Is a point and shoot camera the right tool for the job?
As I discuss in "Choosing a Camera for a
Long Trip", you have to decide whether the purpose of an outing is
primarily photographic. Are you trying to experience Paris or
photograph Paris? If you're going to be spending 80% of your time
exposing film or thinking about pictures, then a larger camera is a
better tool. A standard 35mm
SLR camera has larger and more convenient controls than a point and
shoot. A medium- or large-format camera will give significantly better
image quality (see "What Camera
Should I Buy" for a discussion of these cameras). A tripod will be a tremendous help. But if you're
only carrying the camera on the off chance that something catches your
eye, it is rather unpleasant to lug around 50 lbs. of equipment.
Digital versus Film-based Cameras
There are pocket-sized digital cameras that function quite nicely as
point and shoot cameras, for example, the Canon S100. The advantage of the
digital camera is that the photos are available for instant sharing via
the Internet and you don't have to spend money on film or processing.
The main disadvantage of digital cameras circa 2001 is that they depend
so heavily on personal computers circa 2001. With a film-based camera,
you press the button 36 times then remove the film and take it to a lab.
For long-term archival storage, a metal file cabinet serves nicely.
With a digital camera, you need to transfer the images to a computer and
learn how to use a high-quality printer or produce Web pages. For
long-term storage and retrieval you need to get a big hard drive, a big
tape drive, backup software, and the discipline to make backups
regularly.
What if you don't use your camera regularly? Suppose that two years ago
you loaded up a film-based camera with a roll of ISO 400 film and
lithium battery. You took two photos of your dog's birthday party and
put the camera on the shelf until the next birthday whereupon you
snapped four more photos. Your dog's birthday is today. You grab the
camera off the shelf and snap a few more photos then take the roll down
to the local minilab. Most digital cameras rely on rechargeable
batteries. If you tried the same scenario with a digital camera you'd
have missed two birthday parties.
Why you might not want that fancy zoom P&S
Zoom lenses have more elements (pieces of glass) than fixed
focal-length lenses. More elements means more ways for light to
bounce around inside the lens. Stray light (flare) fills in areas of
the picture that are supposed to be black, thus reducing contrast.
That's why pictures taken with most zoom lenses are flat. If your
subject is a stand of trees on a foggy day, you might not mind, but
most of the time photographs taken with a zoom lens will lack snap.
You can forget about shooting into the sun with most cheap zoom
lenses; all you will get is flare.
The zoom lens adds weight, cost, and size. You might not have the
camera with you when you need it and that's the whole point of getting
a P&S instead of an SLR.
But I want the zoom to take portraits
A longer focal length makes for better portraits, but you will
generally want a fast aperture (e.g., f/2.8 or f/4) to throw the
background out of focus and concentrate the viewer's attention on the
subject. A Nikon 80-200/2.8 lens ($1000) makes a beautiful portrait
lens, but the zooms on P&S cameras are usually around f/8 or f/11 when
racked out and therefore will render the Exxon station behind your
subject perfectly sharp.
The photo at right was taken on the street in Whitehorse, Yukon (part
of Travels with Samantha) with a 300/2.8 at
f/4. Whitehorse, Yukon is not such an attractive town that you'd want
it rendered perfectly sharp in the background.
But I want the zoom to take artistic pictures
Most artistic pictures are taken in fairly low light (see my technique guide). Even with ISO
400 film, a point and shoot zoom lens is so slow at longer focal lengths
that you'll never get anything without a tripod. And a tripod kind of
spoils the whole idea, doesn't it? (Though not as badly as on-camera
flash, which spoils nearly every photo.)
A Yashica T4 with its 35/3.5 lens will let you do creative things with
ISO 400 print film and even ISO 100 slide film, without having to
turn on the flash all the time.
Why you might want that fancy zoom P&S
Technology changes fast. Some of the very latest zoom P&S cameras can
fit in a shirt pocket and don't have much flare. How do they do this?
With aspherics. Most expensive camera lenses are still made with only
glass elements that are sections of spheres. If you are willing to
mold a lens out of plastic you have much more freedom of shape and can
correct more optical problems with a single element.
Minolta sells a 28-70mm shirt-pocket zoom camera that uses four
elements, two of them aspheric (Freedom Zoom Explorer, about $145 at Adorama). The exposure system is great with slide film and
the contrast seems just as good as with the T4. Under a Schneider 4X
loupe, the images from mine were
sharp enough for the photo editors at Hearst magazines. The fill flash
doesn't suit me very well on overcast days, however. The subject is
usually brighter than the background and that looks unnatural. I'm not
sure if the T4 was any better or if I just tended to use it more with
ISO 50 film where the flash didn't have much reach.
I carried mine in my front left pants pocket for a few months and the
viewfinder filled up with dust (lint?) then the camera jammed and
prematurely rewound its 10th roll of film. This was the same failure
mode as my old T4. I sent it back to Minolta and they cleaned it for
me and claimed that it works perfectly now. It would seem that I've
demonstrated the inability of these cameras to survive the pants
pocket environment. [Note: the camera broke again a couple of months
later. I sent it back to Minolta for warranty service. They held it
for two months. It came back vaguely repaired but still not behaving
reliably.]
The Yashica T4: a sensible choice
Thousands of pros have Yashica T4 point & shoots. These have a
fixed 35/3.5 lens that is as sharp and contrasty as most SLR optics, an
exposure metering system accurate enough for slide film, and a true
shirt-pocket size. Even Consumer Reports top-rated this
camera. It is about $150 in New York. The latest "T4 Super" (known as
the T5 in Europe and Asia) has the same optics and film transport but
adds a right-angle "waist-level" finder (good for low-angle and/or sneak
shots) plus weatherproof construction. The latter is very important if
you like to carry your camera in a pants pocket, where the high humidity
from, dare I say it, sweat tends to fog the viewfinder.
My T4s have proven to have exposure metering that is
sufficiently accurate for slide film though these days I never use
anything other than ISO 400 color negative film
in a point and shoot (or sometimes Kodak TMAX 400 CN black and white
film, which is more or less the same idea).
Don't expect miracles from the T4, though. The plastic construction
doesn't feel any better than the other P&S cameras; it is the
beautiful Zeiss Tessar 4-element lens (with T* coating) that makes the
T4 special.
Here's something I found in the rec.photo newsgroups about a German
magazine's test of a T4 versus expensive ($600) Contax and absurdly
expensive ($900) Nikon P&S cameras (yuppie class):
"The following is a side by side comparison of Yashica T4 vs Nikon 35Ti
and Contax T2's optical performance according to foto Magazin test
charts.
Yashica T4 T2 Nikon 35Ti
Lens: Tessar 35mm/3.5 Sonnar 38/2.8 35mm/2.8
Resolution (smaller better)
Center: 0.017mm 0.015 0.015mm
Edge: 0.017 0.016 0.018
Contrast (higher better)
Center 92% 78% 72%
Edge 85% 50% 45%
Optical
Performance 9.8 9.4 9.2
Rating ***** **** ***
T2 slightly better than 35Ti, but very close.
T4's resolution < T2 at center and edge
< 35Ti at center
> 35 Ti at edge
T4 contrast, better than T2 and 35Ti center/edge
by subtantial margin."
Olympus Stylus Epic (available at Adorama). It has a four-element 35/2.8 lens (2/3rds of
an f-stop faster than the T4), is weatherproof, and can be triggered
with an optional infrared remote control.
