[Jeroen]

We have several excellent threads on our forum about digital cameras, DSLR and Mirror/EVIL cameras. What we don’t have is a dedicated thread on digital compact cameras.

Some of you think, compact cameras?? Isn’t that a bit dated technology? Who uses a compact camera these days? Well, it turns out that the compact camera is going through a bit of a revival. Good second hand high-end compact cameras are fetching premium money. And there are rumours of manufacturers such as Canon releasing a high-end Power shot this year. Most of the big camera manufacturers have not released any compact cameras for several years.

Have a look here:

https://www.canonrumors.com/opinion-...er-generation/

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/09/nx-s1...ennials-trendy

I just bought a Sony Cybershot RX100 VII. Not a cheap camera by any stretch of the imagination. With one extra battery I paid Euro 1150,— for it (INR 104000).

I also traded in all my Olympus kit, two cameras and several Pro (zoom, prime) lenses. I received almost Euro 2000 for it (INR 181000). So I am in the money! Well, not really as the Olympus kit did cost a lot more as I bought all of it new over the years.

All of this in one little box, ready to be traded in:



And still a lot of stuff left, that I need to sell or give away privately. three camera bags, four tripods, reflectors, and several filters and filter kits.



I have been involved in Photography since I was about 12 years old. My first camera was a Praktica LTL3. The first affordable SLR with through-the-lens metering. These cameras came with the so-called P-mounts. I paid about 500 Dutch guilders for it at the time. (1971). To put that is some perspective, it took me about 20 weeks of morning newspaper delivery, 6 days per week to earn that sort of money. In those days I also developed and printed my own (B&W) photographs as well.



About 6-7 years later I upgraded to a Minolta 700. The Minolta travelled with me all over the world during my merchant navy and offshore days. In those days I shot mainly slides (remember those?).



It wasn’t till the early 90s that I got my first digital camera. One of the early Sony Cybershots. I liked it so much I got myself the Sony Cybershot DR1.



A camera used by pros (and little old me!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Cyber-shot_DSC-R1

Around 2012 or so I bought my first Olympus OMD E5 camera and I have stuck with Olympus OMD camera and their outstanding lenses since. I have exhibited some of my images in Europe and India and have a licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society.





So why move back to a compact camera? There are several reasons. As the saying goes, the best camera is the camera you are carrying with you. For most of us, these days, our mobile phone. And you can take stunning images with a mobile phone.

One of the huge advantages of the micro third format is its size and weight compared to your regular DSLRs. Many of my RSP colleagues switched from full-frame cameras to various micro third brands, for weight alone. The RSP is a society with old members. At 66 I am probably still regarded as one of the younger ones. Dragging all this camera kit with you is a real problem as you get older.

Until recently, the RPS also promoted the printing of your images. So I printed all of my own images up to A3 format. Printing, monitor/printer calibration, choosing the right printing paper is as much a science/black art as shooting and photo editing. I have had some health issues over the last couple of years, which have degraded some of my cognitive abilities. I just don’t want to, or rather can't spend so much time behind a computer anymore. Photo editing and all the intricate adjustments for printing are simply beyond me.

Over the last 12-18 months, most images I have shot were done on my iPhone. I have also taken my Olympus Pen F with me to a few car shows and on my boat Sirion. Especially on board, I found the Olympus kit a hassle. There is too much of it, even though it is a lot smaller than a full-frame kit. It's still a rug sack for the kit. Also, I just don’t like having to change the lenses all the time or have two bodies with different lenses lying about.

So a few weeks ago I started contemplating trading in all of my Olympus kit and get myself a good compact camera. Interestingly enough, all the big manufacturers have not released any new high end compacts over the last couple of years. So when you start googling for reviews you end up with cameras that were released 3-5 years ago!

Even so, those cameras still pack quite a punch.

I had a list of some simple requirements.

