Been looking at cameras, my old trusty 5MP Olympus C5060 died a death lately.
Thought I'd share
:-) based on my notes:
PS I'm a total amateur so feel free to correct or advise
All links are from
http://www.imaging-resource.comFirst, I wanted a small camera with a good lens -
- reasonably sharp into the corners of image
- preferably with low chromatic abberation (the colour fringes you often get, especially in high contrast areas towards edge of image)
I wanted to be able to photograph in low light, so either
- a "fast" lens (i.e. with low aperature number, e.g. 2.0) or
- a camera that makes good quality images at high iso
Of the
compact cameras I only found the
Olympus XZ-1 has a good sharp lens. I considered it, but it's around €400 and I saw that I could get a compact system camera from Sony for the same price. (
Compact system cameras have larger sensors and exchangable lenses, but have no mirror in the camera so are a lot smaller than SLRs.)
The
Sony NEX-3 seems to have the best image quality/ high iso performance of any non-SLR camera, matching some SLRs which have much bigger sensors. (There is a newer version,
NEX-C3.) It's very small; lenses are not as small as some other makes. Problem is the
kit-lens is not so good. Also there's not much choice in lenses till next year. I guess that's why it's selling so cheaply..
Then comes my favourite, the
Olympus PEN E-PL2. Good
kit-lens (14-42 = 28-84mm equivalent) which is collapsable, so especially small when not in use. Costs under €500 new here, but you can get it
with two lenses for
€582.
I really wanted to try it out but havent yet had a chance to go to an actual shop. Anyways I was thrown by the announcement yesterday of three new cameras in the same line:
All are supposed to have super-fast auto-focus.
Hum-di-dum.
Think I'll wait a bit and see what the first two are priced at (not yet announced).
There are other compact system cameras but image quality didnt get good reviews.
Finally, have a look at the
Pentax Q - will be available in September - definitely the smallest compact system camera around, but also with a very small sensor so image quality will suffer.
But, (with apologies) it's soooo cute . . .
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