Lynch Tor, Dartmoor (Jon) Using a compact camera can lead to distinctive body language
Camera Types
Cameraphones
Mobile phone cameras have ridiculously tiny sensors, often with absurd numbers of pixels crammed onto them – even though most of their images are viewed on other mobile devices or online, where they don’t need to be big anyway. As a result the images are usually noisy even at reasonable light levels and even worse when the light is poor. This leads you towards using flash, but the flash (if there is one) is usually pretty pathetic.
The excessive number of pixels combined with limited processing power (to be fair, these devices do an awful lot in a very small package) also means that mobile phone cameras are slow. The response to your urgent press on the shutter button is often anything but urgent: shooting any sort of action with these babies is a very hit-or-miss affair. For calling out the mountain rescue, they’re great; for anything else related to outdoor photography, they’re far too limited.
Compact cameras
Unlike mobile phones, compact cameras are worth considering for serious outdoor photography. Well, some compacts, anyway: the term covers a multitude of sins. At one end there are cameras which aren’t much better than a mobile phone. At the other there are cameras which cost more than an entry-level SLR and have a raft of serious features; these are often marketed as a ‘pocket’ camera for professionals.
A very few cameras, like Sigma’s DP-2 and Fujifilm’s resolutely retro-styled X100, have SLR-size sensors in compact-size bodies. If you can live with a fixed focal length lens they’re a really intriguing prospect.
The undeniable advantage of compact cameras for outdoor use is their, er, compactness. Small size and light weight are surely desirable, and so is the ease with which a compact can be stowed in a pocket and pulled out in a second. However, smallness is a mixed blessing. It can make cameras harder to handle, especially when wearing gloves, and particularly when you want to change settings; often the control buttons are so small that they’re fiddly even with bare fingers.
We could fill the whole book with advice on choosing a compact camera, but that’s not what we’re here for, and fortunately there are many magazines and websites which already do that job. What we can do is outline a few factors that could help you narrow down the field.
RAW Shooting. Any DSLR can shoot RAW, but many compacts do not give you the option. The ability to shoot RAW is worth taking into consideration even if you don’t think you’ll want to use it. At least the option will be available if you change your mind later. It’s also a good basic indicator of a serious camera.
Lens range. Some compacts have quite a wide lens zoom range, but never as extensive as you can get on an SLR. In particular, you can’t get such a wide view. Many compacts go no wider than about 35mm focal length see Focal length and angle of view. A fair number go to 28mm, a few reach 24 or 25mm, but that’s it. If you’re interested in wide-angle shooting, maybe for big landscapes, this can be a serious limitation (there is always the option to create a wider view by ‘stitching’). You can eliminate most compacts from your enquiries by insisting on a lens of 28mm or wider.
Sensor size. Almost without exception, compacts have much smaller sensors than SLRs. If the lens is good they’ll probably still produce decent results at moderate ISO ratings but start to struggle at higher speeds (typically 800 and above), and they’ll never match a decent SLR for dynamic range, which can count for a lot in uncontrolled outdoor light. But not all compacts are equal. Sensor sizes do vary. Unfortunately, sizes are usually given as a reciprocal (eg 1/2.5in). We can only assume this is done deliberately, to obscure the truth of how small these sensors are. Take the common 1/2.5in size, for example; this sensor measures about 5.8 × 4.3mm, which is less than one-fifteenth the light-gathering area of a typical SLR. 1/1.8in is a large sensor for a compact. It’s still a lot smaller than an SLR but it is at least another way of narrowing down the excess of choice.
Speed of response. This used to be a major weakness of compacts in general compared to SLRs. The delay between pressing the button and actually taking the picture could be half a second or more. This may not sound much but in fact it’s excruciating. Fortunately most compacts are now much livelier, although they still trail behind SLRs for real action shooting. In choosing between compact cameras, shutter response (aka shutter lag) definitely helps narrow down the field. However, many manufacturers are still coy about it; you may have to drill deep into spec sheets for this figure, or go to independent reviews. Be careful not to confuse this with ‘shooting speed’, which usually refers to how many frames per second a camera can capture. Being able to shoot four or five frames per second is helpful, but it’s no substitute for a nippy shutter response.
Viewfinder. In essence, can you manage without a viewfinder? Lots of cameras now don’t have one. This may not seem important, as so many people use the screen for framing their shots anyway. However, most camera screens are hard to see clearly in bright sunlight; this is a major drawback in outdoor use (yes, even in Britain!). Using the screen rather than a viewfinder also increases the risk of camera shake. If you do plan to rely on the screen, make sure it’s a good one; as large as possible (3in or 75mm diagonal is the benchmark), with a bright, high-resolution display. Conversely, if you want to use the viewfinder, make sure that’s a good one too; bright, clear and sensibly placed.
Kayaker, Holme Pierrepoint, Nottingham (Chiz) This image was taken on a Canon DSLR; compact cameras will struggle (and often fail) to capture fast-moving action at the ‘decisive moment’ (shutter speed 1/350s)
Ultra-zoom cameras
This is a rather nebulous category; in fact it’s tempting to lump them in with compacts as a kind of high-end variant. Names like ‘bridge camera’ seem to be falling out of use, while the term ‘prosumer’, which is sometimes bandied about, has no clear definition. Alternative names, which seem to have become more widely used are ‘long zoom’, ‘superzoom’, or ‘ultra-zoom’.
These cameras often look superficially like an SLR, right down to the bump above the lens, but have a non-interchangeable lens and a compact-size sensor. They do tend to have very wide zoom ranges, often running to 500 or 600mm equivalent, sometimes beyond, but they’re still limited to 24mm – at best – at the wide-angle end. A 600mm lens for an SLR can cost £6000 and weigh 6kg, so getting one built-in for a few hundred sounds too good to be true.
And arguably it is. These lenses won’t deliver the same optical quality as SLR lenses. And although all these cameras now have some form of image stabilisation, it’s still almost impossible to hand hold a 600 or 800mm lens. Never mind avoiding camera shake, just keeping your subject centred in the viewfinder can be tricky.
And then consider that these cameras are not vastly smaller or lighter than an entry-level SLR; they certainly won’t slip comfortably into the average pocket. And the SLR has the advantages of a big sensor and interchangeable lenses.
It’s also interesting to look at these cameras in the light of our five key points for choosing a compact. One telling result is that most of them don’t offer a RAW shooting option.
SLR cameras
Of all the main categories of digital camera, the one that still looks most like its 35mm film ancestors is the SLR. There’s a reason for this. The 35mm SLR is up there with the bicycle as one of the great humanistic design icons. It brings hand and eye together. As a flexible and versatile camera, especially for hand-held