it’s a fairly low end model (nice and cheap). But it has still produced some good photographs and has quite a lot of features like digital zoom, movie mode, white balance and ISO settings for example. The only thing is the more creative and artisitc I want to be, the harder it is to create what I want to do.

At the end of the day it comes down to what type of photography you want to do? Whether you want to take snapshots, or whether you want to be more creative and artistic with your photography. The answer to this question will be the one to help you decide which type of camera you want to buy.

I would like to get more creative with my photography and try new things out. So my decision on what camera I would buy is to look at getting a DSLR and learn as I go. But I am going to keep a point and shoot as a back up camera, because I still want the opportunity to take quick snapshots, and have a easy to carry camera to use. I suppose I’m after the best of both worlds!

Mandy

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Do you ever feel held back with your Photography?

I have to say I’m feeling a little held back at the moment with my photography and in particular my camera.

I’ve got to the stage where I know I need to be able to adjust the settings for exposure to capture a better photograph, but I have no way of doing that. Because I’ve got a very low end point and shoot camera which is really great for snap shots of friends and family, but no good if I want to go a little deeper. The camera I use at the moment is a Traveler DC-5080 and it has taken what I feel are some good photographs. But if I had a camera that was more flexible then could I have made them even better?

I’ve felt this way for a while and I have been thinking about a solution, which only comes to one answer which is to buy a new camera. I could look at how I am taking the shot and consider the natural lighting that I have to work with, which I do at the moment but at the end of the day the camera itself is still limiting me. It’s just the natural time to move on to the next stage. After all if you enter a race with a Ford Fiesta you are not going to do as well in it as if you had entered it with a Jaguar, are you…

So the hunt is on and the decisions are being made and weighed in the search for an upgrade to my camera, which has served me well and will continue as my back up.

I have even been using Photoshop Elements 3 to give my images a helping hand. Which is something I’ve never really done before. I’ve used Elements more for resizing and cropping in the past, but I have been experimenting with it to see how I can improve the images, and I’ve had some pleasing results.

This is good for learning photoshop skills, which I do think has it’s place as part of the process of creating an image. But I just need that bit of flexibility in the first place to give me more creative freedom. I don’t know why but I feel like I’m betraying a trusted friend!

Mandy

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Looking at Size and Quality Settings

Have you ever wondered why every time you transfer a photo to your computer it is so large. And wondered why, I know I have. Is it a camera setting or the photo editing software that you are using?

Size Setting

But then I noticed I have a size setting on my camera, in other words setting the number of pixels that can be used in the image.

My camera’s default setting is 2560 x 1920 pixels which is also the highest setting without interpolation. Once in the photo editing software it is 90 x 67cm with a 28.346 pixels/cm. That’s huge. I also have some other pixel options on the camera and they are:

3072 x 2304 (interpolation)
2048 x 1536
1280 x 960
640 x 480

The more pixels the better and sharper the image will look and thats also why the photos come out so large, the more pixels the bigger the file size.

Quality Setting

Underneath the size setting I noticed a quality setting for images. Which gives me a choice of:

Fine - low compression rate
Normal - Normal
Economy - High compression rate

Conclusion

At the end of the day I want to take photographs that are high in quality and look sharp enhancing the detail in the shot. So the setting I would keep as high as possible and play around with the normal or low compression rate.

I think these settings are geared towards increasing the amount of images that you can take on the camera. And that would only be useful if you have a small memory card. I use a 1gb memory card and that is plenty for me, I can take up to 1,000 photos on my camera using the 2560 x 1920 size setting. Although that may change if I use a low compression rate I can’t see it changing the amount of photos I can take drastically.

Mandy

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My Digital Camera ISO Experiment

Following on from Wednesdays post about digital camera ISO I thought it would be good to stop talking about it and give it a go.

So I did, but seeing as I didn’t have any low light shooting opportunities coming up I decided to use my mouse as a substitute.

The photograph on the top is taken using the 100 ISO setting on my camera and the photograph on the bottom is taken using the 200 ISO setting on my camera. And these are the only two options I have for ISO besides the auto setting where the camera will automatically decide which is the best between the two.

Results…

I took the shots using a mini desktop tripod and no flash. Which really gave the camera a good workout because it was really low light!

There isn’t a huge difference between the two photographs but there is some, and taking into account that I don’t have much ISO range on my camera anyway, I think it is quite a good result. What I wanted to achieve was to see the difference (if any) between the ISO settings on my camera. They show that using a camera’s ISO settings in low light with no flash is a realistic option and one I will experiment with further.

It will be great for when flash photography isn’t allowed, like concert or school performances. And I can see that there will be slightly different effects with each settings depending on what I want to do with the photograph. Looks like fun!

Mandy

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Traveler DC-5080 Camera Review

In The Photographer Blog image of the week feature that runs weekly on a Monday I share a photograph I have taken and talk a little about it. So I thought it would be good to take a close look at the camera I am using at the moment to take the photographs.

My Traveler DC-5080 is the camera I use at the moment and was a present from my husband a couple of years ago. As point and shoots go it’s at the cheap end of the range, but it is a 5 million pixel camera and I feel takes really nice photos.

Although it does have limitations because of the model I was pleasantly surprised by the options that it does have. Including different photography modes like macro, sport, night, portrait, landscape and backlight. It also has a movie mode although I don’t use that much.

The features that interest me the most are the settings and how much I can adjust them. On this camera I can adjust the EV compensation, white balance, ISO, colour, sharpness and saturation. And these are the settings that I want to learn more about, I will be looking at them seperately in future posts. But I am very happy that I can adjust these and have a mess around with them to see how they work. This is the part of taking photographs that I want to improve on, adjusting the settings to improve the image that I am taking.

The camera itself is nice and small with an internal rechargeable battery making it ideal to stick in my pocket whenever I go out, because you never know when a photo opportunity may happen. All in all it’s a descent starter digital camera for me, and will let me get to grips with the settings and learn more about digital photography.

Which camera do you use on a daily basis?

Mandy

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