digital camera

amar · Post by **amar** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 6:54 am

I want one.

Trying to decide between these:
http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/camera/ ... -1483.html
Can anyone help?
Cheers.

fel bautista · Post by **fel bautista** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:12 am

I think the Panasonics cameras have Leica lenses. I'm obssesive with Leica hardware so its a pick between those two. Pick the 7M if its a price point issue.

my $0.02

Tyler · Post by **Tyler** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:17 am

fel bautista wrote:I think the Panasonics cameras have Leica lenses. I'm obssesive with Leica hardware so its a pick between those two. Pick the 7M if its a price point issue.

my $0.02

That is absolutely correct, sir!

/Leica FTW
//M5 FTW
///too poor for anything else

amar · Post by **amar** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:33 am

yes, it does. but what I really like about the ricoh is that it has a minimum macro range of 1cm. The panasonics have 5cm. I'm interested in taking close-ups of my carnivorous plants, not sure if 5cm can do the trick?
Anybody have experience in macro-ranges?

Tyler · Post by **Tyler** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:41 am

you can get macro adapters.
Personally I wouldn't settle for the Ricoh just on the basis of the macro feature.

just sayin.

amar · Post by **amar** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:48 am

Tyler, would you go for the panasonic because of the leica lenses, or is there an other reason?
hm...not easy..

Tyler · Post by **Tyler** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 8:01 am

amar wrote:Tyler, would you go for the panasonic because of the leica lenses, or is there an other reason?
hm...not easy..

The leica lens woudl be one reason. Another would be because it appears on the surface to be a decent compromise between power and quality for the price. In point-and-shoot digitals, you really don't want to get into anything over 7mp, because of the increased ammount of noise in the photos taken at higher ASA ratings. There are programs out there to deal with the noise and remove it, but I'd rather not deal with it at all in the first place.
Just MHO.

dfernandez77 · Post by **dfernandez77** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 8:22 am

I have a Lumix. I'm very pleased with it.

Here's a couple macro shot examples from my trip to Ireland:

djm · Post by **djm** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 8:35 am

Whoa! Great snail-cam shot!

djm

Tyler · Post by **Tyler** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:12 am

dfernandez77 wrote:I have a Lumix. I'm very pleased with it.

Here's a couple macro shot examples from my trip to Ireland:

nice!!

Yeah, go for the lumix amar.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:35 am

lumix

dwinterfield · Post by **dwinterfield** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:41 am

We've had an earlier Lumix for about a year and a half and are very happy with it. The optical and digital zooms combine to about 15X and it works well at that distance, probably because it also has image stabilization.

Scott McCallister · Post by **Scott McCallister** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:47 am

Tyler Morris wrote:In point-and-shoot digitals, you really don't want to get into anything over 7mp, because of the increased ammount of noise in the photos taken at higher ASA ratings.

How does the MP rating affect this? Any ASA above about 800 is going to introduce some noise wouldn't it?

Also, Wouldn't the size of the CCD chip contribute to this? The smaller the chip, physically, the more noise will be introduced regardless of the MP rating. I thought.

What's happening here? Will you elaborate?

Tyler · Post by **Tyler** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:07 am

Scott McCallister wrote:
Tyler Morris wrote:In point-and-shoot digitals, you really don't want to get into anything over 7mp, because of the increased ammount of noise in the photos taken at higher ASA ratings.
How does the MP rating affect this? Any ASA above about 800 is going to introduce some noise wouldn't it?

Also, Wouldn't the size of the CCD chip contribute to this? The smaller the chip, physically, the more noise will be introduced regardless of the MP rating. I thought.

What's happening here? Will you elaborate?

They're trying to squeeze more MPs into the same size ccd, and the result is smaller, less efficient pixels (meaning, weaker signal to the camera's processor).
Those 8-10MP point-and-shoots will get better resolution at low ISOs, but poorer resolution at higher ISOs, than say a 6-7MP camera.

Here's some more info, sorry I couldn't take more time to dig up more; I just got a project dumped into my lap that I thougt I'd have a whole week to complete...ugh.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/compactcamerahighiso/
http://www.dansdata.com/gz059.htm

brewerpaul · Post by **brewerpaul** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 5:54 am

(If anyone can tell me why the first two pics came out the way they did on this board, tell me and I'll try to fix it).
Don't know how important it is to you, but I notice that your choices don't have aperture or shutter priority modes. You'd need to choose a different style of camera such as:

http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/st ... splayTab=S

The chunkier, SLR styling is actually quite comfortable to use. I ended up with a comparable Kodak camera (Z612) and have been extremely happy with it.

Shutter priority lets you do cool things like blurring moving water for artistic effects:

Having a long zoom was important to me since while hiking I often see great stuff too far away to otherwise take pics of. These Columbines were clinging to a shale cliff over the Mohawk River and the closest I could safely get was about 20 feet away. Image stabilization lets you get these shots without a tripod:

I just liked this mossy picture:

Note that although my camera is 6mp, I shot these at 4mp to keep file size down. Still not bad.