Ryan Brenizer Photography

In my last post, I outlined a few basic principles of thinking about how to find a wedding photographer. In the end, it boils down to finding the person who will give you the kinds of results you want, even in less-than-optimal (or disasterous) situations. How can you tell if a photographer can actually do that?

I'm going to look at some common tools for analysis and comparison of wedding photographers, and give you my sense of how useful they really are, and in what ways.


Portfolio photos / Web site: Only as a negative selector.

By this, I mean the common display on a wedding photographer's Web site or portfolio book of "Here are some good wedding photos that I've taken." Consider this to be like a resume -- it should get you in the door, but not have much effect on getting you the job. Art directors can find someone with a book they really like and hire them to shoot a non-essential assignment; you don't have that luxury. A steadily working wedding photographer can easily take 25,000 shots a year -- even if they limit their portfolios to the past year, a collection of 10 images really says "Here is what the best 0.004 percent of your photos will look like." That's not really reassuring -- but if you don't like the photos, you know not to hire them. Instead, ask for this:



Extensive, systematic collection: Excellent.

Specifically, ask to see a large group of photos arranged by wedding -- something close to the number of photos you'd want in an album (let's say more than 50). The best would be to see exactly what one or more select couples got. If the photographer just designs albums, ask to see that. If he also presents a Web site of proofs, that should be part of the sample as well. Ideally, a photographer will have gotten permission from a couple or two to do this -- since you wouldn't want him showing all your wedding proofs to other couples without your say-so.

Some photographers present this sort of structure on their Web sites -- especially photographers with well-maintained blogs. I would feel very confident about hiring Charlotte Geary, for example. Why? Because of her blog. I've seen hundreds of her photos from a wide array of weddings, as well as a number of different album designs. There's no room for smoke-and-mirrors; I know what she can do. I try to carry this through in my Web presence -- my name site is little more than a resume, but for those interested in finding out more about my work, it connects to literally thousands of photos. I have nothing to hide.



Word-of-mouth: Great. Trust but verify.

There's a reason wedding photographers get such a large share of their business through word-of-mouth. Remember that wedding photography is about a lot more than just pictures. They have to be consultants, designers, and quite often ringmasters, keeping a circus well-organized. You have to be comfortable with them. The best way to tell if a photographer is any good in the field is to ask someone you trust who's hired them. Perhaps you even saw them in action yourself at a friend's wedding. But, when asking your friend, go beyond "he was great!" Remember, they've only hired one -- they might not have perspective. Look at the photos. Ask what sorts of images they were interested in, and think independently about whether you want the same thing. Ask whether there were any moments of particular stress during the wedding, and how the photographer handled it. Was he respectful? Did the rest of the wedding party feel comfortable?Were there technical challenges, such as a poorly-lit chapel with no flash allowed, and how did he handle it?



Interview: Great, if you ask the right questions.

By the time you select which photographers you want to interview, you should have a really good sense of what you want. You've looked through a number of photographers' sites, getting a sense of which sort of photos appeal to you. You should have a budget range (more on that later). You should know the venue and rough size of the wedding, which may affect you need for a second photographer (and, hence, your budget). You should know what you want the wedding to feel like, and how the pictures should reflect that? Is it a black-tie ball or a barbecue? Do you want loose prints or an album, and if so do you like the more modern, coffee-table-book style or the old, stately designs? The more you know in advance, the less you can be swayed by a sales pitch from the most practiced negotiator, who may well not be the best photographer for your needs. Can't find enough photographers to get a good selection? Remember, the Internet is your friends -- a lot of wedding photographers are willing to travel, and often the budget of a nearby photographer, travel-included, will be around the price range of the hometown studios who have largely thrived through pre-Internet monopoly.

Pay attention to attitude as well as their answers. Is it about you, or them? Are they willing to give evidence for their assertions? For example, a very common question among couples is whether the photographer can handle low-light settings. Now, few photographers are going to say "No. I shoot with Ektachrome 64 and prefer my couples to be standing under direct sunlight only." But they should be willing to show work that specifically addresses the couple's questions. For example, to address this question I don't only show some of my low-light wedding work, but some images from my documentary work where a room was lit by only two candles.

Ask to see a sample contract. Read it and, if you have any specific issues with it, bring it up early. Wedding photographers are people more than coporations -- some things they can compromise on (and some things they just can't, but it's best to know that early).

Next: How does this all fit into a budget?

Today I finish the series by focusing on the professional rigs. "Professional" is marketing-speak, and means, among other things, "really expensive." You don't have to buy one of these to be a professional, and if you do buy one it certainly doesn't make you professional, but they are the most capable cameras offered by their manufacturers -- whether they're actually the best for you is another matter. I've been wrapped up in end-of-the-year stuff, so this entry is a bit late for the holiday shopping season, but if you can afford to get someone a $5,000 Christmas present you don't need my advice on anything.

