rick vincent

<p>Take the picture for god's sake. No one said it has to be good. </p>

So the Fuji has some kind of anti-blurring feature which I guess is different than the IS on other cameras. Not sure what the difference is. The water is getting muddier as I try to make a decision on a purchase. I thought I had a good idea of what direction to take. Now I'm completely lost.

I feel like the more I read, the less inclined I am to buy anything. I had a better idea of my choices before I started browsing this forum. Now everything is sounding bad. Fuji, Canon, Panasonic.....or Nothing! lol...I'm really scratching my head...Maybe I'll just keep shooting my 2.1 megapixel Olympus C-700.

I double-checked my information about the Panasonic batteries...I was correct and its even worse than I thought. They list the battery as "proprietary." I hate that word. That means you better stock up on some back-ups because there's a good chance you won't even find these things in the photo department of a local drug store. Maybe not even at your local camera shop.

 

If you buy our camera, you "must" by our batteries. That scares me.

I am also looking for the answer to your question, which superzoom? The Panasonic camera is an award winner that looks very interesting, with one drawback. The batteries. I prefer my electronics equipment to run on standard AA or other standard batteries as an option. The Panasonic, to my understanding, does not accept regular alkaline or NIMH rechargable batteries. For that sole reason I won't get it. What if you are in the middle of the Galapagos trip and your batteries go dead, and with no place to plug in a charger. You need to be able to grab a set of back-up alkaline AA's. That take the Panasonics and the Kodak EasyShare P850 out of the mix for me.

 

A good point was brought up about the lack of a good wide angle on these superzooms. The Fuji Finepix S9000 does the best at wide angle (28mm equivalent compared to the 35-38 of most other superzooms).

 

The superzooms that have captured most of my interest are the Fuji S9000 mentioned above, the Canon S2 or S3, and the Nikon Coolpix S4.

 

Depends on who you ask, there seem to be people who absolutely love, or absolutely hate each and every superzoom out there.

I'm finding that people either really love these cams or they really hate them...I think it depends most on what you are coming from...The pro DSLR users probably are the haters and the people who are upgrading from basic consumer grade digitals seem to love it.

 

Part of me wants to make the jump to an entry level pro DSLR. There are certains features I would have to give up though. I'm really used to my built-in 10x zoom on my olympus c-700. I shoot a lot of mini videos with my Olympus and I also like the idea of a tiltable or movable LED screen for those great camera angles.

 

I don't think I'm serious enough to carry around a big bag full of lenses...I would probably end up more likely leaving the camera bag behind.

 

The real question I should be asking is "which superzoom digi-cam is the best out there?" I noticed a similar post of that question so I will take a look at was said there.

After thorough examination of the superzooms, its down to these two.

The Canon zoom is 12x (36mm to 423mm equiv). The Fuji is 10.7x (28mm

to 300 equiv). Fuji has a bigger sensor at 1.6/1 to Canon's 2.5/1 and

megapixelwise the Fuji is 9mp to Canon's 6mp. Rare that I will be

printing much beyond 8x10.

 

I kind of like that the Canon is lighter and smaller. They both have

some type of movable LED screen and both have some sort of image

stabilization technology. Both look like great cameras. I'm leaning

towards the Fuji because of the larger sensor (i.e. possibly better

quality images and ability for narrow depth of field shots). Evening

shooting in dimly lit rooms is important as well.

 

Your thoughts?

Bob is correct. I discovered that it was a user-definable setting that allows web pages to load faster at the cost of picture quality.

What happened to the photos on photo.net? Is it just me? Is it just

my computer for some unknown reason? I just went on today and all

the photos look absolutely horrendous. It looks like someone went

through the photos and compressed at the highest compression ratio

ever created for jpg file saving. Every photo looks like it is made

of little digital cubes. Help!

I think the main start up TRP page should be according to # of views. Good photos get lots of view, often in the 10's of thousands. Nobody here has a clique group or mate-rate group big enough to affect those kinds of numbers. SO, LETS DO IT....RAISE OUR HANDS TOGETHER AND ANNOUNCE THAT RATINGS DON'T MATTER.

 

The only other system I can think of, if people are compelled to "VOTE", is to have a simple +/- system that is completely anonymous. You like the photo, give it a plus. If you don't like the photo, give it a minus. The most pluses make the top photos page. The minuses would not play into the total, but just provide a visual to the photographer of the number of detractors.

