I've been using a Canon S3 IS for bird photography for a couple of years now. With a 1.7x teleconverter it's easily able to take photos good enough for id without having to try to get closer.
I'd like less noise at ISO 400, but apart from that my main complaint is the difficulty manually focusing for when birds are behind vegetation. You have to press and hold the MF button and adjust the focus with the "joystick" buttons at the back. This is not only physically difficult to do while holding the camera steady, but the EVF's resolution is too low to be sure when it's focused anyway.
With this in mind I started looking for a compact camera with a focusing ring. There are very few of these around. I ended up with a Panasonic FZ30, bought cheaply off eBay because its LCD doesn't work.
The controls on this camera are just about everything a bird photographer could want. I'm finding birds in vegetation fairly easy to shoot, just like I wanted, and the spot focus AF zone is nice and small, so AF works a lot of the time anyway. But the noise and the fringing are awful compared to the S3.
So I have a dilemma - which camera should I use? The Canon is a pain to focus, but the shots that are focused are of much better quality. The FZ30 is nice to use, but the image quality is much worse.
I'd just stick with the Canon, but what use are fuzzy pictures?
Before bidding on this camera, I did a bit of reading, and was aware that noise was an issue, but was under the impression that the fringing was a little worse on the S3. This makes me wonder if what I'm seeing is normal for this model.
If anyone is interested, I've posted some heavily cropped comparison shots at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pshute2/CanonPowershotS3ISAndPanasonicDMCFZ30Comparisons#
Both shots were taken at ISO 100 on a tripod, at f3.5 and 3.7, at 1/100. As you can see, the Panasonic shots are much noisier, and have quite bad purple fringing, compared to the Canon's bad but not so noticeable red fringing.
I realise these cameras are several years old now (3.5 years for the Canon, 4 for the Panasonic), but I'd like to hear what people have to say about this issue
I'd like less noise at ISO 400, but apart from that my main complaint is the difficulty manually focusing for when birds are behind vegetation. You have to press and hold the MF button and adjust the focus with the "joystick" buttons at the back. This is not only physically difficult to do while holding the camera steady, but the EVF's resolution is too low to be sure when it's focused anyway.
With this in mind I started looking for a compact camera with a focusing ring. There are very few of these around. I ended up with a Panasonic FZ30, bought cheaply off eBay because its LCD doesn't work.
The controls on this camera are just about everything a bird photographer could want. I'm finding birds in vegetation fairly easy to shoot, just like I wanted, and the spot focus AF zone is nice and small, so AF works a lot of the time anyway. But the noise and the fringing are awful compared to the S3.
So I have a dilemma - which camera should I use? The Canon is a pain to focus, but the shots that are focused are of much better quality. The FZ30 is nice to use, but the image quality is much worse.
I'd just stick with the Canon, but what use are fuzzy pictures?
Before bidding on this camera, I did a bit of reading, and was aware that noise was an issue, but was under the impression that the fringing was a little worse on the S3. This makes me wonder if what I'm seeing is normal for this model.
If anyone is interested, I've posted some heavily cropped comparison shots at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pshute2/CanonPowershotS3ISAndPanasonicDMCFZ30Comparisons#
Both shots were taken at ISO 100 on a tripod, at f3.5 and 3.7, at 1/100. As you can see, the Panasonic shots are much noisier, and have quite bad purple fringing, compared to the Canon's bad but not so noticeable red fringing.
I realise these cameras are several years old now (3.5 years for the Canon, 4 for the Panasonic), but I'd like to hear what people have to say about this issue
