megapixels or zoom lense? Which is best for wildlife,landscapes?

wrote:
Ok, I am looking at two cameras. They will be primarily for outdoor
shooting of landscapes, wildlife etc. This is just for personal
enjoyment.

The cameras:

Fuji e550 6 MP 4x zoom
Fuji s5100 4 MP 10x zoom

One camera has the longer zoom, one has higher megapixels. For shots of
eagles, elk etc, and landscapes, which camera will suit my purposes
better?
In my opinion, neither of these cameras is good for wildlife,
especially birds. In general, you need 500mm and longer
in 35mm equivalent for wildlife. Moving wildlife need
fast shutter speeds too. Fast shutter speeds requires
fast telephoto lenses, and often high iso. Consumer
P&S cameras with their small pixels fail badly in this
regard. See:

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedeta...el.size.matter

The second thing is that P&S cameras generally have long
shutter lag, making wildlife pictures very difficult.

You would be better off with a DSLR, which you can add
lenses to as your budget permits. DSLRs have the fastest
autofocus speeds and lowest shutter lags of digital
cameras (and some models even outperform film cameras).

Here are some eagle and other bird pictures:

http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries...ird/index.html

Four eagle pics are with 700mm focal length (500mm f/4 L IS lens + 1.4x TC),
the last was 300mm f/5.6 consumer zoom lens and not as sharp and
the eagle is not as large in the frame. See the other bird
photos for other focal lengths, f/ratios, shutter speeds,
and ISO's used.

Roger

thx for the detailed reply Roger but this is more for fun at this
point. I may not or may choose to upgrade to a DLR later on with a
higher end tele lense.

I managed to ger a few decent wildlife pics with a Fuji s3000 4mp 6x
optical for the past couple of years.

Your shots are really nice by the way. Nice work.

wrote in message
ups.com...
Ok, I am looking at two cameras. They will be primarily for outdoor
shooting of landscapes, wildlife etc. This is just for personal
enjoyment.

The cameras:

Fuji e550 6 MP 4x zoom
Fuji s5100 4 MP 10x zoom

One camera has the longer zoom, one has higher megapixels. For shots of
eagles, elk etc, and landscapes, which camera will suit my purposes
better? I read a review at Stevesdigicams which states the digital zoom
on the e550 actual does not hurt image quality at all, which is
interesting. The review said you could get another 1.4x at 6 megapixel
mode, giving the camera an actual zoom of 5.4x.

So lets say you have captured an eagle with both the e550 and the
s5100. Would I in effect be able to get as good of a picture as the
s5100 by digitally zooming into the photo I took on the e550 in
Photoshop? Would the 6 megapixel clarity of the e550 allow me to zoom
in and get as nice of a shot as a 10x zoom 4 megapixel?

Thanks for any help, hints, etc.

You need to know what the maximum aperture will be when shooting at the 10X tele end of
that lens.
In most cases, this means you're shooting with a tiny aperture...meaning you need slow
shutter speeds...meaning animal motion blur is going to disappoint you.

If the maximum aperture is smaller than 5.6 (a bigger number means a smaller aperture),
then you'll have to shoot in fairly bright light to freexze motion...and bright light is
NOT the best time to find/shoot wild-life.

A lower-res, but SHARP image will beat a high res, but BLURRY image (due to slow shutter)
every time.

