Wednesday, June 13, 2012

More on photography

Some more thoughts about photography, in particular DSLR vs. point & shoot or phone cameras.

1. DSLRs give greater control - for example to get the photo above I played around with a range of shutter speeds and ISO settings. A point and shoot would think "its night" and over expose the moon (which is in daylight if you think about it).

2. DSLR sensors are larger, so have lower noise. This means better quality pictures or you can take pictures where otherwise you wouldn't (e.g. low light conditions)

3. DSLRs have a choice of lenses which extend beyond the range possible for a single point and shoot i.e. you can get specialist lenses that are wider or have more zoom than any point and shoot

4. DSLR lenses are generally better quality, which should lead to sharper images and less distortion, though point are shoots are improving here a lot.

The two points above go together. Lens quality is helped by specialising on particular zoom ranges. You could have one that is (say) 28 - 200 mm or two from 18 - 55 and 70 - 300. The pair cover a greater range and will be better quality.

5. DSLR lenses can include image stabilizers which can reduce motion blur, particularly if you zoom in a lot

6. It used to be the case that there was significant shutter lag for point and shoot cameras compared to DSLRs, though that is becoming less of an issue.

7. DSLR style controls can be more ergonomic as some point and shoots are too small to hold easily

8. Cameras on phones are improving all the time and seems likely to eat away at the point and shoot market

9. I find optical viewfinders easier to look into when its bright and screens get washed out.

10. O'Docker's post on the subject is great

Overall, recent mirrors less designs using the micro 4/3rds standard offer a range of lenses plus manual controls while not being as big and bulky as DSLRs: this makes them very tempting.


1 comment:

Tillerman said...

Thanks for this. i think I'm beginning to understand this whole question a lot better now.