Compact recommendations?

I am looking for a digital compact with optical zoom that also allows
to control the depth of field manually in a slightly better way than
just picking a couple of pre-set icons from the setup screen. Any
suggestions?

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:09:14 -0000, Hoshisato wrote:

I am looking for a digital compact with optical zoom that also allows
to control the depth of field manually in a slightly better way than
just picking a couple of pre-set icons from the setup screen. Any
suggestions?

Choose any of the cameras that have Manual settings. Many of them
do have them. You'll then be able to choose settings that will give
you repeatable DOFs. But if you find a camera that you like you may
not like the depth of field that you can get with it, since the DOF
is based on the lens's *real* focal length, not the 35mm equivalent
that most people are familiar with.

My Fuji S5100 has a 37-370mm f/2.8 zoom lens, but the real focal
length is 5.7-57mm. If for example, you want to take some portraits
with a shallow DOF to blur the background, comparable to what you'd
get from an SLR using an 85mm lens, to get the same field of view
and perspective (with the same camera to subject distance) the Fuji
would have zoomed the lens to an actual 13mm focal length. This
will give you a pretty large DOF, not the desired small DOF, even if
the lens is used with its widest possible aperture. Now if you're
shooting outdoors so that there's room to move the subject pretty
far from the lens when set to 370mm equiv. focal length, the actual
focal length of 57mm might produce a reasonably small DOF, but now
you'll either need to use a camera with IS, or better, put the
camera on a tripod to eliminate camera shake that the large focal
length magnifies.

If this DOF 'problem' is not a problem for you, then you might
want to add what you mean by a 'digital compact', because that's
almost guaranteed to get you recommendations from subcompacts that
fit in shirt pockets to larger compact cameras such as my Fuji,
Canon's S3 IS and Panasonics both smaller and larger than the S3 IS.

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:09:14 -0000, Hoshisato wrote:

I am looking for a digital compact with optical zoom that also allows
to control the depth of field manually in a slightly better way than
just picking a couple of pre-set icons from the setup screen. Any
suggestions?


You possibly need a DSLR is DoF control is that critical to you.

David