Remember that when you buy in the top market, you're buying into a camera system. It's foolish to get a great camera without having money left over for top-quality lenses that do the jobs you need to do, as well as thinking about other tools that will serve your needs, mainly lighting and tripods.


Cameras are just a small part.
Looking like a dork is another thing entirely.

Should I buy a pro-quality camera?
If you have to ask, you probably shouldn't. Look at my #4 and #4b entries in this series -- those are some fantastic cameras, and they are capable of taking amazing images. The main reason to be looking at this market is if you have a specific need that those cameras can't fill. If you haven't used an SLR before, you may not really know what your needs are, so I'd be very careful about a huge outlay of cash right at the beginning. You may find you don't like carrying a bulky camera, no matter how good it is.

Although it's counter-intuitive, pro cameras make it harder to take good pictures. You start losing the automatic modes. You start losing scene modes. A pro camera won't give you a "sports mode"; it will assume you know how to shoot sports. It won't give you a "portrait mode," because it assumes you know that there's no one way to shoot a portrait.* If you put in the time, though, it can make it easier to take great pictures. I would only recommend jumping into this market if you absolutely know that photography is going to eat up a big chunk of your life. When I see someone take a bad photo, well, that's life. When I see them take it with an $8,000 camera, that's tragedy.

Of course, I found myself walking around Midtown East the other day, and I realized half the people there spend $8K on their hankerchiefs, so your mileage may vary.

What will this market get me?

As you move up the ladder, cameras become more and more specialized. Your basic "do everything pretty darned well" cameras are the Canon 30D and Nikon D200, and it diverges a bit from there.

Machine-gun speed
For now, at least, 5 frames-per-second is the domain of the expensive (although used 20Ds are pretty cheap these days). Eight frames-per-second is the domain of the really expensive, available only on the Canon 1d Mark II N, Nikon D2Hs, and a cropped output of the Nikon D2Xs. Very few things actually require eight frames per second, but if you need to capture the absolute best moment in sports or wildlife, three frames-per-second might not do. If you shoot indoor sports, for example, the 30D might be worth the cost over the XTi, even though the XTi has higher resolution.

Strong, metal bodies
OK, so the expensive 5D doesn't have weather sealing, and the cheap Pentax K10D does, but in general the cameras in this market are much tougher than the cheaper models, having magnesium or metal skeletons instead of just plastic. The other cameras are fairly tough, too, but if you spend a lot of time playing in the dirt (or, like many photojournalists, you treat your camera like dirt), you might want to consider this.

In the true pro-class -- the Canon 1D series and the Nikon D2 series -- the cameras are rated to survive most forms of extinction-level apocalypse.

35mm sensors
All of the cheaper models these days have sensors cropped smaller than a 35mm film image, giving lenses a different field of view. This is most obvious at the wide angles, where crazy-wide lenses become merely wide, and wide lenses become pedestrian. Only two cameras -- the 5D and the 1DS Mark II -- are currently offered with a 35mm-sized sensor. Some Nikon users sour-grapes this, but I think it's a fairly big thing. It becomes harder to design effective cameras the larger the sensor is, so my rule is that I want to use as large a sensor as possible until it becomes too much of a headache. Medium format tends to be much clunkier to use the 35mm, but for various reasons not worth getting into here, a 35mm-sensored dSLR isn't much clunkier than a smaller-sensored dSLR. It does point out the flaws of bad lenses, which tend to be awful the further you get away from the center, so you'll need a good investment in glass.

35mm sensors are MUCH, MUCH more expensive to make than smaller sensors, though, so you need some really good reasons to pay the premium. Even after its price has dropped $1K in a year, the 5D is still more than $1K more expensive than the Nikon D80, which has similar features but a smaller sensor. Unless you've used 35mm film for years and years and are wedded to what a given focal length should look like, the premium may not be worth it to you. There will always be a premium, but unless the rules of technology and economics change in the next few years, the premium will be much smaller than it is now in a matter of a few years, which may be when more companies jump onto the bandwagon.

Lenses, lenses, lenses
I did say this was a system, right? If you're outlaying the money, at least half of your expenses -- and probably more like two-thirds -- should go to glass. If you only have $2,500 to spend, don't get the $2,200 camera -- get the $1,200 camera. A camera can't even start with a picture until your lens is already done with it. Pro lenses are specialized tools that do a certain job very, very well. They tend to be built like tanks and suck in vast amounts of light. You need to ask yourself exactly what you need to achieve -- if you shoot wildlife, you'll need long telephoto, if you shoot documentary, you'll tend toward fast, wide zooms, etc. -- and then figure out the lenses that will get you there. This can cause problems -- one of the lenses I need based on the question doesn't exist -- but generally it's a good way to go about it. It can help to look at what lenses the pros use to shoot their pictures, but never assume that you'll get the same results as they do -- everyone has different shooting styles.