• I wanted the camera to fit in the palm of my hand and fit into a coat pocket.
• I also wanted an optical zoom at least 30x, preferably 40x
• And that zoom lens should be of the best quality money can buy.
• I want the ability to program various shooting parameters and have at least full manual and aperture priority control.
• I wanted excellent and very fast autofocus
• Excellent image stabilisation

There are not that many compact cameras that fit the bill.

It was a fairly easy conclusion to go for the Sony. It has received many excellent reviews. Here on my favourite Camera-review-site:

https://www.dpreview.com/products/so...ony_dscrx100m7

If you Google the best compact camera, you will often find this very camera in the first places around the world. Not bad for a camera that was released in 2019!

I had trouble finding one though. Various webshops had it on offer, but I could only find two camera shops that had one in stock. So last Saturday I drove over to Cameraland in Alkmaar. (https://www.cameraland.nl/). About an hour and a half drive. I was quite surprised. I had never been to this camera shop, but it was magnificent. Huge collection of just about anything for the discerning photographer. They also do trade-ins. They had one of the earlier Sony Cybershot RX100 second-hand. So I could compare the brand new one, the MKVII against earlier versions. Still went for the new and latest MKVII. The price difference with the older versions is not that great. As I mentioned, these compact cameras are the latest craze!

So after about an hour of discussion, I bought it, with just one spare battery. I never ever in my life have bought a dedicated camera case. I have had many camera bags and rug sacks to hold all my kit. But here is what I love about this camera.



All I need is the camera, one extra spare battery, nothing else. As you might recall from my previous post, I do visit a lot of (classic) car events. Glare is always an issue. So I have kept the smallest of my polariser filters from my Olympic kit. It won’t fit, but if you just hold it in front of the Sony lens it works just as well.

One battery should give me some 250-350 images, which is plenty these days for me for a day. If need be, I take the spare battery, which is tiny. I can charge the battery, inside the camera, with my iPad/iPhone charger. So no need to take extra charger hardware.

Sunday, I went on a short trip to nearby Dordrecht. A nice, picturesque little town not too far from where we live. I wanted to put my little camera through its paces and develop a good feel for it. It has a huge set of different settings/parameters and what not. The Sony Manual is next to useless. It has 254 pages, but in 84 different languages, so not useful. But I have found a dedicated book that comes highly recommended. I have ordered it and it should arrive next week.



In the meantime, I have found quite a bit of information on the internet and some very useful Youtube videos.

I must admit I am very pleased with its performance so far. I took a couple of hundred images. In many cases the same scenery with different settings. E.g. different aperture over zoom settings. Different ISO versus shutter speeds. Experimented with the various autofocus modes and metering modes and so on.

The depth of field range on this sort of compact camera is very different from a Micro Four Thirds let alone a full frame camera. But I was impressed with how well it performed.

The Autofocus is extremely fast. Much faster than my old Olympic. The eye-detection focus mode is out of this world. I took a few shots of our Digital Image Frame (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadge...tal-frame.html (You have the images, now get yourself a digital frame!)). This little camera picks up the eyes on the photographs displayed on the digital frame from several meters away!. You can also set it to detect animal eyes versus human eyes. However, our cat Molly sleeps most of the time, so I have not had the chance to test it.

The screen on the back is very good and can be tilted up or down.





Here is a tip for all you photographers. Stop shooting from eye-height. Get down on the floor or shoot from above, arm stretched above your head. I once took part in a workshop where all your shots had to be taken from ankle height or less. Having a tilted screen on your camera is essential, unless you want to spread out on the ground!

This camera does come with a tiny pop-up electronic viewer. Comes in handy in bright sunlight as the screen on the back might be a bit tricky to see. (There is a special “bright sunlight” setting for the screen. But I suspect the battery is going to take a hammering in that mode)



I reckon I will need to shoot some 1000 images to get the feel of the camera. Become familiar with all the controls and settings. More importantly, set up 4-5 different specific profiles in memory. Unfortunately, these days I do need quite a bit of help to set this all up. With my garbled mind and memory there is no way I can even begin to do this al by myself. Luckily I have several friends who are keen photographers who are helping me out.

