Digital Camera Buyer's Guide Introduction - Comments

[Greg Bernhardt]

Looking forward to the rest of the series! One question though. With the meteoric rise in smartphone cameras, is the quick shot camera near death? I believe the only advantage at the moment is a bit of zoom?

 

[DaveC426913]

I think this may be the very first PF Insights I've ever followed.

Write faster please.

 

[DaveC426913]

This is surely outside the scope of this article, but I am interested to see if taking RAW format pics is of any benefit to me. I've taken some test photos in the 'JPG and RAW' mode, and used RAW image software, but frankly I can't see much I would do to the RAW image - at least, nothing that isn't otherwise doable in PhotoShop. The compression that comes wth JPG images does not seem to be mitigated noticeably in a RAW image.

 

[davenn]

This is surely outside the scope of this article, but I am interested to see if taking RAW format pics is of any benefit to me. I've taken some test photos in the 'JPG and RAW' mode, and used RAW image software, but frankly I can't see much I would do to the RAW image - at least, nothing that isn't otherwise doable in PhotoShop. The compression that comes wth JPG images does not seem to be mitigated noticeably in a RAW image.

I primarily only shoot in RAW. it has the huge advantage of being able to push the image much further than in JPG ... much, much further

The compression that comes wth JPG images does not seem to be mitigated noticeably in a RAW image

until you start doing serious editing then you quickly find out the problems assoc. with JPG's

Dave

 

[davenn]

Looking forward to the rest of the series! One question though. With the meteoric rise in smartphone cameras, is the quick shot camera near death? I believe the only advantage at the moment is a bit of zoom?

great question, Greg.
Smartphone cameras have come a long way in the last 5 years. big jumps in megapix count and overall image quality.
And yes there are now even addon lenses for them, one example .. http://www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au/prod11943.htm
not brilliant, but it does extend the capabilities

and the general consensus is that they are considerably damaging point and shoot sales figures
from wiki

According to the NPD Group, up to end of November 2011 point-and-shoot cameras took 44 percent of photos, down from 52 percent in 2010, while camera-equipped smartphones took 27 percent of photos in 2011, up from 17 percent. Unit total sales of all types of point-and-shoot cameras declined by 17 percent year on year, but increased by 16 percent for cameras having optical zoom greater than 10x.[6] At the end of 2012, more than one brand have released point-and-shoot cameras with 24x optical superzoom[7] as compensation of sales decline and at the end of 2013 there were 30x optical point-and-shoot cameras.

P&S camera sales dropped by about 40 percent in year 2013 particularly inexpensive cameras, so Fujifilm and Olympus have stopped development of low-end P&S cameras and focused to develop mid and high-end cameras with more added value

Smartphone photography is also hurting DSLR sales as well
From DPReview, my favourite camera review site ... https://www.dpreview.com/articles/5928296460/canon-q4-earnings-report-shows-camera-sales-are-down

Canon has released its 2014 Q4 financial report, showing an overall profit increase but a continued slump in camera sales. Canon saw its quarterly operating profit - which spans from the three months leading up to December 31 - rise 5.4% year-on-year to the equivalent of $835 million (98.5 billion yen).

Despite the increase, it failed to meet analysts' expectations. Canon's imaging business saw its operating profit fall 6.2% year-on-year, with a 58.3 billion yen operating profit. Sales in that segment fell by 7.3% YOY. By region, the biggest decline in sales came from the Americas, down 11.9% from 2013.

Smartphones are cited as a big cause for the slowdown in camera sales. In 2015, the maker anticipates its compact camera sales will only hit 7.8 million units, which is a substantial decrease from 2014's 9.03 million, and predicts interchangeable lens camera sales will remain relatively flat at 6.4 million units. Still, Canon expects that this year will prove favorable as far as sales go, with the company estimating it'll bring in 3.9 trillion yen, a year-on-year increase of 4.6-percent.

DSLR's will always be there for the serious amateur and professional photographers.
There's an old saying ... " Everyone thinks they are a photographer until the take the camera from Auto to Manual mode"
And there-in lies the huge advantages of DSLR's ( or the old SLR film camera) ... you can get full control over the camera in every aspect.
almost nothing like that can be done with a smartphone camera, extremely limited. Point and Shoot cameras are much better but still have a lot of limitations.

And even DSLR's have come a very long way since @Andy Resnick first penned this insight article.
Huge leaps in lens quality, megapix count, high ISO noise control, faster focussing, image stabilised lenses, better metering to name some of them.

I'll stop waffling for now Dave

 

[Andre]

This is surely outside the scope of this article, but I am interested to see if taking RAW format pics is of any benefit to me. ...

A sunset over daffodils. Left: out of camera jpg. Right: heavy post-processed RAW

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22026080/daffodils.jpg

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I primarily only shoot in RAW. it has the huge advantage of being able to push the image much further than in JPG ... much, much further

Just make sure you have a huge memory card :)

 

[DaveC426913]

until you start doing serious editing then you quickly find out the problems assoc. with JPG's

Maybe that's the issue. I have a little G15, not a DSLR, so it may not leverage the power of RAW.

 

[DennisN]

I am looking forward to the continued insight articles! It is a topic I am very interested in...

 

[Andy Resnick]

Looking forward to the rest of the series! One question though. With the meteoric rise in smartphone cameras, is the quick shot camera near death? I believe the only advantage at the moment is a bit of zoom?

I think you may be right- modern smartphone cameras (2016) perform as well as DSLRs from (IIRC) 2007. One area where inexpensive dedicated cameras have an advantage is the sensor size: larger fields of view, more sensitive pixels, etc.

 

[Andy Resnick]

This is surely outside the scope of this article, but I am interested to see if taking RAW format pics is of any benefit to me. I've taken some test photos in the 'JPG and RAW' mode, and used RAW image software, but frankly I can't see much I would do to the RAW image - at least, nothing that isn't otherwise doable in PhotoShop. The compression that comes wth JPG images does not seem to be mitigated noticeably in a RAW image.

I consider that a personal choice. For me, I simply can't handle the workflow required to manage routine RAW images. JPG works for me, except for astrophotography.