I just got back from a vacation in New Mexico where I took a lot of
mountain pictures. I was using a Canon S100 2x zoom. 1st problem I had was
most of the pictures of the mountains were too far away, because even at 2x
optical zoom the image was not the same size as the eye sees it. In my 35mm
camera about 55mm is about normal size as my eye see it. So things looked
further away in the picture then with my necked eye. Which resulted in me
having to crop the image with software to get the picture I originally
wanted which cost resolution.
So for the scenes I think you would want both optical zoom to get the image
close to the picture as you see it and pixels so if you crop you still get a
decent amount of resolution to print and see the objects you were
photographing. Based on that I bought an E550. The 4x zoom although Fuji
says its equivalent to a 130mm 35mm equivalent lens only looks about the
same to me as my 35mm cameras 55mm lens. In other words, if I look through
the view finder zoomed 4x and look at the scene just above the eye piece the
distance looks about the same. However I can crop the picture using the 6mp
without loosing much resolution. You can also use the multiple shot trick.
Using 4x zoom shoot 2 or 4 slightly overlapping pictures, which gives you a
very wide angle and combine them with software to get a high MP wide angle
finished shot.
The 2nd thing is that the E550 can take an optional Telephoto converter
lens and wide angle converter. I don't know about the S5100

wrote in message
ups.com...
thx for the detailed reply Roger but this is more for fun at this
point. I may not or may choose to upgrade to a DLR later on with a
higher end tele lense.

I managed to ger a few decent wildlife pics with a Fuji s3000 4mp 6x
optical for the past couple of years.

Your shots are really nice by the way. Nice work.

I just got back from a vacation in New Mexico where I took a lot of
mountain pictures. I was using a Canon S100 2x zoom. 1st problem I had was
most of the pictures of the mountains were too far away, because even at 2x
optical zoom the image was not the same size as the eye sees it. In my 35mm
camera about 55mm is about normal size as my eye see it. So things looked
further away in the picture then with my necked eye. Which resulted in me
having to crop the image with software to get the picture I originally
wanted which cost resolution.
So for the scenes I think you would want both optical zoom to get the image
close to the picture as you see it and pixels so if you crop you still get a
decent amount of resolution to print and see the objects you were
photographing. Based on that I bought an E550. The 4x zoom although Fuji
says its equivalent to a 130mm 35mm equivalent lens only looks about the
same to me as my 35mm cameras 55mm lens. In other words, if I look through
the view finder zoomed 4x and look at the scene just above the eye piece the
distance looks about the same. However I can crop the picture using the 6mp
without loosing much resolution. You can also use the multiple shot trick.
Using 4x zoom shoot 2 or 4 slightly overlapping pictures, which gives you a
very wide angle and combine them with software to get a high MP wide angle
finished shot.
The 2nd thing is that the E550 can take an optional Telephoto converter
lens and wide angle converter. I don't know about the S5100

"Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even number wrote in message
news:ApSXd.195882$0u.136853@fed1read04...

wrote in message
ups.com...
Ok, I am looking at two cameras. They will be primarily for outdoor
shooting of landscapes, wildlife etc. This is just for personal
enjoyment.

The cameras:

Fuji e550 6 MP 4x zoom
Fuji s5100 4 MP 10x zoom

One camera has the longer zoom, one has higher megapixels. For shots of
eagles, elk etc, and landscapes, which camera will suit my purposes
better? I read a review at Stevesdigicams which states the digital zoom
on the e550 actual does not hurt image quality at all, which is
interesting. The review said you could get another 1.4x at 6 megapixel
mode, giving the camera an actual zoom of 5.4x.

So lets say you have captured an eagle with both the e550 and the
s5100. Would I in effect be able to get as good of a picture as the
s5100 by digitally zooming into the photo I took on the e550 in
Photoshop? Would the 6 megapixel clarity of the e550 allow me to zoom
in and get as nice of a shot as a 10x zoom 4 megapixel?

Thanks for any help, hints, etc.

You need to know what the maximum aperture will be when shooting at the
10X tele end of that lens.
In most cases, this means you're shooting with a tiny aperture...meaning
you need slow shutter speeds...meaning animal motion blur is going to
disappoint you.

If the maximum aperture is smaller than 5.6 (a bigger number means a
smaller aperture), then you'll have to shoot in fairly bright light to
freexze motion...and bright light is NOT the best time to find/shoot
wild-life.

A lower-res, but SHARP image will beat a high res, but BLURRY image (due
to slow shutter) every time.

