DSLR vs P&S a replay of Film vs Digital?

SMS ???????????? ??? wrote:

DSLR partisans seem like the defenders of film, because
they don't have a lot of firm evidence that their workflow
is superior, except at high ISO or some arcane usage.

LOL, high ISO is "arcane usage?"

Yes. Back when I was doing wet photography, the only time I bought
and push-processed 800 speed film (NPZ or Portra) was when my kids
were in a Nutcracker performance, once a year. That's pretty arcane.

For dark conditions there is always flash or tripod. A generation ago
ASA 64 was considered fast film, and they made good pictures anyhow.

The problem of P&S shutter lag has been mostly solved in recent models.

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:35:19 -0600, Doug McDonald
wrote in :

John Navas wrote:

Noise is actually good at ISO 200, and easily reduced with Neat Image.

ISO 200 would have been a disaster for me on my last two vacations
on my 30D it stayed at 1600 for very long periods,
and we are talking f/4 and sometimes f/1.4, sometimes f/1.4
for .4 second on a tripod, at 1600.

Then that's what you should use.

I personally don't have that need, and I'm thankfully done with lugging
a full 35 mm kit on vacations.

"Different strokes for different folks."

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

On 16 Nov 2007 06:05:51 GMT, (Ray Fischer) wrote in
:

Bill Tuthill wrote:

The bodies and lenses are larger and heavier than they need to be
for the APS sensors inside (except Canon 5D, ??, and vapor Nikon D3).

And the lenses are far, far more limited in P&S cameras and of
lower quality than SLR lenses.

The best compact camera lenses are actually unmatched in the SLR world,
notably the superb fast Leica super-zoom lenses on Panasonic FZ-series
cameras.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

Matt Ion wrote:

Douglas wrote:
No mirror slap must account for at least 2 stops...

HAHAHAH, that's a good one. Funniest thing I've read all week.

Definitely one stop, anyway. In my experience.
High-quality P&S film cameras such as the Yashica T4 Super
always produced sharper pictures than my SLR at similar shutter speeds.

David J Taylor wrote:

The recommended DSLR workflow seems like a huge chore, not a fun
hobby, with RAW mode and the continual treadmill of Adobe software
upgrades.

You don't /have/ to use that workflow - I believe in getting things right
in the camera and minima post processing. No RAW for me.

You're losing about 5 stops of dynamic range by not using RAW mode,
according to a study by R.N. Clark. Narrow dynamic range is my
biggest complaint with the current crop of digital cameras, P&S and DSLR.
I loved print film for its wide dynamic range, but got sick of scanning,
and $2/roll scans are only 1800x1200 pixels.

Depend how closely you look, and under what circumstances you take
pictures. With indoor photographs - lecturers at conferences for
example - I needed flash with the compact camera, but with a DSLR I can
simply set ISO 1600 and avoid the flash. With the fast mechanical zoom on
the DSLR I have got pictures I would otherwise have missed. For
travelling light, I will take just the compact.

I believe you, but have no need to take pictures of lecturers at conferences.

Look closely at the images - if you need to crop or have a large print -
and you can see the difference in quality. It's up to you whether the
difference matters enough in a particular situation.

Righto, I have compared Rebel (kit lens) vs G7 and the G7 is better.

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:34:46 GMT, "David J Taylor"
wrote in
:

Bill Tuthill wrote:

So I'm wondering if the DSLR is a dead-end. In field use, I don't see
any significant advantage in pictures produced by friends with a DSLR,
versus friends with a pocket-size digicam.

Depend how closely you look, and under what circumstances you take
pictures. With indoor photographs - lecturers at conferences for
example - I needed flash with the compact camera, but with a DSLR I can
simply set ISO 1600 and avoid the flash. ...

Only if you lug a full SLR kit or are able to accurately anticipate and
have just the right glass for the situation.

The best roughly comparable DSLR lens to the Leica super-zoom lens on my
Panasonic FZ8 is arguably the Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM
($2,100 at B&H). When that Canon is stopped down for comparable
sharpness, my FZ8 will have a 3+ stop advantage, so when the Canon is
shooting at ISO 1600, I can be shooting at ISO 200, which greatly levels
the playing field.

Only with something like the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS USM ($3,900 at
B&H) are you going to be able to match my Leica super-zoom on lens
speed, image quality, focal length reach, and stabilization

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:26:21 GMT, Daniel Silevitch
wrote in
:

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:34:46 GMT, David J Taylor wrote:
Bill Tuthill wrote:

The recommended DSLR workflow seems like a huge chore, not a fun
hobby, with RAW mode and the continual treadmill of Adobe software
upgrades.

You don't /have/ to use that workflow - I believe in getting things right
in the camera and minima post processing. No RAW for me.

With the right software, RAW adds precisely zero extra work. I use
Apple's Aperture, and Adobe's Lightroom does the same thing. I can shoot
in either RAW or JPEG, and either way the software reads them in,
generates preview thumbnails, lets me twiddle with the white balance,
etc. The only thing special I need to do for RAW is budget more disk
space for the bigger files, and in an era of 1 TB drives, that's not a
big deal.

With JPEG there's no need to do *any* post-processing.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:31:04 +0000, Chris Savage
wrote in
:

On 2007-11-16, David J Taylor wrote:
Bill Tuthill wrote:

The recommended DSLR workflow seems like a huge chore, not a fun
hobby, with RAW mode and the continual treadmill of Adobe software
upgrades.

You don't /have/ to use that workflow - I believe in getting things right
in the camera and minima post processing. No RAW for me.

I believe in getting things right in the camera that the camera is good
at getting right. For the rest I prefer to make my own creative choices
while processing the RAW files. I see it as the advantage of having
learned to do that kind of stuff with film in darkrooms.

It's a matter of different personal styles -- I find I'm able to make my
creative choices when shooting and to get the image right in the camera
the majority of the time.

RAW is best for some people and situations.
JPEG is best for other people and situations.
"Different strokes for different folks."

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:29:19 -0600, Doug McDonald
wrote in :

Bill Tuthill wrote:

So I'm wondering if the DSLR is a dead-end. In field use, I don't see
any significant advantage in pictures produced by friends with a DSLR,
versus friends with a pocket-size digicam.

I do. I've compared my own 30D photos of two vacations with the ones
made by my co-travellers using a wide variety of P&S cameras, though none
were the most expensive super-zoom ones touted here as replacements
for DSLRs. But some were fairly large cameras.

There is simply no comparison in image quality; my own photos are
far better than theirs, both in sharpness and tonal rendition. I
exclusively use RAW and process in PS CS2.

That of course may be more due to their particular cameras and their
particular skills than to any fundamental difference in formats.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:07:11 -0800, SMS ???• ?
wrote in
:

That said, or course I often use P&S cameras, but with full knowledge of
the limitations.

From your posts here it's painfully obvious they're all poor ones by
current standards, because you have no knowledge of how the better ones
actually work.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)