Why do bridge cameras have ridiculous zoom ranges?
- Thread starter support_bae
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I think most of it is camera poorness..
But that dock picture was taken from about 2 miles away...
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pingu they don't let people in with DSLRs because they want people to pay for press and media passes. If professional photographers could just batter people out of the way with 5kg of L tele glass then they're have issues there and they'd have people making money off of images that they haven't paid to take. Nobody's going to be making money off of bridge camera photos.
That said, it might be interesting to pick up a cheapo mirror lens at around 300mm or 500mm and see if i could sneak it in then use it on my Nikon FE or another tiny 35mm camera.
That said, it might be interesting to pick up a cheapo mirror lens at around 300mm or 500mm and see if i could sneak it in then use it on my Nikon FE or another tiny 35mm camera.
This was my 16x Sony at our rally car 250m away (give or take). The shot was using some digital zoom but no idea how much (I'm guessing a lot) but as you can see it's pretty poor (not even for web TBH), yet at very small zooms (3x-10x) it's not bad for a P&S.
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I've bought the Canon SX50 this week in preparation for our holiday in March.
After reading this thread I've packaged it up and its going back to the store. I want to make sure I'm getting the best performance for my money, and I don't think I am now from whats been said above.
After reading this thread I've packaged it up and its going back to the store. I want to make sure I'm getting the best performance for my money, and I don't think I am now from whats been said above.
Soldato
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Personally I shoot with a bridge camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ150), which I chose over upgrading to a dslr because I prefer the compact nature, the simplicity of not having to have a bunch of different lenses to carry about and indeed the performance. Is the image quality as good as a decent dslr? Maybe not quite so sharp etc but it's certainly not poor, and serves maxwell for everything I need/want it for including family shots, holidays and even product shots for design work I do.
I've printed pictures out to A1 and had brilliant results!
A lot of the negative views really come from misuse of the features for example using the zoom to photograph subjects far far away when really it's there to allow you to get closer to objects that are out of reach for example I got some great shots of architectural features on buildings in Prague which I couldn't have got with a point and shoot (nor for that matter with a dslr... Unless I was lugging around a zoom lens as well as a wide lens to take shots of the whole building...)
While I've no doubt the image quality of the dslrs is superior, there is a lot of dslr snobbery about!
I've printed pictures out to A1 and had brilliant results!
A lot of the negative views really come from misuse of the features for example using the zoom to photograph subjects far far away when really it's there to allow you to get closer to objects that are out of reach for example I got some great shots of architectural features on buildings in Prague which I couldn't have got with a point and shoot (nor for that matter with a dslr... Unless I was lugging around a zoom lens as well as a wide lens to take shots of the whole building...)
While I've no doubt the image quality of the dslrs is superior, there is a lot of dslr snobbery about!
Actually you could just use a single 18-300mm lens, in fact because SLR lenses are much higher resolution than bridge camera lenses you can crop the images to the size of a stupidly high-zoom bridge camera and still get better quality photos.
As far as zoom goes it largely doesn't matter how you use it, (in fact using it to get closer to out of reach objects can result in focus breathing) you get a lot of distortion either way and good luck taking hand held shots at 1200mm without a tripod.
The lighting conditions you're shooting in are pretty much perfect and there's low to no motion, even a mobile phone can take noise free, decent resolution photos in bright sunlight of a building or person standing still, though you're still stuck with the large dof. Outside of those perfect conditions SLR cameras provide vastly better image quality and offer many more creative features like narrow dof, and practical benefits like fast phase detection, much longer battery life and parfocal lenses, in many situations bridge cameras are completely unusable because of their small sensor and aperture. A compact camera producers better images than a bridge, I would prefer one of those any day, so it's not exactly SLR snobbery!
The best image performance for that amount of money would be an SLR like the D5100, if the SX50 was a more reasonable price like £150 rather than £350 I would probably say keep if you just want to take holiday photographs, but alas.
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Soldato
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yeah you're right there.
just look on flickr at what pictures are coming out of these cameras, I wouldn't say there crap at all
the guy with the sx50 at least have a play with it if you have unpacked it and see what you think
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Nobody is saying the cameras are crap. The point I'm making is the stupid amount of zoom on the front is pointless given the limitations of the technology that sits behind the lens.
