I was an early adopter of digital photograph in 2000 when the Olympus 3030 came out. At this time, this was as state of the art as it got. My current compact camera is an 5.1mp Olympus 5060 which is showing its age, but was the last of the line as DSLR cameras were making an impact at this time, and the market split into two camps.
As compact as possible digital cameras, with small sensors as the lens and cameras are far smaller and lighter for a bigger zoom range. But small high pixel sensors suffer from very high noise, the zoom optics suffer from barrel distortion and fringing. The easiest way to mask these is for the camera image processing to soften the image. Compact camera sales are falling fast, which is not surprising as IMHO they have little to offer image quality wise these days over poor phone cameras, apart from their zoom ranges.
DSLR camera are massively better, so if you want quality, this is now the only sensible route. The FX sensors used in most professional and some prosumer are the best, but the lenses are the biggest and heaviest for any zoom range. The DX consumer are not quite as good, especially on noise, but a perfectly good compromise for most people. This is what I recommend for anybody where photography is a hobby.
There are only two top makes of DSLR and these are Cannon and Nikon, with Sony being a honourable third. Top end Cannon and Nikon lenses are much of a muchness, but Nikon budget zoom lenses are generally better optically than Cannon. Cannon consumer DSLR cameras are normally better value for money than Nikon. Personally, I have gone the Nikon route as I prefer the slightly bigger size, ergonomics and slightly better build quality of Nikon cameras, but you do pay a higher price.
Cannon or Nikon? Go to a camera shop and try them out to see which you prefer as this is a personal thing on which you get on with best.
Zoom lenses are always a compromise with generally the bigger the zoom range the bigger the compromises in terms of lens resolution, distortion (normally most noticeable at both ends of the zoom range). Fixed lenses generally offer much better optical quality as there are fewer compromises and can be relatively inexpensive.
My DSLR cameras are both Nikon D80s one with 18-135 zoom lens and the other with 18-105, which was the last generation of Nikon cameras to use NMOS sensors. They are much noisier than the later generation CMOS sensors, many of which are manufactured by Sony. Where I used to do a lot of low light photography, this was a challenge. I bought the second camera second hand with the 18-105 lens which SWMBO now uses, so I had a backup when I did a friend's wedding photography.
Although the D80 it is only 10.1mp, one job I did was some portrait photography, where they were printed at almost full size for use as promotional figurines. I was worried about the quality and pixel resolution at this size and was surprised on how good the results were.
If you want to quickly test the image quality of a camera then I find a good test is an A4 sheet of text. This will show how soft the image is, by how clear the writing is and also any optical distortion.
Now if we wanted to post up the quality of different cameras on here my suggestion would be to print out a Windows printer test page, photograph it so it just fits an image, cut out a 640 x 480 section and post it here so we have some direct image comparisons. If there is interest in this, then I will post some pictures here for the for my Nikon and Olympus cameras.
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Topic: Digital Camera ... (Read 4901 times)