What camera do I buy? / general gear talk

Then again, think of all those phone calls.

Hi darling, we're just on the 17th, be home soon.

more importantly, a used mid range compact camera is already worse than last gen iphone in image quality which will be cheaper or already in your pocket

if you want the experience of a camera sure, you want a camera, thats how I ended up M3 double stroke.

You got that excited about an M3?

i know, its terrible.

and it doesent even make calls!

Anyway the important thing is we don't encourage anyone in the tragic fallacy that pics taken with 10 yr old film on a 20 yr old compact actually look any good at all and that spending several pounds every time you click the shutter is really a good way to learn to be a better photographer.

It's also only really been the 14 pro that I've looked at results on the screen and thought they are really decent. I've not looked at any with photo software yet.

In comparison the M240 with the ASPH 50 1.4 produces some really nice results. I can't see how the iphone lens could be better than the asph.

Still that's not a compact you want to take out on a bike so the iphone 14 pro still wins in a big way. Photos on it do look really good.

Stem bags and shooting out of date film seem like the perfect hipster combination?

I thought shooting film (in date) actually makes you a better photographer, more considered & focused?

Probably quicker to pull an iPhone out of a jersey pocket and capture that “decisive moment” vs unzipping a stem bag, if that’s your thing?

All my phone camera photos looks shit except cat portraits with the automatic processed blurry background.. All my film camera photos are average. All but a few of the photos I took on an SLR were mediocre. Amey is totally right but at least I enjoy being average when I get to manual focus and stuff up the exposure. FWIW I only ever use a phone camera when doing any type of cycling.

Cartier Bresson was splashing about in the right puddle. Being a good photographer is a bourgeois concept.

welcome back king!

Gosh, what a welcome 🤗 Hope you’re all well.

I've ended up buying a new phone.... Logically it does make sense for my needs...

I'll keep my eye out for a cheap Ricoh though if anyone's selling one in the future.

Trading in my fuji kit for a ricoh griii x. Looking forward to having a camera on me all the time again

What was(is?) your Fuji kit? Just asking as I have been considering whether to get a Fuji or a Ricoh (or just a phone as Amey)

If you want a viewfinder - Fuji x100v (although I'd hang on as the new version is on the horizon) if you don't get the Ricoh.

IMO the Fuji isn't the most robust of cameras, I've had mine repaired a few times. Ricoh is definitely the one to take cycling.

I must confess I do more walking than cycling lately and I mostly want them to take some pictures in nature and document the life of my little one before she gets too old. What would you recommend?
I had a Fuji during my degree (ages ago but similar to the X100 in size and features, not image quality though) and I honestly loved it. It was an absolute tank too… My problem with phones is photos just sit there. So I thought a camera might force me to actually get back to having more of a process, maybe I am just getting old and sentimental 😪

I still enjoy my Ricoh GR 2, very pocketable.

I bought a new compact recently. Nikon L2, 6mp, cost me £18.74. New beater camera is much fun.

There's a few things I really like about the Fuji-

1. It's got a leaf shutter so will flash synch at high shutter speeds
   
2. It has a line level in the viewfinder which is really useful
   
3. The optical viewfinder is wider than the image frame which is useful for anything moving
   
4. The normal controls are all marked knobs or dials on the camera rather than being jog wheels (it's got those if you want to use them)
   
5. Manual focus (the distance markers are terrible though and it doesn't stop at infinity which isn't very useful for night photography or anywhere that the it might be too dark for the AF - I reassured this with Fuji and they said it was standard on that model)
   
6. Probably worth mentioning that they do a fixed price repair for ~£150, where they will fix any issue you make them aware of. Say if your lens and screen are totally broken and it's not turning on...
   

The innovation stopped in camera industry long time ago.

Is this the disc brakes are dead of the camera thread?

• Digital mirrorless and smaller form factor is an innovation.
  
• Large pixel sensors for low light and astro is an innovation.
  
• Image stabilisation is an innovation.
  
• High resolution sensor is an innovation.
  
• Extreme clarity lenses are an innovation (needed because of super high res digital sensors).
  
• Ultra fast storage and multiple storage slots are an innovation.
  
• High number of autofocus points with things like autofocus tracking on eyes, animals, faces are an innovation.
  
• Lens and cameras that work together to remove focus breathing during video zooming is an innovation.
  
• Onboard image processors including built-in machine learning models for image optimisation and touching up is an innovation.
  
  

About the only thing that hasn't yet seen a huge leap is the design of the body itself, but even then there are some unusual body designs emerging for some use-cases (going to pick Sony just because I'm lazy and you can do your own research), i.e. this very weird "mount the sensor to the back of the lens" thing (mostly for remote control rather than hand held use) https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/interchangeable-lens-cameras/ilce-qx1-body-kit and the cinema line https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/interchangeable-lens-cameras/ilme-fx30 where the bodies are designed to be similar to an SLR but yet are constructed for silent use, mounting things on them, and have things like indicators to show when the camera is live, etc.

There's an overwhelming amount of innovation happening in cameras. Every part of a camera made today is several generations further on than a camera made a decade ago. Only the body remains familiar with lens mounts remaining the same due to the investment people have made in lenses. But even then... lens have also seen huge improvements as a 60MP sensor will show up the smallest flaws and aberrations in even in the best lenses in the past and so lenses have had to also become near-perfect to survive contact with incredible sensors.

The innovation stopped in camera industry long time ago.

I mean, that's hilarious.

A lot of your list of innovations is correct but mirrorless and extreme clarity are what Leica have been doing for decades so they are not innovations.

I agree with your overall point about innovation in camera systems though.

xt20
xf 18-55
xc35 f2
xc 55-200

mirrorless and extreme clarity are what Leica have been doing for decades so they are not innovations

I'd argue against that.

I love Leica, I have a romanticised affection for everything they've ever done.

But if you remove the emotion and look at scientific measurements of sharpness, chromatic aberrations, vignetting, etc... then all of the great lens that currently exist come from the last 10-15 years. That is quite something.

https://www.dxomark.com/Lenses/ has a database of nearly every major lens from the past 50 years (though you have to pay to get access to the totality of their database and they gate Leica and full format things as they know those customers freely spend money and will pay money - but still, all the great lenses are relatively recent which is driven by digital sensors exponentially improving)