Canon lenses

@Kristen and all......Well it looks like I could be eating my words! With a landmark birthday coming up it looks like I may be getting a bridge camera from my family.

This of course solves the issue of me buying a 500mm lens for my Canon. I've been doing some research and some thinking, and to be honest the 500mm lens isn't going to be practical for me in many respects, let alone the cost, although I could have picked one up second hand from America for £300.

What worries me now about having the bridge camera is, it will make me lazy and I will stop using my other camera, I almost feel as if I'm cheating on it, how stupid is that!

The two in the running are the Canon Powershot SX50 and the Panasonic Lumix FZ72. I'd like your opinions please?

 

I own the PowerShot SX50 HS, so comments based on that. I've never even seen the Panasonic one ...

I shoot all my "garden archive" pictures at max wideangle - which I suppose has been 24mm ever since I moved to digital from film. So I would probably benefit from 20mm - however, I thought 24mm (digital) was the border-line between distortion and not? Perhaps the camera starts up at 24mm (and can be zoomed out to 20mm)? ... what I am thinking is that I turn the camera on (thus its at 24mm) and if I am taking a happy snappy I walk towards the subject until it is framed (rather than zooming). If camera started at 20mm, AND there was distortion, I would have to change to 24mm first.

An issue with the SX50, compared to the previous Canon I owned, is that it is half a stop slower. Forget about max zoom, I would compare the best f-stop that it is capable of.

Does Panasonic have Image Stabilisation (& as good as Canon's?). I use that all the time - either on long zoom and hand held (which is pretty remarkable - saves lugging a tripod ) and at low light rather than using flash.

I am starting to have an issue with storing the images from digital cameras over the years. Extra pixels (if not really needed) would exacerbate that. I keep pretty much all my photos, for "archive" to flick back through.

I wouldn't buy a camera without this. Being able to protect the screen, when not in use, seems to me to be critical. Being able to angle it (slightly downwards) so I can reach up over a crowd of people - for example gathering around the bride at a wedding - is handy, and I sometimes make a movie of something I am doing, as a demo for someone else, and turning the screen all the way round to "selfie" mode means I can preview that my hands and whatever I am demonstrating are "in shot".

I'm not sure the size of screen matters. I only ever use the viewfinder for normal shots, as the glare on the screen is a nuisence (although millions of people manage in bright sunshine just fine with their feature-phones ). But I am only using the viewfinder to check that the picture is "framed" well - the resolution is pants. If I want to check that the focus is good I have to zoom the screen all the way in, anyway, so bigger screen wouldn't help that much. For someone who only ever uses the screen as the preview for taking pictures their needs might be different.

GPS would be handy, to know where I had taken a photo.

GPS would be an utter nightmare because it would be in the EXIF whenever I uploaded a photo / sent one to a friend. Serious risk of privacy breach.

When is the next Cannon coming out? Worth waiting for that perhaps?

Other points:

I like the Canon software too - the way it downloads (folder per day, date is part of the folder name, so everything naturally in chronological order, makes it easy to find "that wedding 5 years ago)

There was no comparison of the Panorama mode. On Canon the viewfinder comes up with 1/3rd of the previous frame (fixed on the left) so you can align your next frame (2/3rd on the right). In olden days I had so much up-down between frames that the final cropping wasted most of the picture - not any more!). But although it has left-to-right and right-to-left if it has Portrait equivalent I've never found it.

 

Don't forget you would need to purchase the SX50 by 7th May if you wish to take advantage of the £30 cashback offer.
http://www.canon.co.uk/springcashback/

 

I bought mine from a supplier cheaper than if I had used the cashback deal (supplier shipped from England, as the product arrived next-day, but was not considered to be a UK-Retailer by Canon's cashback offer ...)

 

Armandii.....It must have taken you ages to write up those posts, thank you. I had researched the pro's and con's of both camera's but yours was a better read!

Kristen.....Thanks for the pointers on the Canon. Yes, the Panasonic does have image stabilisation. The fact that Canon are on the verge of releasing another camera isn't a problem. As with all technology it changes very quickly.

The screen won't be an issue as it's doubtful that I will use it. I haven't used the one on my present camera in the three years I've had it. The viewfinder will be more important and I've heard some users aren't happy with it on bridge cameras but can't quite put my finger on the problem, any ideas please?

I don't need or want the GPS, I prefer to handle my own naming set up. When I use my camera my photo's are sorted on 'return to base'. The problem I find with present day cameras is they take to much away from the photographer and complicate it in the process, I don't want a camera that does everything for me but unfortunately I don't have a choice with todays technology. Oh, for a Brownie with a zoom lens!

Yesterday after reading Armandii's posts I was swinging towards the Panasonic but now I'm back at 50/50 again having taken on board what Kristen has said. Both cameras have good and not so good points. There is still something telling me Canon is the way to go, perhaps it's because I already have one and know how it performs. This is difficult, I only have a few days to make up my mind.

 

Scrungee, thank you, but this camera is being bought by my children for my birthday and they don't know I know. As Kristen says it is cheaper elsewhere even with Canon's cash back deal.

 

The resolution in the viewfinder is lousy (you aren't looking through-the-lens as with SLR). Its so long since I switched from SLR to Digital I can't remember what would have bothered me at the time ... with SLR I did fiddle with focus and so on, but I just forget about that now, and all I use the viewfinder for is "framing", so even though Low Res it does the job as far as I am concerned.