All in all, a very neat, very capable tiny little package!







Key question is how will these images compare to my earlier images shot on the Olympus kit. Well, a good image always starts with excellent composition. Composition is mostly camera independent.

Every camera thread on any forum, including ours, will have endless debate about full frame versus the rest, quality of lenses and so on. I have my take on all this. In general, I find that the whole discussion pretty arbitrary anyway. Of course, there are technical differences. But it is more important to understand under what conditions might those technical differences be a problem.

If you mostly look at photographs on a phone or some iPad, sensor size is simply not a factor these days. These days almost all my photographs end up on Facebook, WhatsApp or internet forums. Very different from having to print them out on A3 format! This little camera sports a 1 inch, 20.1 mega pixels sensor, CMOS technology.

Truth be told, in most cases I believe the limitations are the photographers, not the equipment. Having said that, a compact camera by definition will have more limitations than any Micro Third or Full Frame camera. But again, if you are going to upload those images to a forum, those limitations become pretty much irrelevant in most cases.

I come back to my earlier statement, the best camera is the camera you have on you. The type of camera you have on you when you are an (amateur) photographer might change over the years. Usually, as we grow older we tend to be able to afford and enjoy more elaborate kits. I certainly did. But there might be reasons, as we grow older, that all that elaborate kit becomes more of a hindrance than anything else. Whether that is size/weight or other factors. When you leave your Micro Third or full frame camera at home it might be time to switch back to a compact camera!

Do we have any other members on the forum still shooting with compact cameras? Or considering it perhaps?

Jeroen

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[shankar.balan]

I agree about this camera. I bought the same one a year ago, almost to the day. The various youtube reviews decided me on this camera. It is easily the best sub-compact point and shoot camera available. And it makes for the perfect travel companion. The price in India was about the same (90K INR).

I find that instead of the bulky DSLRs and all, these hybrid point and shoot cameras from Sony with their Carl Zeiss lenses can provide a very effective alternative.

But then, increasingly, these days, preferring to travel as light as possible, I tend not to carry a camera and its accoutrements, preferring instead, to use the iPhone Pro Max camera which works fine for me, to record all the moments and scenes I consider important.

[pavanmadhini]

After months of research, I recently took the plunge and ended up buying a Sony a7cii and a 35mm f1.8.

My primary use cases were street photography while travelling and some indoor candid photography at get togethers.

The one other camera which really put me into analysis paralysis was the Ricoh GR3. This is THE camera if you want something truly compact and portable. If only Ricoh updates them more regularly and predictably.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by pavanmadhini

The one other camera which really put me into analysis paralysis was the Ricoh GR3. This is THE camera if you want something truly compact and portable. If only Ricoh updates them more regularly and predictably.

It's a very nice camera, but it has a fixed lens, 28mm or 40mm, depending on the model, I believe. I like my Sony Zeiss massive optical zoom lens.

Jeroen

[JediKnight]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

If you Google the best compact camera, you will often find this very camera in the first places around the world. Not bad for a camera that was released in 2019!

I have been using this camera for a few years now. I have Mark-ii version as that was the greatest version available that time.

May I say I was blown by the image quality of this little camera. Out of camera Jpegs of this camera are outstanding. In fact it produced better images than my Nikon DSLR (D50)

Coming to the cons I feel the camera is one size too small. Sony did not have to make it so small. Something like 25 % more size would have improved the camera ergonomics while still being compact enough. Also the menu system is too cluttered. Something Canon does much better than Sony.

But overall this is one heck of a camera and punches way higher than its diminutive size suggests.

[swparth18]

Nikon just released new P1100 bridge camera couple of days ago. And the seems to be only new development in the area of fixed lens camera. Not a huge change, but there is an improvement in CPU and autofocus. It weight 1.4kgs with that huge zoom lens. Very tempting option for all-round photography applications.

