Best digital compact - £200?

I'm after a new camera around the £200 mark.
I haven't got the foggiest about the settings so I need one that can do most of the thinking for me in 'Auto Mode'.
I'd prefer >20x optical for when I'm stalking prey around the wilds of London, not too bulky so it's easy enough to pack on holidays and days out etc and uses SDHC cards (do they all?) as I have a few of those already.
Any ideas?

Well in the compact 'superzoom' category any of the Panasonic TZ / Nikon S9*** / Sony HX / Canon SX range will give very similar results and perform about the same so that where I'd be looking. They all have teeny tiny sensors with very narrow lenses that produce image quality that suffers massively because of it.

The no brainer for image quality in the compact category is the Fuji XF1 at £129 although it doesn't have the long optical range that you desire but does have a significantly larger sensor and wider aperture.

The only recent compact superzoom I've used recently was a Sony HX50B which has a 30x lens, it felt pretty premium and operated fairly speedily although I was using it for someone else and didn't get to see the images back at at desktop.

Columbo said:

Well in the compact 'superzoom' category any of the Panasonic TZ / Nikon S9*** / Sony HX / Canon SX range will give very similar results and perform about the same so that where I'd be looking. They all have teeny tiny sensors with very narrow lenses that produce image quality that suffers massively because of it.

The no brainer for image quality in the compact category is the Fuji XF1 at £129 although it doesn't have the long optical range that you desire but does have a significantly larger sensor and wider aperture.

The only recent compact superzoom I've used recently was a Sony HX50B which has a 30x lens, it felt pretty premium and operated fairly speedily although I was using it for someone else and didn't get to see the images back at at desktop.

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Thanks
I know very little about cameras so have no idea what the issues with the sensors & lenses mean, would you mind explaining it & how/if I can get around that?
Should I look at Bridge cameras or something if I want good zoom & pic quality?

No problem.

Imagine a camera is nothing but a light gathering tool, the sensor is the bit of the camera that records the image (this replaced film), they come is lots of different sizes and in general the larger they are the better image quality, a photo is recorded when that sensor is directly exposed to the light coming through the lens for a set period of time (shutter speed)

The lens in front of that sensor has something called an aperture in it which is basically an iris that opens and closes to increase and decrease the amount of light hitting the sensor, the larger the aperture number the smaller the hole is that lets light through. See below size table, most compacts have the smallest 1/2.3" size in green in the bottom left.



Sensor size also directly affects lens size as the larger the sensor, the larger the lens has to be to cover the entirety of the sensor surface, aperture also affects lens size because the wider the iris opens the more glass is needed in its construction.

The reason that the compacts can have such a large zoom range is because the sensor behind them is extremely small and the aperture in the lenses very small. When those 2 meet poor image quality is pretty much a given, there are lots of other factors that also affect image quality but I won't get into them here.

However I'm not for one second suggesting that you shouldn't get one, lots of people obviously find the quality fine for them, I was simply pointing out the limitations of such cameras.

That's brilliant, thanks.
It certainly gives me an idea of how they work & what I should look for

After looking more closely at the specs of cameras I was looking at I can now see what you mean
The XF1 has a 2/3 sensor which improves the picture quality over the smaller 1/2.3 sensors that the 'superzoom' cameras all seem to have.
If I were to go for less zoom (say 5-10x) is there anything better than the XF1 for picture quality in the £200 or so price range?
I woudn't need fancy stuff like wifi or gps either

JohnnyG said:

After looking more closely at the specs of cameras I was looking at I can now see what you mean
The XF1 has a 2/3 sensor which improves the picture quality over the smaller 1/2.3 sensors that the 'superzoom' cameras all seem to have.
If I were to go for less zoom (say 5-10x) is there anything better than the XF1 for picture quality in the £200 or so price range?
I woudn't need fancy stuff like wifi or gps either

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Unfortunately probably not, the X-F1 is a camera that bucks the trend of cheap and cheerful point and shoot. it's so much of a bargain at £129 that its hard to see past it when looking at compacts.

There are other advanced compacts such as Panasonic LX7, Olympus XZ-2 or Samsung EX2F but they will all be over £200 unless you are willing to go used.

There is also the Canon powershot S*** range which are well regarded compacts that offer RAW capture and decent image quality, not sure what they retail for but Digital Rev have the S110 for £160.

If you want the ultimate quality in your pocket then a Sony RX100 is about the best there is but that comes at a cost of well over £200.

I've always had good experience of the Fuji Finepix EXR compacts, they are really versatile with a lot of advanced shooting modes, really good zoom and picture quality was dam fine too.

My XF1 was my gateway into Fuji happiness. Should have kept it- great results from such a tiny camera.

Thanks so much for the advice.
I've got 3 cheapish cameras already and every one of them has disappointed me in their picture quality and as I didn't want to be disappointed again with rubbish holiday snaps etc I bit the bit bullet and went for an RX100 - £349 -> £299 with £50 cashback.
Without the advice given here I have no doubt that I would've just spent £200 on something I just thought would give good pictures.

The difference is incredible just in Auto mode -

Canon A2400is



Sony RX100


Thanks again

Just a small upgrade!

It is indeed and probably more importantly I've got hold of a copy of 'Understanding Exposure' to try and do the camera some justice

Apologies if this is a daft question, but what level of optical zoom does a camera like the Sony RX100 have?

I've recently been pondering an upgrade from my Panasonic TZ30 (20x super-zoom) and the quality difference in the above pics have definitely got me thinking about considering something like the Sony.

Also, any views on whether the RX100-II is worth the extra ~£140 over the original RX100?

Ah, I think I found the answer to my first question about the equivalent optical zoom of the RX100, it's around 3.6x