There are few enough models in this range that to talk about them would mean doing mini-reviews of each one. A project for the future here, but not for now. In general, look at the features you need, try the cameras out at the store, and if you really don't know what will best suit you, go back and take a hard look at the cameras in entry #4.

*The Canon 30D and 5D are exceptions here, but for most users the scene modes are vestigial.

Radio City Music Hall
Originally uploaded by carpe icthus.

Panorama of seven images made in Photoshop CS3. View larger here.

Andrea and I braved the Rockefeller Center crowd to see the Rockettes last week. It was great fun, but something really bothered me. It pretty clearly said no photography was allowed during the show (which is why this image is from before the show). But so many people were snapping photos that, toward the end of the show in particular, you could barely see the stage behind the relentless, several-per-second barrage of flashes.

Now, I'm all for rebellion, and have no real stake in the proprietary secrets of the Rockettes' legs -- if you really want to take a couple pictures, go for it. But it shouldn't bother everyone else around you. Letting a flash go off in a dark theatre, especially one where photography is prohibited, is extraordinarily rude. So here's today's tip:

How to Turn Off Your Freakin' Flash (And Why You Should)
Watch the stands of major sporting event, and you'll see hundreds of flashes going off. Every one of these people is doing something wrong. A tiny point-and-shoot flash, which can barely illuminate someone standing 10 feet away, probably won't have much effect on the light of, say, Giants Stadium. All you're doing is making your pictures worse -- you're confusing the camera, which expects to see a well-lit scene and exposes accordingly, and if there's anything in the foreground, like the head of the person sitting in front of you, THAT will be lit up like a Christmas tree.

If you're photographing something in a dark theatre, the best thing to do is crank up the ISO as far as it will still give you recognizable pictures, and go into your settings menu to turn off your flash -- the universal signal for this is a lightning bolt with a Ghostbusters-style "NO!" mark over it. Then go into your manual mode or shutter priority mode and take pictures at different shutter speeds until you find the one that exposes the scene correctly -- that compensates for the often-poor metering of point-and-shoots in dramatically lit scenes.

"But I don't have manual modes!" you say. "The only way I can get a decent shutter speed in a dark room is to leave my flash on, fooling the camera into thinking the scene is brighter than it really is!"

Trust me, I've been there. I was using point-and-shoot digital cameras in the 90s, when they had some serious issues. If you know you're going to be in that situation, clamp some electrical tape over your flash first. If that's not practical or you don't have any, just put your thumb solidly over the flash. That's how I used to photograph theatre for the newspaper in the bad old days, and it didn't blind anyone.

In general, you aren't a paparazzo, you don't have six figures resting on getting the shot, so be courteous of those around you and maybe enjoy yourself while you're at it. Merry Christmas.

OK, technically I'm a day behind schedule now, but I felt that people looking to dip their toe in the dSLR market needed a little more. So, not only do I have impressions of specific models listed, but I decided to do something that I haven't seen any other site do -- place the body prices in the context of putting together a good kit on a budget. I did this because I was starting out thinking about what a solid little camera the Nikon D80 is, with a slew of excellent bells and whistles for the buyer who's not demanding in-body VR. But then I thought to myself, "This is the most expensive camera in this market, so is it even really in this class, or poking its head into the advanced-amateur/semi-pro class?" We all live on a budget, so the camera prices matter. In discussing each model below, I've put together a kits that can be had for $1500 or less. This also shows the strengths and weaknesses of the line-ups, which we'll see later.

Just a quick note: When I started out, the idea of putting together any sort of dSLR kit for $1500 was laughable. A camera that kind of worked as long as you got over the frustrations of its nascent tech cost $6,000. You whippersnappers are lucky.

My findings? If you're buying on a budget, buy Pentax. OK, there's more to it than that, since dSLRs are precision tools and you have to find the right one for you, but there's no question in my mind that 2006 was Pentax's year. Before that, though, there's one general feature to discuss that I should have mentioned yesterday:

Auto-ISO:
So far, just a Nikon and Pentax feature. A lot of purists scoff at the idea of cameras with Auto-ISO functionality: These people are dead wrong. Not only is it a neat feature for people starting out with dSLRs, used properly it can be a fantastic tool even in the hands of long-time professionals.

In the old days, once you stuck film in your camera, you had two ways to vary your exposure -- the shutter speed and the aperture. These days, we can change our "film speed" from shot to shot by varying the ISO -- so we have three variables instead of two. If modern cameras have the ability to automatically control the first two variables -- aperture priority and shutter priority (or AV and TV modes) -- then it's only misguided purism that keeps you from being able to automatically adjust the third. A well-implemented system will allow you to go fully automatic or isolate any of these three variables -- for instance, I very often set my aperture and shutter speed, which to my mind both affect the "look" of the image a great deal, and let the ISO wander, which only affects how much grain is in the photo. Unless you're outputting to a very unforgiving medium -- planning on a gallery print or magazine story, for instance -- even high ISO grain doesn't bother me in a properly exposed photo.

