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

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:04:38 -0800, nospam wrote
in :

In article , John Navas
wrote:

Hey post away with "your" version of the truth, it appears to be making you
happy! ;-) Good for you.

My "version of the truth" is actual experience with the camera,
not what I think some website numbers might mean.

yet your version of the truth about lenses is *not* based on actual
experience, ...

Actually it is.

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

On 16 Nov 2007 11:11:18 -0800, Bill Tuthill wrote
in :

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.

That may be due to your particular SLR, or to handling differences, not
mirror slap per se.

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

On 16 Nov 2007 11:15:13 -0800, Bill Tuthill wrote:

You're losing about 5 stops of dynamic range by not using RAW mode,
according to a study by R.N. Clark.

Ooops, you lost the argument right there. If you believe the red-herring
arguments that that fool comes up with to justify why he spent so much on his
dSLR with L-glass that can't even beat the images done with a $400 P&S camera,
then ... there's really no hope for you.

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:30:22 -1000, Scott W wrote
in :

John Navas wrote:
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.

For overall huge zoom range this is clearly true, and for very little
money. But for any given FL a DSLR will have a better lens to choose
from, so this is a trade off between the two system.

Sometimes, but not always, notably at longer focal lengths. To match
(not beat) the FZ8 Leica lens at (say) 300 mm (35 mm equiv), you'd need
something like the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS USM ($3,900 at B&H).

It all comes down to how much you are willing to lug around, not to
mention how much you are will to spend.

At some point in time I will pick up a super zoom compact digital. I
have been looking at the Panasonic DMC-FZ18, but am shocked at how much
noise the images have even at ISO 100. Still the thing is super cheap
so I can probably look the other way on the noise. But for more of my
shooting I will still be using my DSLR.

Consider the FZ8 as well.

I would say a camera like the FZ18 could be great fun, but with a 1/2.5
sensor it is not going to produce great looking photos.

It actually can.

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

"John Navas" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:43:11 -0500, "Neil Harrington"
wrote in
:

"Helmsman3" wrote in message
. ..

So yes, the advancements of the P&S camera are definitely the
death-knell
to the
DSLR. [ . . . ]

I'm afraid you have it all bass-ackwards. DSLRs have come down in price to
the point that they are pushing high-end compact cameras (I despise the
silly term "P&S") completely out of the market.

I'm sorry to see the "prosumer" level compacts go, but going they are. ...

Don't look now, but "prosumer" level compacts by Panasonic equipped with
superb Leica lenses are going strong.

I'm glad to hear it. Panasonic does make an excellent product. I've had an
FZ15 for a few years now and I agree, the Leica lens (probably should be
"Leica" in quotes, but still) is excellent. On my model it's 35-420mm
(equiv.) stabilized and f/2.8 *all the way* which is very nice indeed.

Still, there's only so much you can do with that small CCD, and the very
best EVF you can get is no joy compared to a real mirror reflex viewinder.
These I think are the chief shortcomings of the "prosumer" compact compared
to a DSLR.

Neil

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

In article , John Navas
wrote:

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:04:38 -0800, nospam wrote
in :

In article , John Navas
wrote:

Hey post away with "your" version of the truth, it appears to be making
you
happy! ;-) Good for you.

My "version of the truth" is actual experience with the camera,
not what I think some website numbers might mean.

yet your version of the truth about lenses is *not* based on actual
experience, ...

Actually it is.

you stated yesterday you tried 'quite a few' third party lenses, not
'all of them.'

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:04:39 -0800, nospam wrote
in :

In article , John Navas
wrote:

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.

never?

I said "need", meaning the image is finished and directly usable.
You may be thinking "want", but that's something else entirely.

his point is that with modern tools, there is no difference in post
processing raw or jpeg, however, using raw produces a much better
result. many times, the amount of post processing is negligble,
regardless of format.

RAW processing takes quite a bit longer than just copying JPEG images to
hard disk.

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

On 16 Nov 2007 11:48:21 -0800, Bill Tuthill wrote
in :

Daniel Silevitch wrote:

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.

True, but offline storage on DVD is an issue.

True, but converting to Adobe DNG may help (depending on your camera's
RAW format).

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

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

Doug McDonald wrote:

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.

The advantages of the D-SLR don't show up as much at low-ISO settings,
and in good light. Where I've found the biggest advantages are

a) low light situations, where the P&S models have unacceptable noise at
an ISO high enough to get the shot at all

a1) where you can't even take the images in low-light that a P&S can because you
can't even get the wide apertures needed at long zoom ranges.


b) where a good flash is needed (related to "a")

b1) where you just use an external flash with any P&S camera. Are you so
pathetic at being an armchair photographer that you don't even know anything
about slave-triggers, slave-flash units, and all the P&S cameras that use
external flash with a built-in hotshoe? It appears that you need to do more
web-photography to educate yourself before you can even hope to pawn yourself
off as any kind of believable photographer. It's a shame that you constantly
reveal that you've never used any real camera before.



c) where a wide angle lens is essential, i.e., indoor group photos where
with a P&S we'd have to remove a wall in order to back up far enough

While you're fumbling to find that $2000 wide-angle lens for your camera I'll be
attaching a $100 adapter on mine that goes from fish-eye to 36mm (35mm eq.)
focal length. Uh oh, you didn't attach the right wide-angle lens to your camera,
you'd better dig in that 20 lb. camera bag for another one that might work this
time.


d) where a long zoom is essential, i.e. wildlife photos in Alaska

Anything after 864mm f.l. on my P&S camera setup then I just attach it to a nice
apochromat spotting scope.


e) where shutter lag and fast auto-focus is not important

Now here you are totally revealing that you are just an armchair photographer
without a camera. I'll leave it to you to figure out why you just revealed that.
:-) Who knows, if enough people did that you might actually learn enough to
become at least a snap-shooter one day.

The rest of your ZERO-experience-as-a-real-photographer hog-wash has been
snipped, to save anyone from your blatant misinformation. No sense making things
worse for someone who needs some real advice from those who actually do
photography and actually own cameras.

Try doing photography with more than a photo of a camera on your computer
monitor sometime. Then you won't be wasting so much of your time misleading
others while forcing others who know photography from correcting all your
blatant errors.

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:37:27 -0500, "Kinon O'Cann"
wrote:


"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message
...
Kinon O'Cann wrote:
What flame wars? What's to discuss? For some uses and needs you use one
tool. Other times, you use another tool. What controversy?
What, exactly, do you see coming to an end? And why is the workflow an
issue? Sorry, but this is a very odd post.

It's just that the current-day DSLR is largely a relic of 35mm film.
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).
Olympus created a whole new lens system, but it is not significantly
smaller than 35mm-based DSLRs, and Pentax makes a 35mm-compatible DSLR
that is smaller and lighter than any Olympus.

Can today's DSLRs be replaced with something else, like an EVF model? Nope.
Today's DSLR's use tech similar to a film SLR because the lenses, focusing
systems, etc originated there.



Yes, that's nice of you to simply regurgitate the nonsense that others like you
have been spewing for years now on the net. But next time try to get some real
experience with real cameras before you care to offer any useful and honest
advice.