Point & shoots, no improvement as long as sensors stay SMALL

Bill Tuthill wrote:
SMS ???????????? ??? wrote:
I.e., I was looking for a small P&S with a wide angle lens,
image-stabilization, and an optical viewfinder (or EVF). Shouldn't be
too hard to find, but actually there's a grand total of one model that
meets these not-so-strange criteria.

The Canon SD800? Not anymore, it is discontinued!

Hmm, it still is in stock at all the standard etailers, and it's still
on the Canon web site,
"http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=145&modeli d=14227"

Nikon has a new model, the P50, that has all this except IS.

LOL, they say it has "software stabilization."

Once you drop the IS requirement, a bunch of models show up.

Too many buyers look only at the telephoto side of the lens, "higher
number is better," just like they look at how many megapixels. Few
buyers are trained to look for stuff like wide-angle capability, optical
or EVF viewfinder, battery type, flash availability, etc.

The dearth of high-end P&S cameras is because the market has changed
from enthusiasts to mass-market, with the enthusiasts all going to SLRs.

Rich wrote:
[-hh wrote]
Just curious: what do you think the night photo currently on my
homepage?

http://www.huntzinger.com/

It's a great shot, but at that XGA size, not much can be determined
about it.

If you pixel-peep, its limitations become quite evident. But what do
you really expect with a 30sec exposure done without a tripod, let
alone a fully tracking 4 degree of freedom telescopic mount? You can
only try to do the best with what you have, and its often worth taking
the risk to experiment, even if its a precariously perched rig on a
wobbly end table to make due for the lack of a proper tripod.


-hh

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 11:58:02 -0800, SMS ???• ?
wrote:

Bill Tuthill wrote:
SMS ???????????? ??? wrote:
I.e., I was looking for a small P&S with a wide angle lens,
image-stabilization, and an optical viewfinder (or EVF). Shouldn't be
too hard to find, but actually there's a grand total of one model that
meets these not-so-strange criteria.

The Canon SD800? Not anymore, it is discontinued!

Hmm, it still is in stock at all the standard etailers, and it's still
on the Canon web site,
"http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=145&modeli d=14227"

Nikon has a new model, the P50, that has all this except IS.

LOL, they say it has "software stabilization."

The "joke" is clearly you. You don't know how "software stabilization" works, do
you. It has nothing to do with auto-increasing ISO.

Look up a little plugin for VirtualDub video editing called DeShaker, it applies
a software stabilization in post processing to video. It works quite well. It's
done by software.

You really need to get your head out of your ass more often. That permanent ****
all over your face resulting from your preferred posture is not very becoming.




Once you drop the IS requirement, a bunch of models show up.

Too many buyers look only at the telephoto side of the lens, "higher
number is better," just like they look at how many megapixels. Few
buyers are trained to look for stuff like wide-angle capability, optical
or EVF viewfinder, battery type, flash availability, etc.

The dearth of high-end P&S cameras is because the market has changed
from enthusiasts to mass-market, with the enthusiasts all going to SLRs.

"SMS ???• ?" wrote in message ...
AAvK wrote:

I do know one thing with the s8000fd, the CCD is a smaller one, adding higher
megapixel output, not as good that way.

While the s8000fd gained image-stabization, Fuji just couldn't resist worsening it in other ways compared to the s6000fd. Slower
frame rate, loss of the manual zoom/manual focus ring, loss of RAW, and presumably higher noise, though that remains to be seen.
Fuji, which has no real SLR business to speak of, would have the least to lose by trying to make a ZLR that competed, at least
half-heartedly with an SLR.

The ZLR market is a really tough segment. You're trying to market cameras that have all the disadvantages of a point and shoot,
but that have few of the advantages of a D-SLR. You're selling primarily on price to people that don't care about noise, shutter
lag, hot shoes (in most cases), or fast auto-focus, and that only want a wide zoom range. Furthermore, you can't depend on future
lens sales to subsidize the cost of the body.


It's still the kind of camera most people want, like the s9100 (almost), all I want in it
next is a large CCD with nice large pixels on it! THEY know that is desireable in an
artistic quality camera, not supremely important to have hyper-fast awesome focusing,
but effective and viablke enough to be a quality user tool, they could do it for $500-$600!
....or buy an old Canon D1, ay?

AAvK

Daniel Silevitch wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:47:29 -0700, Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
FZ8 is 2.07-frames/sec is at only 640x480 pixels (0.3 MPix) highly
compressed jpeg recording 0.63 megapixels/second of information).
Raw mode takes 3.9 seconds/frame (about 0.25 frame/sec),
or 2.86 frames per second for only 5 frames in large fine jpeg.

According to http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz8/page5.asp
the continuous mode on the FZ8 is 2.8 fps for a 5 shot burst, or 2.1 fps
for no-end burst. Both figures for 7 MP/fine JPGs. Drop down to the
second level of JPG, and the no-end burst rate goes up to 2.3 fps. RAW
takes about 2 seconds to save on a fast card.

Still not as good as even a mid-range DSLR, but not as bad as what you
are presenting.