The models:
There are a few guiding principals to my discussion. First, I wanted to look at the new cameras -- this market is still improving at a rapid rate, so models from even two years ago may lag behind in important ways. You can still buy the D50 and Rebel XT new with warrantee, though, and they're still nice cameras, so they get brief mention.

Second, when designing the kits I tried to put something basic together with a good focal length range and lenses that, although cheap, aren't total garbage. I did my best to include an off-camera flash and a fast prime in each package, because both of them dramatically increase a dSLR's functionality. If you're using the kit lens, spending $80 on a fast prime will increase your shutter speeds by more than eight times. That's a whole different world. And a good off-camera flash can give you soft light effects and light up a good portion of the world. This also illuminated the weaknesses of a few systems, where a cheap, fast prime wasn't available.


The Nikon D40:
This is the newest kid on the block, and it's in a special category -- in some ways, I almost consider it to be in the next market down. This is because its autofocus system is incompatible with most of the Nikon line -- and all of its fast primes under $4,000. I think this severely restricts your ability to grow with the camera -- so it's really for people who just want a nice cheap option and know they're not going to buy a bunch of lenses down the line. If you do see yourself as wanting to try out more optical solutions, I recommend the D50. Still a great camera, and it will autofocus with great, cheap lenses like the 50mm f/1.8, and it has a top LCD, which I like.

You may worry that this and the D50 have only 6 megapixels. Don't. I've had 6 megapixel pictures published in a solo gallery shot at 24x36 inches, and people loved them. The advantage of the kit below is that you get a long telephoto with VR, and Nikon has the best flash system of any dSLR maker, hands down. The disadvantage is that autofocus thing.

The kit:
D40 + 18-55 II = $600
70-300 VR = $529
50mm f/1.8 = $104 (no autofocus with D40)
SB-600 = $184
Total = $1,487

The Nikon D80
This camera is a fantastic little number, with probably all the features of the D200 you need unless you routinely shoot sports and wildlife or play in the mud. Its menu system and electronics are great, it has a fantastic autofocus system, has a great ergonomic design, and Nikon has far better options for kit lenses than any other maker -- in fact, they've been ticking me off by focusing on this market so much, instead of the expensive, exotic lenses I want. I think a D80 with the 18-200 VR and 50mm f/1.8 will do most anything a hobbyist wants -- but that combo breaks the $1500 mark handily. So there's the disadvantage -- this camera is straddling the semi-pro market in features and price, and the $1500 kit below is underwhelming. This is in contrast with, say, the Pentax K10D, which is in the semi-pro market in features, but squarely in the entry-level price market.
The kit:

D80w/ 18-135 $ 1,279.95
SB-600 = $184
Price : $1463

The Canon XTI
This is a great camera in a lot of ways. Nice, sharp sensor with a good signal-to-noise ratio at higher ISOs. A great autofocusing system, far above its predecessor's. More resolution (very slightly) than even the 30D above it. A dust-removal system that keeps you from having to take a Rocketblower to your sensor as often. Definitely check this one out at the store and see if you like it -- it could be a great camera for you.

Personally, I did go to the store to check it out, and I didn't like it. Many people will find the grip uncomfortable. I like LCDs to check on the top of the camera. The viewfinder is worse than the Nikon or Pentax camera. No Auto-ISO. No in-body IS, like the Sony or Pentax. Canon (and Nikon's) advantage is in the higher markets -- yes, Canon makes the best telephoto prime, and Nikon makes the best telephoto zoom. But these things cost upwards of $5,000. Making that factor into your buying decision isn't counting on growth as a photographer; it's counting on winning the lottery.

The kit below gives you IS with the basic lens, which is nice. Couldn't price in a longer telephoto, though.

XTI w/ 17-85 $1,179
430 EX flash $229
50mm f/1.8 $70
Price: $1478

Pentax K10D
In-body anti-shake. Anti-dust. The best body of any camera in this market. The best autofocusing array of any camera in this market. Auto-ISO. High-resolution sensor. Great viewfinder.

Wow.

If you're at the upper end of this market, check this bad boy out. The only problem I have with the kit below is that this camera deserves better lenses, so a better kit would be in the $2K range. The advantage of this kit? That 50mm is an f/1.4, 66 percent brighter than the f/1.8s of other systems -- and the Pentax 50mm is very well-regarded. If I were buying in this market, I'd almost assuredly get this camera, and would only be annoyed at its flash system, which is significantly worse than Nikon's. If use manual flash most of the time anyway, so I'd be OK -- you may differ.

K10D 18-55
$999
AF-360 flash $194
50mm f/1.4 $169
Tamron 75-300 $129
$1491


Why is this man laughing? He shoots Pentax.

