"Adrian Boliston" wrote in message
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"Beck" wrote in message
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To me, a point and shoot camera has always been of the small pocketable
type that have barely any manual controls and maybe a few set scenes.

SLR would be a camera type (apart from being single lens reflex) that has
full manual controls aswell as auto.

I am curious as to what the middle cameras would be? You know like for
example the Fuji S5500 that has a full range of manual controls but is
not an SLR. Would that still be classed as a point and shoot camera?

There is no real reason I need to know this, its just merely out of
curiousity because in my experience the media tend to talk about either
point and shoot or slr cameras.

From what I gather, it seems that the main factor which separates p&s to
dslr is the type of viewfinder.

A dslr will give you a "real" preview image projected onto a ground glass
viewfinder, wheras a p&s will show the preview on a low-resolution "evf"
or electronic viewfinder, which can never really compare with the "real"
preview that a dslr gives. Another problem with the evf is that the image
often lags behind what is actually happening.

Ah well this I did not know. Having never looked at an SLR camera I have no
real idea of what features they do have. My camera EVF is not that great.
It does alledgedly have 100% frame coverage, but its the grainyness of it
that makes it look cheap. However it does work well in low light, so thats
something to be thankful of.