Djarum
All-Pro
- Location
- Huntsville, AL
- Name
- Jason
IMO, on most of the travel zooms, having aperture priority control is nearly useless. There is tons of DOF to begin with. So DOF control is minimal at best. More importantly, the lenses in these cameras are typically so slow that one has to shoot the lens wide open no matter what. Otherwise, the ISO gets way too high for these small sensor cameras. Even with the X10, which has a sensor that is just a little bit bigger than the typical travel zoom, I pretty much leave the aperture at its brightest setting. Exception is super bright days which then forces me to stop down the F2 as the X10 has a limited max shutter speed.
My first camera was a Panasonic FZ3. F2.8 all the way to 420mm equivalent. Even though sensors have improved technology since then, no one is really making a camera like that. If they did, I'd pick one up.(and maybe get rid of mFT...nah...). Most of the larger superzooms are rediculously long. Sure, some birders might appreciate it, but anything over 500mm I think on these little cameras get's really useless because they are slow and sharpness is really sacrificed. The travel zooms were around 10 and 12x, but now they are pushing 18x with some of them with really slow aperature. I think a camera like the s95 is inherently much more useful to most people even if sacrifciing the zoom. With a 1/2.3 inch sensor, I don't see why a 12x f2.8 through the entire range would be that difficult to make. Or better yet, an 8x zoom on a 1/1.7 inch sensor.