Pentax K100D
My eyes bugged out when I saw the price of this camera. Again, there's nothing truly revolutionary about these cameras -- they just put the best stuff about other cameras in their system and then price it at about 60 percent of what I'd expect. 6MP, but who cares? Not as rugged as the K10D, but just as much as any other camera here. Body is small but comfortable. The price savings over the K10D lets me put together what I consider to be the best lens kit here -- constant aperture zoom! 50mm f/1.4! Autofocus pancake lens! Put that together with the K100D, and you've not a nice, small imaging machine.

K100D
$469
16-45 f/4 $309
AF-360 flash $194
43mm f/1.9 $379
Tamron 75-300 $129
Total: $1480


Mmmmm...Zeiss.

Sony A100
The Sony A100 also features the anti-shake sensor, and I've tested this to see that yes, it works quite well. Pentax may take some wind from its sails, but if you're after a 10 MP sensor, this body is even cheaper than the K10D. "Cheaper" is the operative term, though -- I really don't enjoy the toy-like feel of the A100. Sony has said they're going to be coming out with a more professional model soon, but the D80, K10D and even little cameras like the E-500 or (I assume, given Nikon's track record) the D40 have a more solid feel. There is also a great deal of chroma noise at ISO 1600 -- except for Canon, the 10MP cameras use the same Sony sensor, but they apply their own software magic down the pipeline to tweak it, and it almost feels like Sony is letting their sensor stand by itself. At the highest ISOs, it doesn't stand all that well.

The best reason to get the A100 is the gorgeous Zeiss autofocus lenses they sell for it -- I seriously considered getting one for the 135mm f/1.8 alone -- but those are way out of the price of this market. You can throw a decent kit together, though. The Minolta 50mm f/1.7 is a great lens (may take some searching to find), and remember that those long telephotos (though still not fast enough for sports in all but the best light) get a big help from in-body anti-shake.

Sony A100 w/ 18-70 = $774
50mm f/1.7 = $150
HVL-F36AM = $249
Sigma 70-300mm = $219
$1392

Olympus E-500
A slightly older model, since Olympus's most recent model was only released in Europe. Frankly, that would spook me a bit -- I want to make sure that the company I'm buying into stays in a world-wide dSLR market, and I can't imagine what's going on with their books that would make a limited release of a camera like that a good idea. The E-500 is a fantastic buy for the price if you don't need the best in high-ISO performance, which is where the four-thirds mount tends to suffer.

Worse, though, there are no cheap, fast primes offered for this system. Panasonic/Leica are working on a 25mm f/1.4, but it won't be truly cheap. In the meantime, you have to go for the Sigma 30mm which, while a fantastic lens and worth its price, isn't cheap either. You can skip the fast prime, but with the Sigma we're starting to talk almost SIXTEEN TIMES the shutter speed compared to a kit lens. You're just slowing yourself down without that option.

E-500 $509
Sigma 30mm = $429
FL-36 flash $169
14-45mm $199
55-200mm Sigma $149


Olympus E-330

This model serves an important purpose -- it's the only camera in this market to have live LCD previews. As mentioned before, this can really be helpful to people coming from point-and-shoots, people who like to shoot from weird angles, etc. The problem is that techological solutions to getting around that pesky SLR mirror are still in their infancy, and with a clunkier LCD viewing method than the point-and-shoots you're coming from, it feels more a proof-of-concept and harbinger of things to come than a fully-realized camera. Still, that's better tha the rest of these cameras, which can't frame with the LCD at all.

E-330 w/ 14-45mm = $849
Fl-36
Sigma 30mm $429
$1447

In the continuing series on how to think about the current digital camera markets, I'm going to look at cameras that are often priced as much as a very basic digital dSLR, but which don't have an interchangeable lens system. Some of these specialty cameras, in fact, cost more than a basic Nikon D40 or Pentax K110D kit, but I'm segmenting by type here, and not by price, for a reason -- dSLRs are meant, by their very nature, to cost a great deal more than the basic kit price, since there's always another lens or accessory around the corner that will improve your photos.

So …

Should I just get a dSLR?
If you're buying in this market, you're probably more than just a casual snapper. Some of these cameras, like most of the good megazooms, are too big to stuff in a small purse, let alone a pants pocket. So, why not just go all the way into the land of interchangeable lenses?

Since I shoot with dSLRs for at least 99 percent of my photos, you might think I'm about to say "come on in, the water's fine!" But there are plenty of users who would be better served by an advanced "bridge camera" for a few reasons:

1. Money. As I mentioned above, the basic kit price of a dSLR is just getting your toe wet regarding its potential -- you're usually getting just one slow lens with a short zoom range. If you will never take this lens off and put on a better one? You should likely get a camera that was MEANT to have one lens. For less money, a megazoom bridge camera will give you a tremendous range, and (in most bodies this year) viibration reduction for $800-$1,000 cheaper than a megazoom + VR combination with a dSLR. They still offer some of the best ways to get versatility on a budget.
   