I learnt manual controls using p950 for my first trip to Orissa and later on, did lot of a travel shots using p520 over in the last year( my mother's old camera). It generated really good results under well lit conditions. Since I like birding and wildlife more, I considered RX10- Mark IV and P1000 for quite a while. RX10 was very tempting with that 24–240 mm F2.4–4 lens but it is quite expensive for bridge camera and already end of life (with availability only on order).

Finally, I made of the choice of using an Aps-c body (z50-mark ii) with full frame lens of 24-120 f4 (total weight of ~ 1.26kgs) and cost of ~ 1.5L INR. The combination has incredibly fast auto-focus and insane image processing speeds. As a new user, I have never really used a fixed focal length camera. Even at lower end, I like the flexibility of 24-120. Eventually, I plan to rent out different wildlife lens before eventually settle on one.

[ninjatalli]

Thank you for this amazing review. A compact camera that fits in the jeans pocket is something that's been on my wishlist for years; and a ask ever since I gave up my SLR (for the mobile cameras) a decade ago.

Curious to understand - the US price (~$1250) is pretty much same as the Indian price (~1L); which isn't a small price. Are there any more VFM options from lesser known brands that might be more decently priced?

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

So why move back to a compact camera? There are several reasons. As the saying goes, the best camera is the camera you are carrying with you. For most of us, these days, our mobile phone. And you can take stunning images with a mobile phone.

... all the big manufacturers have not released any new high end compacts over the last couple of years. So when you start googling for reviews you end up with cameras that were released 3-5 years ago!

Even so, those cameras still pack quite a punch.

I had a list of some simple requirements.

• I wanted the camera to fit in the palm of my hand and fit into a coat pocket.
• I also wanted an optical zoom at least 30x, preferably 40x
• And that zoom lens should be of the best quality money can buy.
• I want the ability to program various shooting parameters and have at least full manual and aperture priority control.
• I wanted excellent and very fast autofocus
• Excellent image stabilisation

...

Do we have any other members on the forum still shooting with compact cameras? Or considering it perhaps?

Jeroen

You've hit the nail ... the perfect camera is the one that is present when you need to take a shot.

Phone cameras, though certainly ubiquitous has certain issues (which I have experienced, may be not others) including not offering the above:
1) Poor telephoto capabilities (I hear this is improving)
2) Practically no point in A mode (with the sensor and lens so small, hardly makes any artistic difference between f/1.4 or f/5.6)
2) Not as great night / long exposure quality (My >decade old Samsung nx1000 was able to capture stars on a hazy well-lit night compared to iPhone 14 or 15)
3) Too much AI interference occasionally resulting in frustration
4) Ingress of dust over a period of time, leading to blurry low contrast photos

Back then, I was evaluating cameras and the market was neatly categorized as:
Casual (<5x zoom, 1/2.5" sensor, f/3.5-5.6 lens, limited manual controls),
Travel (>10x zoom, 1/2.5" sensor, f/3.5-5.6 lens, limited manual controls),
Prosumer (<5x zoom, 1/1.8" sensor, f/1.8-2.5 lens, all manual controls),
Superzoom (>35x zoom, 1.25" sensor, f/3.5-5.6 lens, all manual controls) (these used to look like smaller siblings of SLR)

I was using a travel zoom (Canon SX210) that I loved and lost it at one of the touristy destinations.

During the hunt for replacement I had nearly zeroed upon the prosumer category (Olympus XZ1). That was when 1" sensors were unleashed (Sony RX100) and drastically improved the high ISO performance. Over a period of time all (Canon, Nikon included) shifted their Prosumer category from 1/1.8" to 1" sensor.

I opted for NX1000 only because of still larger sensor (APS) and dirt-cheap price in a deal. How so ever be the small size of NX1000 and its lens (much small than any DSLR, comparable to 4/3"), I still sometimes get envious about the charm and ease of proper compact camera.

[Joe367]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Do we have any other members on the forum still shooting with compact cameras? Or considering it perhaps?

