Every year I buy myself a birthday present. Nikon came out with a couple of nice little point and shoot cameras. I love my little Nikon cool pix 5600. I've had it for four years. It's a great little camera. Doesn't do everything well, but it takes great outdoor photos. Amazing battery life on regular type AA batteries with the flash turned off. Plus it has an optical viewfinder and many little cameras don't now. That's really important to me.Nikon quit making the 5600 and For a while Nikon didn't have any point and shoot cameras that had an optical viewfinder. Now they have three. The cheapest one, the P50 (photo above) that is due to come out in October is pretty much the same as my 5600. It will be about $230. It does two things that I always wished the 5600 did. It has a manual mode in which you can choose shutter and aperture, and you can choose a high ISO. Both of those things will give the camera more range as it will allow me to shoot in the low light of dusk and dawn. That's important to me because some of the best times are early in the morning and at dusk. Plus it is an 8 megapixel camera instead of only 5 like the 5600. 3 megapixels is what I usually shoot in and it's enough for most people. Plus the P50 uses regular batteries like the 5600 and that's important to me. They are making a P5000 and a P5100 that has pretty much the same lens but with all the controls and a hot shoe for an external flash. They have more megapixels but those cameras both use the nikon battery. It works ok as I have it in my SLR but you always have to have a second one ready to go and they are expensive. Not like you can just drop a couple of regular batteries in.
I've been giving this a lot of thought. I have a Nikon SLR that they no longer make. 5700. It shoots in raw and has every control. So it's not like I need a rad camera, but it is too big to take most of the time. So the P50 will most likely be my next camera very soon. I don't expect this camera to work very well indoors. But outdoors for scenery it will rock. I'm pretty sure.
2 comments:
That's an awesome little camera Don! I like the manual function - I used to have a film camera that was kind of like that. You could set the shutter speed on it so if it was low light you could get a really good exposure.
It's been so long since I've done any hobby photographing I think I've forgotten a lot!
My little Olympus is 4 megapixels. I always try to shoot photos in the extra-high quality mode but sometimes they come out grainy (especially in low light). It shoots good enough photos but I'd like to get something that would shoot photos I could make enlargements (like 11" x 13") of.
I'm still a huge fan of film photography and the hot shoe. I guess I'm old fashioned that way.
$230 is a good price for a camera.
I have a Canon camera (I think it's a Canon) that's a film SLR. I've been wanting to buy other zoom lenses for it but the big feature that I want (the remote button hook-up) it doesn't support. Also Canon doesn't make that SLR anymore and I think they'll probably start phasing out lenses for it, even though the lenses are interchangable on other Canon cameras. So maybe I'll eBay it and buy a new snazzy film camera. Do they even MAKE film cameras anymore?
Grain or (noise in a digital) is a result of pushing the exposure beyond the ISO speed. It's the same as with film. As you most likely know, in low light you select a film with a high ASA/ ISO # like 400. My 5700 digital lets me pick the "film speed" Lots of little point and shoots have a variable ISO setting, so the "film" speed will go up and down depending on the light. But still the exposure will go beyond the film speed as the lens won't gather enough light. The picture will be noisy as a result.
Honestly Diane, I don't think I'd invest in a film camera anymore. Nikon isn't even developing any new models. Kodak stopped making B&W print paper. We are getting rid of our darkroom here at work. The writing is on the wall.
If you want to invest in a decent DSLR you could get a Nikon D40. And there is another camera that is similar to my Nikon 5700 that they no longer make that I think would be a nice all in one camera.
The Leica V-Lux 1. It sells in the $800 range. 10 megapixel. All of the controls. The lens is not removable. All of the Nikon DSLRs have removable lenses now.
Leica makes some really cool cameras. They still make film cameras too but they are expensive.
www.leica-camera.us
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