   
2. LCD composition: dSLRs have a big, slapping mirror in the way of the image path, as a function of their design. This means nice optical viewfinders, but it makes it very had to implement a system where you can compose a shot by looking at the LCD -- a few camera makers are trying, but the solutions aren't nearly as elegant as on a simple point-and-shoot. Being able to accurately compose a shot with the camera lifted above your head? Nice feature.
   
   
3. Size: Other than the Sony R1, which is based on the same larger sensor as a dSLR, most bridge cameras are still significantly less bulky than any dSLR. In fact, many of the cameras in this market this year are putting 10x zooms with VR in truly pocketable bodies. If a camera is too big for you to bring with you, it's no better than not having a camera at all.

VR, reconsidered

As I alluded yesterday, vibration reduction/image stabilization becomes a lot more important when you're dealing with camera that has a good telephoto range. You're magnifying the word ahead of you a great deal, and any shake from your hands will be magnified as well. Especially since you can't bump the speed up on these to ISO 1600 and beyond and get recognizable pictures, I consider VR a very important feature for a megazoom.

RAW mode
A camera in this price range should shoot RAW, and shoot it well. The files shouldn't be needlessly gigantic, and it shouldn't be much slower than when shooting JPEGs. RAW vs. JPEG is a debate for another time, but suffice to say that if you're buying in this price range, you probably want to grow as a photographer, and even if you don't want to shoot RAW now, you might in the future. There are just some things that cannot be set in camera:



When I took this photo, Smokey Robinson was bathed in bright purple light. No iin-camera setting can compensate for that. I could have messed with the JPEG in Photoshop, but it would introduce posterization and other problems. With RAW, it was a simple (if extreme) white balance adjustment.

Speed
At this price range, there's no excuse for a truly slow camera. When you press the shutter, the camera should take a picture. Lag is going to be tremendously frustrating if you're trying to use this to capture life's fleeting moments. Thankfully lag has decreased a lot on these cameras in recent years, but I would still try them out at the store to see if it's fast enough for you.

What other kinds of cameras are in this market?
I've mostly been talking about the megazoom bridge camera, like the Sony Cybershot H5, the Canon S3 IS, and the Panasonic DMC-FZ50. But there are other cameras filling niche markets. The Ricoh GR digital has no zoom at all, but unlike the cheap cameras they work that into a solid camera design instead of passing it off under a gimmick, and it has a fanatic user base. Leica sells in this market, but I do not recommend buying them, as they are all just re-badged versions of existing Panasonic cameras marked up considerably just for branding reasons. Let's face it -- they aren't real Leica cameras. The optics on them are good enough that Leica could be associated with them without embarrassment, which is a good sign, but they're no more made by Leica than Steven Spielberg made Joe vs. the Volcano -- it's just a name on a product.

Other cameras, like the Canon SD900 or Fuji F31D, are starting to implement software gimmicks like face-recognition technology. For automatic shooting, I'm betting this can actually be helpful, or at least good party conversation, but I wouldn't spend much money on it. The F31 makes the face-detectionless F30 seem like a great deal.

Welcome to Day 2 of the Holiday Camera-Buying Extravaganza™! Sorry, I've been looking at too many advertisements. during my preparation.

Today I'm going to focus on what I consider to be the meat of the point-and-shoot market -- the truly portable cameras that vary from the clunky but capable to the ultracompact and slick. This is a market for people who want a camera with a good deal of capability, but don't want to come near the size and cost of a dSLR. This market has matured in some ways this year, finding its niche by putting out some really great cameras that can be stuffed in a pocket. It also has some pitfalls, though, as in the hyper-competitive market some makers have just tried to make their cameras better and better, and some seem to be loading up on gimmicks instead (generally, digital cameras don't make the best platforms for video games, nor should they. Stumble across the Picture of the Century, and you won't want to have used up your battery playing Dig Dug.)

Again, there's really a huge array of cameras in this market, so I'm going to focus on general principles.

MEGAPIXELS MATTER (but not how you think)
If you've been researching camera review sites or talking to enthusiasts, you've probably heard "Megapixels don't matter." That is, at the print sizes you're likely to make, there really is very little difference between 6 and 8, 8 and 10, or even 4 and 10, if the 4-megapixel camera was built right. That's true with any kind of camera, but in the compact market, megapixels matter in an important way—they can make your camera worse.

I remember a punch line from a 1980s joke that said "I can type 712 words per minute -- but none of them make any sense." That's sort of how it is with digital camera sensors. Every individual pixel on a digital camera is only good if it can pick up enough light to read an image. As these pixels get smaller and smaller, their ability to do that decreases -- the image gets noiser, loses contrast, etc. Given how tiny the sensors on point-and-shoots are, there isn't much room to pack them in … but that doesn't stop manufacturers from trying, just to impress people with numbers. So I'm sure it's possible to make a point-and-shoot with 45 megapixels -- the pictures just wouldn't look like anything.