In terms of "using the screen" I use that (flipped out and angled down) for photographing over the heads of the crowd, or when I want a down-pointing shot (daughter and two friends were sat in a, dry, bath the other day "'coz that's the best Wifi signal for watching a movie" and a down-shot was the best angle for a photo ). I also use it just to review which of the 3 shots I took looks best, and delete the the other two (before I download), and sometimes to show someone a photo that I happen to still have on the camera, but sounds like your experience that my usage is "rare".

One important point is that Zooming is nothing like as nice as with SLR. You have to use the "Knob" for that, and getting it to just-the-right-point is hit and miss. I still miss the SLR ring-around-the-lens for zooming, and would dearly like that back on a Bridge. I expect it is because the zoom is electric-motor (goodness knows what rearrangement of the lens elements has to happen, internally, to get from touching-object macro to 1200 zoom!!

Worth considering speed and noise of zoom. The Canon was praised for this when the HS50 came out. Compared to my previous Bridge (an earlier Canon model, forgotten which one now) the HS50 is both incredibly quick, and very quiet (saves embarrassment in situations like at the kids play! and also avoids pick-up noise when shooting a movie with sound and zooming). Panasonic may be same though?

Canon Macro is pretty easy. There is a Macro mode [menu option], which can help "lock" that mode if you have several shots to do, but other than that you can just move closer, until the lens is touching the object (so I presume that is 1:1) and it will continuously focus. I presume at some point it automatically switches the lens elements from Normal to Macro.

I'm the same ... although ... it is well cool if taking photos around a garden to actually know where exactly you were standing, and which way you were facing. All that can spring up on a map (such as Google Maps). Not sure if I am comfortable with the intrusion of the technology though.

You'll need to unthink that You can set-up for the photos as you want to, but I think you will want to let the technology help too. Most of my photos are happy-snappy (current log of garden "status"), but I did Photography at skool, owned an SLR, and thus know my way around a camera ... and as such I resort to Program mode a reasonable amount of the time, but for me forcing aperture, or shutter speed, is about all I need most of the time [that I am in "manual" mode], along with twiddling the ASA up, or down, and forcing over/under exposure.

There are some very cool effects - take 3 photos at different exposures and the camera will blend them to bring out the shadows (probably get all that stuff in SLRs now, or post-process in Photoshop?)

So don't be worried about having the choice. No doubt it is not the same as SLR, but there is lots to twiddle if you want to - I'm just not sure you will feel the need to twiddle as much as you did. But I'm only speaking from my own experience.

Get biggest, fastest, SD card you can afford. Helps with Movies to have a fast card. I would recommend emptying the card when you are sure the images are safely download and backed up - I find mine works faster with fewer images on the card, and the Download trawls through all the existing photos [checking if they have been downloaded already] so the more you have stored the longer it takes to "start" downloading the new ones.

Canon automatically stores to a folder naming convention of your choice (basically flavours of Date) but also asks you a Suffix, which it appends to the default folder name - so I wind up with "20140420" to which is appended "Joe Bloggs Wedding" - which I find handy, as the first thing I used to do with previous model was add a Human Prompt suffix to date-based folder names

 

Just to link-back:

Examples of full zoom, and macro-touching-object I posted some photos earlier in this thread:
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/canon-lenses.55218/page-2#post-748393

 

@wiseowl - have you got your hands on an Olympus stylus sp100ee yet?

 

Kristen......Yesterday I made a trip to the only existing camera/photography shop on the island, it is family owned. The intention was to get my hands on the bridge cameras and fire questions at the owner. My luck as always ran out, it was shut for the Easter weekend! I'll try again on Tuesday.

Thanks for your long post Kristen! My quote button has opted out yet again, so please bear with me. Quote: 'The resolution in the viewfinder is lousy', that is probably my biggest issue at present. As I said in a previous post, I don't like using a screen and I think ultimately this will make my mind up on a bridge camera let alone which one.

Quote: 'Zooming is nothing like as nice as with SLR', hmmmm, still thinking on that!

Even with the pro's and con's I find myself thinking Canon again regarding a bridge camera, however, I'm still also thinking about my DSLR and haven't completely given up the idea of another lens for that. I have just invited Strongylodon into the conversation via another thread. I want to expand my wildlife photography and Strongy being a bird photographer at heart will help. @wiseowl also takes a fair amount of bird photo's and with his knowledge of both sorts of camera, hopefully he will give me an opinion on which he prefers. I also know that Woo has recently added a 300mm lens to his kit and would like to know what he thinks of this in relation to bird photography in particular. My current issue is with my 250mm lens, it's just not strong enough to approach, particularly, sea birds without them taking fright and flight.

 

@wiseowl.......Thank you for pointing out your thread on bridge cameras. I have actually been reading through that again during the course of making my mind up and the running of this thread. You have the best of both worlds owning both types of camera and the ability to give information in both respects, so what you say is valuable.

As you can gather I need to get this decision right. My choices at the moment with the idea of a 500mm lens discarded for various reasons, are whether to consider a 300mm lens and perhaps sell on my 250mm as I probably won't need both, or have a bridge camera as well.