Nearly all of the shots I've seen that I'd class as good image quality are at the wide end of the zoom and anything at the tele end is obviously identifiable because the image quality is so low.
And I'm not judging the photographers by saying that, I'm simply talking about what the camera is recording to the sensor.
A quick test with my Samsung compact that has '18x' zoom shows my point.
24mm equiv
432mm equiv
Now that was the best I could get hand held at ISO 80 with its 'Dual IS' turned on at 1/125th.
At ISO800 I could get a faster shutter speed but the image is so bad from the small sensor its pointless.
And now an crop straight from my D7000 of the area at 70mm (105mm equiv). Consider that this is massively cropped in from the original image.
And that's my point. That amount of zoom is useless if you want anything other images for sadbook or flickr groups where people upload the images at 800x600 and convince people they are sharp.
You shouldn't do that based on a few opinions on an Internet forum! I doubt there'd be much need to use it at full zoom. It's not a bad camera: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canon-powershot-sx50-hs/11
The 2nd photo here was taken with a 6-year-old super zoom at full zoom (so I'd imagine new cameras would be MUCH better), and I've added a guassian blur so it might not look as clear as it would have:
This was taken with the same camera at close to full zoom, and through a pane of glass:
There is a Fuji camera that has a bigger than normal sensor inside it than some of the other bridge cameras "FUJIFILM X-S1", not sure what people make of that?
Some of the reviews do suggest it can hunt when focussing though as one of the main downers.... But picture quality in general will be better.
Some of the reviews do suggest it can hunt when focussing though as one of the main downers.... But picture quality in general will be better.
The sensor performs no better than the smaller one used in the Canon 50x zoom bridge camera, terrible ISO performance, apparently the lens is bad too. ISO performance is actually surprisingly poor given that it's more than twice the size of other bridge sensors.
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The simple answer to the OP's question is because they sell. Their is a market segment that likes big zoom ranges and they find the pictures from this type of camera acceptable for their use.
They also don't have to compete with phone cameras like the compact market does as nobody is sticking a 500mm equivalent lens on a mass produced phone anytime soon so this gives them clear market segmentation and a reason for people to buy.
They also don't have to compete with phone cameras like the compact market does as nobody is sticking a 500mm equivalent lens on a mass produced phone anytime soon so this gives them clear market segmentation and a reason for people to buy.
Don't forget a 30x optical range is 720mm and the camera costs about £300 and can be hand held?
A budget dlsr about £400 plus the lens.... The lens will cost over £4000 from what I can see and is not handheld but ideally you need a tripod.....
I did take both my bridge camera and the Sony Nex-5 on honeymoon and I must admit there are some great photos with the bridge camera that I could not get with the Sony (since at the time I couldn't afford a bigger lens which is why I bought the bridge in the first place).
However in this case the other half and myself as 2 operators were seeing things and taking photos even duplicating to make sure it was captured..... I did take more video though and still going through the 80GBs that we came back home with! lol.
A budget dlsr about £400 plus the lens.... The lens will cost over £4000 from what I can see and is not handheld but ideally you need a tripod.....
I did take both my bridge camera and the Sony Nex-5 on honeymoon and I must admit there are some great photos with the bridge camera that I could not get with the Sony (since at the time I couldn't afford a bigger lens which is why I bought the bridge in the first place).
However in this case the other half and myself as 2 operators were seeing things and taking photos even duplicating to make sure it was captured..... I did take more video though and still going through the 80GBs that we came back home with! lol.
Soldato
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£4k? Hardly, the sigma 150-500mm lens gives you 750mm on a crop and is £600. Or you could buy a cheap teleconverter and pair it with a 300mm lens giving you 900mm for under £400. Heck you can even stack teleconverters, a 1.4x and 2x tc gives you 1260mm on a crop.
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Well I have had a budget 300mm sigma lens for my old dslr before and at full zoom the picture has lost its sharpness. But ok you can do it for cheaper than what I said.