quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

$380 to $450. Here, you and I diverge on sensor size vs. zoom. It's only 3x. I've found that far too limiting in a general-purpose "touring" camera.

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Sensor size notwithstanding: The bottom line is image quality, and very good image quality can be had in cameras with 1/2.3 sensors. Certainly as good as any phone and with optical zoom to boot.

I think we're going to just have to chalk this one up to different strokes for different folks, as I think our idea of shooting style for travel or "walking about" differs. I just don't see the value of having a telephoto zoom for a travel or walkabout camera.

For traveling, I often select just a single 35mm equivalent fast prime lens to bring with me. This focal length is just about perfect for travel--wide enough to capture the context for the image, but close enough to keep your subject prominently in the frame.

Anything narrower (zoomed in, for non-camera geeks) and you lose the background and foreground for context. You start getting pictures of the random gargoyle on the rooftop, the vase on the table, the bird on a branch, and your travel companion striking a pose, BUT you lose the sense that the gargoyle is on the flying buttress of the Nortre Dame, that the vase is in the lobby of the Bolshoi opera house, the bird is on a blooming dogwood tree in Yosemite, or your travel companion is standing in the Piazza San Marco. The more you zoom in, the more context you lose and travel and walking about photos are all about the context (in my opinion).

The ideal travel and walkabout camera (again, in my opinion) would have a wide or ultra wide on one end, and then a normal or just past normal on the other. The wide or ultra wide for giving viewers a sense of being in the picture and the expansiveness of landscapes or grand interiors. Normal for capturing people and details in context of your travels. When I go places where I anticipate wide vistas and grand interiors, I'll bring a wide angle zoom (15mm-35mm) in lieu of or in addition to a fast normal prime

A super telephoto is useful for sports and wildlife photography where you do want to get close up and personal with the player on the field or the lion in the distance, but those are very particular needs and even with optical stabilization, you'll really struggle with maintaining fast shutter speeds to capture truly sharp images with a small sensor. People and balls move fast in sports, animals rarely sit still and are most active when the light is weak. I went on Safari over the summer and I had people in the vehicle with long 600mm lenses on Nikon full bodies, and they really struggled with getting sharp images in the early morning light and our overcast days. In the same vehicle, I had an older gentleman who was really into birding, use a compact superzoom camra and while he was very excited to get such up-close photos of birds, those photos had entirely too much ISO noise and blur to be useable on anything other than the camera screen.

I really do believe that the era of the small sensor compact point and shoot is drawing to a close, and I wouldn't personally buy one. First, the computational photography power of smartphones (starting with the Pixel 2, and Galaxy S9+) is allowing small smartphone sensors (which are often the same size as small sensor point and shoots) to punch way above their weight. For instance, my Pixel 2 begins taking pictures (many times per second) the moment the app is open and begins buffering photos. As soon as I snap the picture, the camera takes the nearest 9 photos that it's already buffered, divides the photos up into thousands on tiles, and begins analyzing the tiles against each other. If part of a tile is unsharp, the software will attempt to find a non-blurry tile from a different photo, or even a different part of the photo, to substitute it, allowing for much better photos (even of moving subjects) in low light. The software also composites the photos together to improve image noise at high ISO, and the improve the dynamic range (composited HDR photos), and uses machine learning to improve images based on what's in the image. It's estimated that the noise and dynamic range are similar to that coming out of a sensor 4 times its size. The Pixel 2 also has a dual pixel sensor that allows the pixel to capture depth information that it can use for other computational tasks like artificially adding bokeh to a photo. That's pretty phenomenal, and only covers the photography side--the Pixel 2 uses a hybrid optical and electronic stabilization together with machine learning to make *really* smooth videos. It's cutting edge, and you could read an entire whitepaper on just the stabilization technology that Google developed.

for outdoor pics you need to consider a camera either with both a view finder and l.e.d. screen or even a view finder only feature

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
I think we're going to just have to chalk this one up to different strokes for different folks, as I think our idea of shooting style for travel or "walking about" differs. I just don't see the value of having a telephoto zoom for a travel or walkabout camera.

Yup: Big difference in styles, there.

When I travel/tour I often find myself wanting to "get close" to something to which I cannot get physically close. E.g.: Couple summers ago: Pictured Rocks in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Or a trip to Meadowbrook Hall, to "get close" to some of the architectural features from the ground.

To each their own

My favorite is the Canon S95 which is pocket size and gets used the most.

I also have a Canon SX500 which is bigger but has 4X zoom capability.

I found these on ebay in like new condition for a great price.