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Comparing Superzooms (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Hobbes2
- Start date
Swifty49
Scouse Scoper
At the end of a digiscope is a camera and smaller digitals can have slow lag rates after pushing the button and also, ultimately, it's down to the glass in between the camera and the subject. I think digiscoping will be great when you have "compliant" birds like waterfowl, etc, but small birds are more likely to be captured with a more quickly accessible item like a camera. I don't digiscope so I don't know how versatile a medium it is. I suppose the ultimate capture equipment is a DSLR with a very big lens!
crazyfingers
Well-known member
How much money are you looking at to upgrade? Would another $400 break the bank to have both?
Seems to me the two would have very different advantages?
Phil Carter
Well-known member
Reading various review sites regarding super-rooms I'm struck by how widely peoples opinions differ. For example, in the customer reviews of the fz100 on Jessops website, a vast majority give 8/10 or higher but a couple of people give 4/10 saying image quality is poor and video "almost unusable". Is it likely that certain cameras are faulty (which wouldn't say much for Panasonic's quality control) or is down to people's expectations?
Phil
Phil
IvanCavallazzi
Well-known member
In my opinion... it is more likely that the standards are different.
Some people are set to DSLR quality pics... and saw the superzoom.
Some others are used to their old 5mp camera and their cell phone cams... and saw the superzoom.
I for one... I only had digital cameras. I had an actually very good old digital compact canon... and next I was with this big superzoom in my hand. I was impressed.
I can see its problems and its faults... but indeed the first impressions about it ... for me... initially, it was breathtaking, considering my older compact only had 3x.
I guess that is the deal of the gateway, only $400, cameras... to gather the total newbie and the semi-pro. The semi-pro will be unimpressed as he used better things already($5k+)... in other hands the total newbie will be amazed.
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crazyfingers
Well-known member
I always read customer reviews whenever I am looking for a new piece of electronics. Invariably there are some people who are extremely disappointing. Cameras, DVD players, GPS units, whatever. It's always that way.
IvanCavallazzi
Well-known member
Heh, guess what...
It is not even in the best time of the year to photograph it, and the night was a bit cloudy... even then there you go...
In the first pic I pushed the ISO, so you can actually see Titan(one of its moons). All the other pics I took the ISO down to try to intensify the rings shape.
Saturn with CanonSX30.
Lol taking pics of the rings with a P&S is priceless =P
Notice that none of the pics were edited in anyway. I just used windows pic manager to crop it. If you edit it you can far easily identify the rings shape.
(maybe tomorrow I will try different camera settings to see if it works better)
I must admit, this camera is a lot of fun.
It is not even in the best time of the year to photograph it, and the night was a bit cloudy... even then there you go...
In the first pic I pushed the ISO, so you can actually see Titan(one of its moons). All the other pics I took the ISO down to try to intensify the rings shape.
Saturn with CanonSX30.
Lol taking pics of the rings with a P&S is priceless =P
Notice that none of the pics were edited in anyway. I just used windows pic manager to crop it. If you edit it you can far easily identify the rings shape.
(maybe tomorrow I will try different camera settings to see if it works better)
I must admit, this camera is a lot of fun.
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Hobbes2
Well-known member
Wow, that's great going, Ivan. Perhaps you could post one of your best edited pics to see what the final result is? Anyway, whatever it is, those SOOC (straight out of camera) shots are impressive.
Hobbes
IvanCavallazzi
Well-known member
The image is actually too small for the edit making much of a difference. The correct thing to do would for one taking several low exposition pics and then stacking one above the other. And for that I would need an equatorial tri-pod, to follow it(it is already too fast at 35x).
Still I am amazed how a P&S camera with such a tiny aperture can resolve Saturn rings alone. That in the photo is not much less than the view you get with a small 70 aperture + ploss telescope. Of course you can have far better images, but not with such compact handheld thing like sx30.
It will take like 2 or 3 months for me to be able to try the same with jupiter(it is too close to the sun now... impossible to see. But I am thrilled, jupiter shines a lot more.)
This camera is too versatile. The more I use it the more I realize it.
Funny that in the first pic I was not even considering possible to the camera resolve anything... I was shooting out of curiosity. When I saw the pic in the LCD, I was like... "there is some light aberration here".... omg it is Titan!! Then I went for the rings. I never knew it was possible to resolve it with cameras alone at all.
I wonder if in the future people will be doing astronomy with their cellphones =P
EDIT
Just another minor nitpick. Is it just mine or sx30 auto white-balance is a bit "crazy"? What is strange is that often in the same light condition, it give me 2 or 3 different results on the white.
I need to keep fixing it all the time (custom white)... otherwise the camera keep giving me colorful whites.
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Phil Carter
Well-known member
Anyone heard any news or got any views on the new Olympus EZ30MR ?