-dms
I was looking at another review site. Even the dpreview site
is confusing. For example, while they say in the "Continuous Mode"
section is 2.1 frames/sec in continuous infinity mode for a 5MP/7MP JPEG fine,
if you go down to the "File Write / Display and Sizes" section,
it says it takes 1.1 seconds to write a 5MP JPEG fine image.
Another review says the rate was determined "Time per shot, averaged
over buffer length or 20 shots, whichever came first" (imaging-resource.com)
so it's hard to know the true long term rate with vague statements
like this.

But since the FZ8 is a 2007 camera, how about we compare to 2007 DSLRs.
For examples the 40D does 6.3 frames/sec for 19 raws or 128 large/fine
jpegs (10 megapixels), then 3 frames /sec for the same 10 mpixel jpegs.
And dpreview has similar confusing timings on the 40D for file
write times.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos40d/page13.asp

I realize the write time section includes other things going on in the
camera, but it doesn't add up with the other modes (6.3 frames/sec)
which imply the data has gotten off the chip and into RAM in
less than 1/6 second including jpeg conversion.
Maybe its a pipeline delay thing.

Roger

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:05:43 -0700, "Roger N. Clark (change username to
rnclark)" wrote:

Daniel Silevitch wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:47:29 -0700, Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
FZ8 is 2.07-frames/sec is at only 640x480 pixels (0.3 MPix) highly
compressed jpeg recording 0.63 megapixels/second of information).
Raw mode takes 3.9 seconds/frame (about 0.25 frame/sec),
or 2.86 frames per second for only 5 frames in large fine jpeg.

According to http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz8/page5.asp
the continuous mode on the FZ8 is 2.8 fps for a 5 shot burst, or 2.1 fps
for no-end burst. Both figures for 7 MP/fine JPGs. Drop down to the
second level of JPG, and the no-end burst rate goes up to 2.3 fps. RAW
takes about 2 seconds to save on a fast card.

Still not as good as even a mid-range DSLR, but not as bad as what you
are presenting.

-dms
I was looking at another review site. Even the dpreview site
is confusing. For example, while they say in the "Continuous Mode"
section is 2.1 frames/sec in continuous infinity mode for a 5MP/7MP JPEG fine,
if you go down to the "File Write / Display and Sizes" section,
it says it takes 1.1 seconds to write a 5MP JPEG fine image.
Another review says the rate was determined "Time per shot, averaged
over buffer length or 20 shots, whichever came first" (imaging-resource.com)
so it's hard to know the true long term rate with vague statements
like this.

But since the FZ8 is a 2007 camera, how about we compare to 2007 DSLRs.
For examples the 40D does 6.3 frames/sec for 19 raws or 128 large/fine
jpegs (10 megapixels), then 3 frames /sec for the same 10 mpixel jpegs.
And dpreview has similar confusing timings on the 40D for file
write times.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos40d/page13.asp

I realize the write time section includes other things going on in the
camera, but it doesn't add up with the other modes (6.3 frames/sec)
which imply the data has gotten off the chip and into RAM in
less than 1/6 second including jpeg conversion.
Maybe its a pipeline delay thing.

Roger

Oh look, he's hoping to buy another machine-gun camera so that by chance alone
one of those frames out of every 200 might be worth viewing. Fire enough rounds
and one will eventually hit something.

What great photography skill you have Roger. It shows all too clearly in your
camera selection criteria.

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:05:43 -0700, Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
Daniel Silevitch wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:47:29 -0700, Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
FZ8 is 2.07-frames/sec is at only 640x480 pixels (0.3 MPix) highly
compressed jpeg recording 0.63 megapixels/second of information).
Raw mode takes 3.9 seconds/frame (about 0.25 frame/sec),
or 2.86 frames per second for only 5 frames in large fine jpeg.

According to http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz8/page5.asp
the continuous mode on the FZ8 is 2.8 fps for a 5 shot burst, or 2.1 fps
for no-end burst. Both figures for 7 MP/fine JPGs. Drop down to the
second level of JPG, and the no-end burst rate goes up to 2.3 fps. RAW
takes about 2 seconds to save on a fast card.

Still not as good as even a mid-range DSLR, but not as bad as what you
are presenting.

-dms
I was looking at another review site. Even the dpreview site
is confusing. For example, while they say in the "Continuous Mode"
section is 2.1 frames/sec in continuous infinity mode for a 5MP/7MP JPEG fine,
if you go down to the "File Write / Display and Sizes" section,
it says it takes 1.1 seconds to write a 5MP JPEG fine image.
Another review says the rate was determined "Time per shot, averaged
over buffer length or 20 shots, whichever came first" (imaging-resource.com)
so it's hard to know the true long term rate with vague statements
like this.

Well, my personal experience on a previous generation (the FZ5) is that
it can sustain ~3 fps more or less indefinitely. The 40% increase in
pixel count between the FZ5 and the FZ8 is pretty consistent with the
observed ~30-40% decrease in the continuous shot rate reported by
DPReview. That just says that Panasonic hasn't put too much emphasis on
speeding up the "write to card" data pipeline in the last couple of
years. However, that model line can certainly do a lot better than your
original statement of 2 fps at 640x480. The FZ8 can do 30 fps at that
resolution (in movie mode, of course, which uses less bandwidth than
30 jpegs/second would).