Given that, and given that there's no way most contact-lens-sized lenses on these cameras can resolve 10 megapixels truly effectively, megapixels matter -- at the extreme end, they tend to make your pictures worse and will clog up your system with files much larger than you need. Many 10-megapixel point-and-shoots have enough other features that you may want them anyway, but I generally regard a MP count much over 6 as a bug, not a feature.

Here's a picture taken with a 2-megapixel camera and cropped down to about 1.5MP:



In addition to looking fine on the Web, it makes a passable 8x10. The other qualities of the camera are far more important. So, what are they?

FORM FACTOR
If you hate to use your camera -- if it feels wrong to you, if the menus and buttons don't make sense, than it's not going to do you much good. A lot of the cameras in this market have very important functions -- white balance, ISO settings -- buried two or three levels deep in a camera menu. Not good. Also, you need to know what your priorities are. The best pictures for the money will generally be found in the slightly boxy cameras that just want to take a nice picture and be done with it. But if you want a camera that can fit in your pocket, or — admit it — really want one that's impressive to look at, it's better to have a camera that takes decent pictures that you'll use than a camera that takes slightly better pictures that you won't. When possible, go to the camera store and HOLD these things, try to use them for a little while before you're stuck with it.

LCD Size:
Point-and-shoots have LCDs up to 3 inches (and soon beyond, most likely), making them look like PSPs with lenses. This can be nice, since you generally have to frame your shots through these, sometimes holding the camera a good deal away from your face. But take other things into consideration: Will I toss this camera around a lot? The bigger the LCD, the easier it scratches. Does the LCD take up so much place that I can't put my thumb anywhere? (Makers seem to forget that people actually have to HOLD these things).

ISO sensitivity
This aspect is really important to me. ISO basically is the digital version of film speed -- the higher numbers will give you faster shutter speeds but grainier pictures. If you tend to shoot moving targets in low light (especially without flash), you'll want cameras that take decent pictures at ISO 400 and above. Two years ago, you were pretty much out of luck. Now, though, there are a few good options. The class-leader here is far and away the Fuji F30, which can technically take shots up to ISO 3200, and can take actually decent shots up to ISO 1600. That's really impressive, and I'll likely pick one up as a pocket/street cam in the next few months. Canon's new models rate pretty good as well. Some otherwise great cameras fare pretty poorly here, especially cameras by Panasonic/Leica and Samsung.

Vibration Reduction/Image Stabilization
This is another boon in trick light, but it really has nothing to do with ISO sensitivity. A better ISO rating will stop motion; a well implemented VR will stop motion blur even better than a good sensor, but it's not going to help you with pictures of people, cats, or anything else capable of autolocomotion. Where it's really important is in cameras with long telephoto capabilities, since usually you need a very high shutter speed to get sharp images with a long lens, and VR brings that back into a normal range. Those cameras are outside today's range, though, so in most pocket cams with 3x to 4x zoom I regard VR as nice if the camera happens to have it, but not something that makes or breaks a deal. If you photograph slower-moving stuff than I do, though, VR may be very important.

Optical zoom
Here we're moving beyond the normal 3x zoom (and certainly beyond the digital-zoom-ripoff). Think about what you need here -- how telephoto do you need to go? A 4x zoom is generally a good spot for this market, but that's not the only number that matters. For general shooting, I tend to find that the wide end is important than the long end -- especially since NO point-and-shoots are all that wide. Some of these cameras' zooms start at an effective 38mm -- that's not wide at all. Most start at the slightly wider 35mm equivalent, and the "wide zooms" usually start at about 28mm -- this starts to be a nice wide angle to capture a scene, without providing the geometric distortion of a REALLY wide lens. Kodak has a few models, such as the Generally, I would prefer a 3x zoom that starts at 28mm to a 4x zoom that starts at 38mm.

The Little Things
You still need to check on battery life here, and the cameras in this range should have a pretty capable flash. As palimpsestic pointed out in the last post, how is the shutter delay? These days, cameras in the mid-range market should have pretty good response times. Web site reviews like DPreview.com or Imaging Resource are helpful for figuring out timing to the 10th of a second, but again nothing beats actually trying it. You should also look for cameras with good automatic white balance readings, so you don't have to take all of your snapshots into Photoshop.