Lets not act like a government here, who tend to make broad changes for everyone, based on the abuse of a few. You might consider leaving the choice up to the member whether they wish to receive e-mail. That way, if only a few people are having a problem, they can turn off availability to their e-mail address.

I agree Doug that it would be helpful to know how many new photos a person on your IP list has just posted. Sometimes I miss photos by people on my IP list because they post more than 3 at a time. Some of these people have several folders, and I don't always have the time to check out every one of their folders to see what is newly added. It would be nice to have some kind of notification, maybe by e-mail (for contributing members of course), that would say "Doug Burgess has posted 5 new photos since you last viewed his portfolio."

Screw the ratings...if you want to know if people really like your photos look at the other numbers. Number of ratings, Number of views, and number of comments. If you are running up 10,000 and more views on your photos, I think that means a hell of a lot more than the unsubstantiated 3/3's without a comment.

Marc, Your plan looks good from the way "you and I" use Photo.net forum. But, what about the people who use the forum to say post 10-20 pictures from an event they attended so that they can show other photonetters their collection of shots. I wouldn't have a problem with the three minimum, but I would not want to limit other people who exceed that number regularly. Your plan also assumes that most photonetters are interested in viewing "every" photo that is ever posted. I don't feel this need to see everything. The recent photos gallery does a fine job of randomly presenting current photos and it seems the good ones get noticed, start collecting ratings and comments, and before you know it, make top photos pages. The way I see it, my fellow photonetters help me weed out the good from the garbage, so that I don't have to waste my time viewing every photo that is ever posted. For the most part, I believe that the photos I want to view, rise to the top.

 

Maybe there are some good photos that slip through the cracks. If so, how about making a photo re-submit button that allows a photographer to resubmit a photo just by clicking on the resubmit button. That way, if you don't feel one of your photos received a fair look, you can hit the resubmit button to clear the numbers and get it back in the recent photos gallery. I've noticed that if I post a shot that is well-liked, it tends to run up 3-4 ratings within the first hour of posting. I think if you take good photos, you will get recognition, if you post garbage, you won't. I came out of nowhere, less than a year ago and joined Photo.net. I had to work my way into the ranks just like everyone else by posting my best.

 

It's also good that the top photos pages are more than one page long. This allows me to dig deep and offer my comments and ratings on a wide range of photos while at the same time weeding out the photos that are averaging very low ratings averages.

 

One other suggestion...for the photographer that would like to spend time critiquing lower rated or less recognized photos (perhaps to offer help to budding photographers who need help and look forward to honest critique). Add a search filter that organizes images by the lowest average rating.

Voting wouldn't change how many images you have to look through. It would be the same as always. The better images would attract more attention and therefore receive more opportunities for a vote towards top photos. In a way, there are already is a voting type system in the terms of "number of ratings". Everytime someone rates a photo that photo tallies up another rating "vote". Regardless of whether the person gives you a 7/7 or a 1/1 you are still getting an extra vote towards your total tally. From that point of view, it doesn't bother you as much when someone low rates your photo. Everytime someone does that, they are raising your total ratings score. So, even if your photo doesn't make top photos for aesthetics, orginality, or average ratings....you still may be on top photos for the number of ratings you are racking up.

No matter what steps Photo.net has taken to reduce ratings-related

problems, they just never go away. I'm not going to suggest total

removal of a ratings system, but I think a great idea would be to

allow people to vote in "top photos". That way if a photo.net viewer

thinks a certain photo is worth top photo status, they can click a

small box to give it a Top Photos vote. Each member could only cast

one vote for a particular photo and if some of these no-name people

with 0 photos loaded don't like it, then there is nothing they can do

about it, except just not give a photo their vote. One aspect I like

about this method is as follows: Have you ever seen a photo in top

photos that you personally found to be "not that great?" Rather than

slam it with low ratings just because you don't like it, you could

place your vote with other photos that you do like. I think it

takes out some of the negativity and would drastically reduce the

number of people who create photo.net accounts for the sole

purpose of slamming other photographers photos and hard work. Thank

you for listening to my ramblings. It was an idea that I thought

worth mentioning.

I like Mark Thomas' suggestion. I also have thought this to be a good idea to only base the rating on a weighted type average system. With my suggestion, however, I would remove both the highest and lowest ratings. For instance at 10 ratings you drop the one highest and one lowest, at 20 ratings you drop the two highest and two lowest, and so on. Then you could average the rest of the ratings for a more accurate calculation that removes some of the 10/10 and 1/1 that can tend to corrupt the ratings system. I think this is what they call a weighted average.