And since the "time to save" for a 11 megabyte RAW file is only double
that for a 2.3 megabyte jpeg, I think we can assume that there are some
latency or delay issues that don't scale with file size and presumably
are less of a factor when dealing with streaming a continuous set of
images to the card.

But since the FZ8 is a 2007 camera, how about we compare to 2007 DSLRs.
For examples the 40D does 6.3 frames/sec for 19 raws or 128 large/fine
jpegs (10 megapixels), then 3 frames /sec for the same 10 mpixel jpegs.

As I noted above, the FZ series is pretty good for its class, but
doesn't hold up to even a mid-range DSLR. So, no argument here.

-dms

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:59:41 GMT, Daniel Silevitch wrote:

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:05:43 -0700, Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
Daniel Silevitch wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:47:29 -0700, Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
FZ8 is 2.07-frames/sec is at only 640x480 pixels (0.3 MPix) highly
compressed jpeg recording 0.63 megapixels/second of information).
Raw mode takes 3.9 seconds/frame (about 0.25 frame/sec),
or 2.86 frames per second for only 5 frames in large fine jpeg.

According to http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz8/page5.asp
the continuous mode on the FZ8 is 2.8 fps for a 5 shot burst, or 2.1 fps
for no-end burst. Both figures for 7 MP/fine JPGs. Drop down to the
second level of JPG, and the no-end burst rate goes up to 2.3 fps. RAW
takes about 2 seconds to save on a fast card.

Still not as good as even a mid-range DSLR, but not as bad as what you
are presenting.

-dms
I was looking at another review site. Even the dpreview site
is confusing. For example, while they say in the "Continuous Mode"
section is 2.1 frames/sec in continuous infinity mode for a 5MP/7MP JPEG fine,
if you go down to the "File Write / Display and Sizes" section,
it says it takes 1.1 seconds to write a 5MP JPEG fine image.
Another review says the rate was determined "Time per shot, averaged
over buffer length or 20 shots, whichever came first" (imaging-resource.com)
so it's hard to know the true long term rate with vague statements
like this.

Well, my personal experience on a previous generation (the FZ5) is that
it can sustain ~3 fps more or less indefinitely. The 40% increase in
pixel count between the FZ5 and the FZ8 is pretty consistent with the
observed ~30-40% decrease in the continuous shot rate reported by
DPReview. That just says that Panasonic hasn't put too much emphasis on
speeding up the "write to card" data pipeline in the last couple of
years. However, that model line can certainly do a lot better than your
original statement of 2 fps at 640x480. The FZ8 can do 30 fps at that
resolution (in movie mode, of course, which uses less bandwidth than
30 jpegs/second would).

And since the "time to save" for a 11 megabyte RAW file is only double
that for a 2.3 megabyte jpeg, I think we can assume that there are some
latency or delay issues that don't scale with file size and presumably
are less of a factor when dealing with streaming a continuous set of
images to the card.

But since the FZ8 is a 2007 camera, how about we compare to 2007 DSLRs.
For examples the 40D does 6.3 frames/sec for 19 raws or 128 large/fine
jpegs (10 megapixels), then 3 frames /sec for the same 10 mpixel jpegs.

As I noted above, the FZ series is pretty good for its class, but
doesn't hold up to even a mid-range DSLR. So, no argument here.

-dms

Another one showing how they need the fastest auto-focusing, auto-exposure,
auto-frame-rates, auto-everything. Just another claiming how the merits of a
fully automated DSLR might turn them into a better snap-shooter. If they could
buy a DSLR with auto-composition built in they'd jump on it.

Keep trying to buy that talent and skill that you seek!

The camera company CEOs depend on you for it ... for your total lack of it.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

Daniel Silevitch wrote:

As I noted above, the FZ series is pretty good for its class, but
doesn't hold up to even a mid-range DSLR. So, no argument here.

What's kind of sad is that in the film days, it _was_ possible to have a
P&S model that could deliver results pretty close to what an SLR could
accomplish, but this was lost in the transition to digital. There's
something to be said about buying your sensors in rolls, and every
camera having access to to the same 24mm x 36mm sensors. With digital,
it seems that P&S's are doomed to continue to be noise boxes with
comparatively long shutter lags, as long as the sensors remain small.
Which of course is the subject of this thread. To whoever started this
thread: yes, you're absolutely correct. All the additional features
added to the P&S digitals will be of little value, as long as the
sensors stay small.

Sockpuppet "Trent_B. " wrote:

Oh look....

The anonymous coward who hides behind sockpuppets has made another
snotty, yet clueless comment.


... he's hoping to buy another machine-gun camera...

These aren't "machine gun" cameras.

The Phantom 5 I have in our lab does 1000 frame/sec @ full-frame (much
higher in partial frames). I can also set it up using an 'end'
trigger, which is useful for some tests. Overall, much more useful
for what I was doing than the Hadelin (sic) camera I was borrowing at
the time, as the situation had timing variations that are impossible
to zero out.


-hh