Standout Models

Again, I open this up to comments, since there are so many I've never used. The F30 seems ideal for me -- but I am not you, nor are you me. It's not pocketable easily, no VR, no 3-inch LCD, not a truly wide angle -- most people just tend to shoot in better light than I do, or use flash more. The Canon G6 is a great camera that was released at a higher-priced segment, but has been coming down since its replacement. It also has two features that most cameras in this segment do not -- it shoots RAW (great if you know Photoshop) and has a genuinely fast lens, letting in at least twice as much light as most competitors. Many of the Panasonics, such as the LX1 (on the pricier end) are great cameras if you mostly shoot during the day -- very sharp, an intriguing 16:9 aspect ratio, and IS. In terms of raw sexiness, nothing to my mind beats the new Samsungs, although apparently the images from them are underwhelming. Thus the great philosophical question: Is it more important to take good pictures or look good doing it?

If you're widely known as a photography nut, you probably get a lot of people asking you about whether this camera they want to buy is good or not. The market has become glutted, particularly in the point-and-shoot category, and while it makes our choices better (and cheaper) as consumers, the array of options is bewildering. I haven't tried most of the point-and-shoots on the market -- pretty much no one has, even excellent camera testers like Phil Askey at DPReview.com. There's just too many, and they often differ in the slightest of ways.

So I could easily give a "top 10 list of best cameras" or the like, but these would have a healthy dose of artifice. What I can tell you is what some of the arcane terms of digital photography mean, and what you should be looking for in each price category, as well as a few cameras that have impressed me along the way. Every day this week I will tackle a new category, from the humble values to the biggest and most expensive.

The Cheapies



The good news is that there are more good options in the cheap seats than ever, as hyper-competition have made point-and-shoots hit rock-bottom prices. If you shoot even a few hundred pictures a year, any of these cameras will be effectively cheaper than a free film camera. The bad news is that if you make a poor choice in this category, you're likely to end up with a camera that will be an endless source of frustration. The bad ones are really bad.

Do I really need a stand-alone camera?
If you're buying for yourself, this is a pretty important question. The best cameras in this category will take perfectly adequate pictures in good conditions, but will face a lot of constraints in poor lighting, photographing fast action, and so on. This year, some cameraphones are entering the same performance range -- not ALL cameraphones, most are still garbage, but a few new ones take nice, sharp shots in good lighting, have passable flashes, and even optical zoom. With these, the "carry it anywhere" advantage of a point-and-shoot is taken to its logical extreme. Of course, these phones tend to be clunkier than their camera-as-an-afterthought counterparts, so if you still want a separate digital camera …

Does it have optical zoom?
One of the surest signs that a manufacturer is trying to push a junk camera on you are the words "digital zoom." Zooming means actually changing your optics to increase magnification, so digital zooming isn't zooming at all -- it's cropping and enlarging, the same way you could do in an image-editing program after the fact. A "5x digital zoom" is taking 1/25th of your camera frame and blowing it up to fill it, which is why it looks like digital vomit.

If a camera has just digital zoom, it has no zoom at all. This is the most common misconception I've seen in this market segment, and for good reason -- the less reputable manufacturers are deliberately trying to cheat you. You can have a good camera with no zoom -- Ricoh makes one in a higher-end market -- but it's not marketing as though it had one. In this market, a 3x zoom is a good sign.

It's the little things
Very few of the cameras in this market are going to have spectacular image sensors, and will get pretty noisy in low light. A few might have passable images at ISO 400, but the variance here isn't going to be huge. What can be huge are the little things that contribute to how usable a camera is.

Battery life is tremendously important -- some of these models, particularly the older ones -- can barely keep a charge. You can't take a photo if your camera won't turn on. Read reviews of the product on forums like Amazon or epinions.com for a good user take on this (I wouldn't buy something in this market I couldn't find user reviews on)

Is the menu confusing? Are the buttons on it usable? Can you change settings on it easily or (in this market) at all? Does it have a manual exposure mode or do you have to rely on the camera's (sometimes stupid) meter? These are things you can best test at a camera store that will let you hold and test out the camera yourself -- what is confusing to one person is perfect for the other, so a personal test is important.

Is the flash good? Can it light a room? Does it meter with the flash well, or do people in its path end up looking like ghosts? This can be tested either in person or from online reviews or, better yet, both.

What are some good cameras in this market?
At the upper end of price and performance are Canon Powershot models like the A530. These are a bit above $100, so not truly dirt-cheap, but they tend to have good color and battery life. While Canon, despite the marketing, isn't at the top of every market, unlike almost every other maker their cameras are pretty good in every price segment. Buy newer models, though -- a lot of their older models have awful battery life, as tempting as eBay is.

Lower still, models like the Fuji A400 produce pretty good pictures while being truly dirt cheap, although you will really start to see the sacrifices -- slow response time, poor LCDs, etc. Casio and Sony also produce some decent models in this segment. Probably the kings of the cheapies, though, are the Kodak EasyShares -- while the cameras themselves aren't spectacular, they make it very easy to go from the camera to finished product, whether it's a print or organized on the computer for e-mail and Web use. Considering most people buying in this market aren't going to spend much time using expensive software to tweak their photos, simplicity is a big bonus.

So, are there any cheap models you've known and loved?