Hi -

For enlarging to 13x19 or something similar, the $200 scope just is not
going to compare to a serious telephoto. Also, when it comes to
getting action shots, blurring backgrounds and so on, what you pay for
your kit does matter.

There *is* a reason most of the top wildlife photographers in the world
do use $10k+ worth of kit.

To the OP:
(a) I have a *very* hard time believing that the digital zoom on a P&S
"does not affect quality at all."
(b) for wildlife, you really should think of getting an SLR or DSLR -
use it in auto mode if you have to, but the response time of a DSLR
simply *cannot* be matched by a compact digicam. By the same token, no
single lens will give you a good wide angle field of view AND a long
telephoto reach.

I know you said this is just for fun, so it is your all - but before
you decide, you may just want to look at a DSLR and how easy it is to
use in full auto mode.

Cheers,
Vandit

VK wrote:
[]
To the OP:
(a) I have a *very* hard time believing that the digital zoom on a P&S
"does not affect quality at all."

Under some limited circumstances digital zoom can actually improve the
quality because:

- the focussing and exposure may be more accurate

- the JPEG compression will have less effect on the lower resolution
image. This can apply when you use, for example, a 2:1 zoom and the
central e.g. 1024 x 768 pixels of the image are interpolated to 2048 x
1536 pixels before being JPEG compressed.

(I have confirmed this on a Nikon 990 using Basic JPEG compression).

David

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:16:15 GMT, "David J Taylor"
wrote:

VK wrote:
[]
To the OP:
(a) I have a *very* hard time believing that the digital zoom on a P&S
"does not affect quality at all."

Under some limited circumstances digital zoom can actually improve the
quality because:

- the focussing and exposure may be more accurate

- the JPEG compression will have less effect on the lower resolution
image. This can apply when you use, for example, a 2:1 zoom and the
central e.g. 1024 x 768 pixels of the image are interpolated to 2048 x
1536 pixels before being JPEG compressed.

(I have confirmed this on a Nikon 990 using Basic JPEG compression).

This needs to be qualified:

A digital zoom is better than no zoom at all, but never as good as an
optical zoom.

A digital zoom *can be* better than a digital crop/zoom performed
later in software. This is because the camera has access to RAW data
from the sensor before JPEG compression that your expensive computer
software is missing.

--
Owamanga!
http://www.pbase.com/owamanga

"Owamanga" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:16:15 GMT, "David J Taylor"
wrote:

VK wrote:
[]
To the OP:
(a) I have a *very* hard time believing that the digital zoom on a P&S
"does not affect quality at all."

Under some limited circumstances digital zoom can actually improve the
quality because:

- the focussing and exposure may be more accurate

- the JPEG compression will have less effect on the lower resolution
image. This can apply when you use, for example, a 2:1 zoom and the
central e.g. 1024 x 768 pixels of the image are interpolated to 2048 x
1536 pixels before being JPEG compressed.

(I have confirmed this on a Nikon 990 using Basic JPEG compression).

This needs to be qualified:

A digital zoom is better than no zoom at all, but never as good as an
optical zoom.

A digital zoom *can be* better than a digital crop/zoom performed
later in software. This is because the camera has access to RAW data
from the sensor before JPEG compression that your expensive computer
software is missing.

But a digital zoom is not better than a RAW image which is later converted
to a TIFF and then cropped using software in your PC. Also, by cropping
with the PC you have full control over framing the crop/zoom. That is much
more control than you have when trying to frame a digital zoom of a flying
bird or running deer with the camera.

Ron

Owamanga wrote:
[]
This needs to be qualified:

A digital zoom is better than no zoom at all, but never as good as an
optical zoom.

A digital zoom *can be* better than a digital crop/zoom performed
later in software. This is because the camera has access to RAW data
from the sensor before JPEG compression that your expensive computer
software is missing.

Yes, optical zoom is much better. Any improvement from digital zoom is
slight at best, and I would only recommend unzoomed or 2:1 (exactly)
digital zoom under the circumstances I indicated.

David