Jeroen

I would love to own a camera like this - I've always wanted a compact camera with good optical zoom. But that pricing is just insane I had looked at some of the cheaper point and shoot cameras, but most of them had mediocre video quality, so I decided against it.

It's great to have a dedicated camera, we don't have to worry about draining the phone's battery. It's more comfortable to hold and extremely satisfying to use as well. I also feel the photos and videos taken on phones look over processed.

I have a dji osmo pocket camera which I carry around with me all the time. It is smaller than most new smartphones and can fit in my pocket comfortably. It can shoot videos upto 4k 60fps with great stability.


I also recently bought a used Canon EOS M for around Rs 25,000. it is quite compact for a camera with an APSC sensor - the body is about the size of a point and shoot camera. The quality of the kit lens that came with it was not very good, so I bought a compact manual lens from ttartisans.



It is still not pocketable and not as convenient or versatile as a point and shoot camera but is quite cheap, compact and fun to use.

[catchjyoti]

Nice thread Jeroen. I bought the Sony RX100M3 compact camera in October of 2018. It has served me well over the years. I have a much older Nikon D40 DSLR too. But I do not use it much. Same issue of lugging it around.

[level0regen]

Nice thread idea!

I own and use a Fujifilm XT200 which I bought for 55k back in 2021. It included the camera body as well as a 15-45mm lens. I bought a telephoto 50-230mm lens for it in 2022 for around 22k.

It's not really a compact camera per say, but because the Fuji body and lens are quite small, it's quite handy. I've had use from both the lenses, but I am desperate to buy a prime 30mm lens for it. Just can't find a good one for a good price as Fuji accessories are hard to come by in India.

Attaching a few images:

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

The eye-detection focus mode is out of this world.

I didn't follow this part. Are you saying the camera scans your retina for where you are looking (In the viewfinder) and the focus locks on whatever you are looking at?

Over the past decade or so, Sony have pretty much re-invented the compact camera and mirror-less landscape. It caught the two big guns Canon and Nikon with their pants down. Historically Sony have been a silent spectator of sorts in the personal camera world. The occasional mega zoom, like the one you had rolling out and not many paying attention to them. However, very good cameras in their own right. The business focused more on Broadcast camera equipment (A separate entity within Sony). I'm not sure what made them wake up. When they released their mirror-less range and new processing tech, Sony pretty much annihilated every other camera brand in the market. I think the only catch was the range of lenses were limited. Thats no longer the case. I see professionals now carrying Sony's alongside the big guns and shooting just as much with them.

In the compact camera space, I can only think of Lumix (A Panasonic-Leica partner program). I have one. Don't use it after I got a Nikon D3000, though I am now more inclined to go back to compact camera as I don't pick up the Nikon anymore due to its bulk. Its control display has also failed (After 10+ years of use!). The main win with the Nikon (over the Lumix) was better noise control in low light conditions. The Lumix was a cheap compact camera after all.

Thanks for sharing. Apart from size, I am pretty sure your camera has 80% of the control offered on a full size camera. I don't think you need more than that.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

I didn't follow this part. Are you saying the camera scans your retina for where you are looking (In the viewfinder) and the focus locks on whatever you are looking at?

Eye focus detects eye(s) of your subject and ensure the camera focus on them. Extremely useful if you want your camera to focus on a person (or animal) face.

Many camera have this feature. The Sony does it exceptionally well!

Jeroen

[neeravnaik]

My compact camera of choice is The Ricoh GR IIIX. It is very compact with a large sensor and a nice fix lens. Love the idea of a daily carry camera to document everyday life. I have used lot of compact cameras over time and I am a big fan.

Some other great options

- LUMIX Lx 100
- Fuji XF10
- Canon s100

It is also great fun to use old digicams from 2007-8 era. They give nostalgic look.

Sony RX100 series already discussed above and are great.

I buy used cameras generally which helps keep the cost down. If you are not a professional anything from 5-10 years ago is also good enough.

My main camera is a 9 years ago old Fuji XT2 and it still works like a charm