Canon 450d

[oakeycoke]

New Canon to replace the 400d with 12.2mp sensor, live view, 3.0" lcd etc announced today, R.R.P. £599 but no doubt will be £500 or less in a month or so.
http://www.canon.co.uk/

Also John the Fuji Finepix F100d so hold back on the f50 as this goes to ISO12800.
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Fujif ... tal-camera

Phil

[sunsworth]

ISO 12800 on a small sensor p&s will be totally and utterly useless IMHO. Is there a p&s that can even do 400 without looking bad? Seems that the manufacturers have found new arms race to take over from the pixel count.

[Chris]

ISO 12800 on a small sensor p&s will be totally and utterly useless IMHO. Is there a p&s that can even do 400 without looking bad? Seems that the manufacturers have found new arms race to take over from the pixel count.

Have to agree with you on that point.

A good friend of mine has just bough one of the latest P&S and I was doing a little research for him on suitable cameras - the number of reviews and sample shots that show low quality images even at ISO 400 made my job even harder... in the end I just pointed him in the direction of a camera that was good enough, good price point, good features and he seems very happy.

I think the driving force behind the pixel race is the terminology... 12 million mega pixels... the terminology itself might have well been thought up by marketeers!

Chris

[oakeycoke]

I think you'll find that the Fuji point and shoots the F30 as the classic example have good picture quality at iso 400 and above. Reviews on it showed that it wasn't far off some dslr's at 400 iso.
For a small camera that fits in your pocket on the occasions when you cant take an slr or rangefinder it (the F30) and its subsequent range will get a reasonable photo even in poor light. Yes its all subjective and the F40/F50 never really built on the low light capabilities of the F30.

The F30 has actually got me some 8 out of 10's in competition , but then that could be down to unpredictable judges lol.

The high iso of the F100 is hopefully an indication that at iso 400 or 800 it will be better than the F30. The 12 mp's will create more noise compared to the F30's 6mp, but i believe its got a slightly larger sensor and newer processor/software built in.

The Canon forums are full of the same point with the 450D and its 12.2mp compared to the 400D and 40D's 10mp. I believe its the photographer, the lens and then probably the camera's sensor/ hardware/software that make the photo in that order(oh forgot the light but take that as given from this thursdays excellent talk/images by Andy Latham) .

Phil

[Chris]

Non of the off-the-shelf cameras we looked at that are readily available today were of much quality IMHO. I used to have a Fujifilm FinePix 4700 Zoom which did OK at around 400-800 but several compacts later (Optio S and other Optio's mostly), I haven't had much luck with compacts at high (or not so high) ISOs.

Not too big an issue anyway and certainly not now he's bought one (Canon Ixus 860).

Chris