Phil
Phil
Hobbes2
Well-known member
Hi Phil
not heard of that carema. Do you mean SZ30MR? The maximum focal length of the SZ30 MR is 600mm whilst others such as the fujiHS20, SonyHX100V and NikonP500 are all over 800mm (from memory). Having said that, you might be able to use a teleconverter to get more reach?? But, no idea about quality of the camera/photos, sorry
Hobbes
Phil Carter
Well-known member
Hi Hobbes, yeah that's the one I meant. Seems strange that there are no reviews on this as yet, as Jessops have them in stock now. They've ordered one in for me to have a look at along with the Sony HX100v and the Panasonic fz100, so I'll compare the three. The Olympus looks to be more pocketable than the others which may suit my needs better but obviously IQ is going to be the deciding factor.
Phil
Phil
Hobbes2
Well-known member
Hi Phil
If you search for Olympus SZ30MR dpreview, you should come up with a few threads to read through (e.g. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1008&message=38353585).
The weight (226g) is certainly enticing. You might find these comparisions helpful: http://snapsort.com/compare/Olympus-SZ-30MR-vs-Sony-HX100v and http://snapsort.com/compare/Olympus-SZ-30MR-vs-Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-FZ100. It all depends on what your priorities are as to which suits you best. Good luck with the testing out.
Hobbes
scodgerott
Well-known member
Interesting discussion. I bought the FZ100 last year because, it was the only camera in this group that had high speed burst modes. I am trying to take some "action" shots and I felt it was the only one around that offered what I needed to get these shots. See examples attached. The 4 shots were part of 39 that I reeled off in one burst of a honeyeater hovering for insects. I used the 40 frames a sec burst mode to get the sequence. None of the other cameras in this category can do that.
My thoughts on the FZ100 are this.
Versatile camera with a quite fast autofocus system, but can "hunt" on occasions. Many options available to shoot with. Manual focus system good and bad. The bad bit is that its a bit clumsy, but workable. The good part is the "one shot" autofocus" system, where you can keep it in manual mode and just push the button on the side of the camera to take you straight into auto. It is now my prefered way of doing things as the camera never hunts for focus that way. Not as big a zoom as the others, but I have found that for birds in flight even the 600mm range gives a very small field of view and I generally need to back off a little so I can find them.
If you're not wanting action shots, or are happy with lower rates of burst shooting then I think the new Sony looks like a good bet.
One other matter on weight. I have recently spent a week looking for birds a a good birding resort/spot and carried the camera around all day everyday and not once did I find it was heavy to carry, in fact I hardy noticed it at all.
Hope this helps in some way.
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Hobbes2
Well-known member
Hi Roger
thanks for your review - very useful indeed. Those shots look good too - I particularly like the last one.
Like you, I'm interested in the burst rate, although I don't need 40fps but I do want something that improves on the rate I can get at the moment. The Sony HX100V provides enough speed for what I want at 10fps.
Have you been happy with the image quality? Various reviews seem to suggest you get a lot of noise even in bright sunshine on ISO100.
All the best
Hobbes
thanks for your review - very useful indeed. Those shots look good too - I particularly like the last one.
Like you, I'm interested in the burst rate, although I don't need 40fps but I do want something that improves on the rate I can get at the moment. The Sony HX100V provides enough speed for what I want at 10fps.
Have you been happy with the image quality? Various reviews seem to suggest you get a lot of noise even in bright sunshine on ISO100.
All the best
Hobbes
scodgerott
Well-known member
Hi Hobbes, I am generally happy with the image quality and I can't say that noise bothers me very much. I find I am shooting at 800iso quite a lot and haven't really noticed the noise at all. Others who are more particular might spot it, but its not that much of a factor for me. With regards to the Sony 10 fps, just be careful, because the FZ100 will do 11 fps, but only if the iso is 100. Once you bump it up to more than 100 it slows right down, whereas the 40fps isn't dependent on the iso. This business of the frame rate slowing down with an iso of more than 100 (even when the light is good) isn't mentioned anywhere in the panasonic manual, so I'm a little disappointed in that. I suspect that the Sony may suffer from the same problem. The only way you will be able to find out about that is to try it, because I'm sure it won't be stated anywhere. It may appear in some reviews, but I haven't been able to find any of a production model as yet. The Sony doesn't appear to offer any other frame rate options, but I may be wrong about that. I do like the manual focus/zoom ring on the Sony, I wish the FZ100 had that sort of arrangement.
I guess that the framerate slows down at higher iso because the camera is trying to reduce noice and that takes away processing power from getting to the next image. If I am right, then you might get faster frame rate at higher iso if you reduce noise reduction in camera -- however, you may not like the result 
Niels
Niels
