The current best carry everywhere camera?

Following Michael Reichmann's recommendation of the Sony DCS W300 over at Luminous Landscape, I picked one up today (cheap, too, at about £220) and added it to my unsatisfying stable of carry-everywhere cameras. Currently that's a Ricoh GRDII and a Sigma DP1, plus a Panny LX2 that lives on a shelf.

The Sony is REALLY not my sort of thing. It has smile recognition. It doesn't do RAW. There is (gasp) no aperture priority mode. It has a tiny sensor but packs 13.6 million pixels. All of the above says it must be a dud. But Michael says it's a revelation so I thought I'd give it a go and take it back if it was cruddy.

Follows unscientific shots taken this afternoon. No tripod, only the vaguest attempt at consistency because I was just fiddling about and now don't have the time to do it again to test standards but nonethless, all shots at base ISO and sort of mid apertures and kind of fast enough speeds to avoid motion blur and vaguely fairly developed in Lightroom. Focal lengths were similar but not the same (35mm efov for the Sony and the Leica M8 and 28mm efov on the Ricoh and Sigma, with the Sigma processed to 'double' in Siggy Soft) but the pixel counts and aspect ratios all differ. So shoot me for not being DP review. But this camera is really, really good.

The full scene on the Sony follows in the next post.



For now, 100% crops in order of quality as it appears to me:

Ricoh:


Sigma:


Sony:


Leica M8:


This may not be scientific and I may not yet have used the Sony at higher ISO etc (Luminous Landscape has some interesting comparisons though) but I do think the files are better here than the Ricoh, probably than the Sigma. I also think that the camera, though ergonomically limited, is better suited in this respect to the job of spontaneous carry around than is the Sigma. And it has a 35-105 EFOV zoom and image stabilisation to sort of apologise for no RAW...

I sooo know I'll get shot now!



Tim

The full scene for reference, taken on the Sony

Tim,

I read the review on Luminous Landscape and it certainly does seem like a compelling camera. For me, however, the 35mm on the wide end is a deal-killer. I'd much rather have 24mm and a shorter tele (72mm in my case with the GX100), but of course YMMV.

Question: I'm assuming the GX100 and DP1 shots above is JPEG? From a comparison standpoint, this makes some sense I suppose. JPEGs to JPEGs. However, since the GX100 and the DP1 have the capacity to shoot RAW, and since their output is of higher quality in RAW mode than JPEG, and since the DSC-W300 can't shoot RAW, it might make sense to compare each camera's "best output" - i.e. RAW from GX100 & DP1 and JPEG from DSC-W300.

I also love the step-zoom of the GX100 and the ability to use OVFs. But again, these features may not be important to everyone.

Best,
Chris

Hi Tim,

Maybe to crush the naysayers or rescue the DP-1, compare the best RAW on a tripod to the Sony jpg. Now, all jpg is not the same. It depends also and how much compression there is. The question is, can the DP-1 hold its own when shooting at it's best conditions?

asher

Asher Kelman said:

Hi Tim,

Maybe to crush the naysayers or rescue the DP-1, compare the best RAW on a tripod to the Sony jpg. Now, all jpg is not the same. It depends also and how much compression there is. The question is, can the DP-1 hold its own when shooting at it's best conditions?

asher

Click to expand...

Same for the GX100, of course.

The Sony's images do look very good, Tim. Perhaps I'll take a look at one some day.

But the Canon G9 remains my casual camera for the foreseeable future. It's been excellent for me. No, I can't comfortaby slip it in my undies. ("Is that a G9 in your pants or...") But if I'm not able or willing to carry the G9, then to heck with photography on that excursion.


Skywalkers

Generally speaking, however, the best "carry everywhere" camera is the one that you're comfortable with and extremely adept using. Regardless of size and techical currency it should feel like an old pair of gloves as you use it.

Ken Tanaka said:

Generally speaking, however, the best "carry everywhere" camera is the one that you're comfortable with and extremely adept using. Regardless of size and techical currency it should feel like an old pair of gloves as you use it.

Click to expand...

I totally agree, but to some extent that depends on what you've used For Chris and myself that's the gx100, and for you the G9. Each camera has it's own character, of course, and they were the reasons we made our choices. Incidentally, my dayghter has a secondhand G7, and although the jpeg quality amazes me I still prefer using the gx100 - but that may be because I do so pretty well everyday.

The Sony jpgs certainly look good out of the box. At first glance, the gx100 output looks faiorly similar to the raw output before any capture sharpening is done - which probably reflects the jpgs really.

Mike

Hi Chris,

These comparisons were 'best to best' i.e. the Sony was in JPEG cos that's all it offers but the others were all shot RAW and then given the sorts of tweaks in LR that I'd normally give them if they were for web viewing. Now I know that this appears to 'unlevel' the playing field but I do know each camera apart from the Sony quite well so like I say, it's unscientific but reasonably fair. I could do the whole thing again with a tripod and so on but I've decided just to go out walking with the Sony for a while instead and see what I catch!

I know the 35mm widest is a restriction and like you I have historically preferred a 24mm lens as my standard but since owning the M8, I slowly became addicted to seeing the world through a 28mm, which on the M8 is 37mm, POV and so the Sigma and the Ricoh have been mildly irritating me on that front and actually I really like the Sony FOV!

t

Chris Kresser said:

Tim,

I read the review on Luminous Landscape and it certainly does seem like a compelling camera. For me, however, the 35mm on the wide end is a deal-killer. I'd much rather have 24mm and a shorter tele (72mm in my case with the GX100), but of course YMMV.

Question: I'm assuming the GX100 and DP1 shots above is JPEG? From a comparison standpoint, this makes some sense I suppose. JPEGs to JPEGs. However, since the GX100 and the DP1 have the capacity to shoot RAW, and since their output is of higher quality in RAW mode than JPEG, and since the DSC-W300 can't shoot RAW, it might make sense to compare each camera's "best output" - i.e. RAW from GX100 & DP1 and JPEG from DSC-W300.

I also love the step-zoom of the GX100 and the ability to use OVFs. But again, these features may not be important to everyone.

Best,
Chris

Click to expand...

Hi Ken,

I got close to the G9 myself having been a huge fan of the G3, which was my first digital camera. However my personal qualification for a carry everywhere is that it must fit in a shirt or jeans pocket. If I were ready to carry the G9 then I'd go the extra mile and carry the Leica.

The advantages of having a camera always and everywhere are legion ;-)



Best

Tim

Tim that photo is so very good!

Based on Tim's endorsement and comparisons, and after reading the Luminous Landscape review, I trotted over to the local electronics store last Thursday to look at the Sony. Although primarily a film-and-scan man, I've carried a matchbox sized 3MP Pentax Optio (the first of that line, I think) everywhere for the past five years. It's given great service despite limitations of outmoded technology and got me back into photography after an absence of years. I used it primarily to experiment with the composition of photos to shoot with film - kind of a Polaroid substitute - and for snapshots.

What I hoped for in the Sony was a large bright viewing screen, a near zero-lag between pressing the shooting button and the picture being taken, a reasonable image quality, and (most important) a small enough size to fit the holster on my belt. The Sony had it all, it seemed, so I bought one.

A week of shooting later, I'm more than impressed. The default settings gave a slight blue cast that was easy to correct, after which the colors were fairly realistic; the ISO 100 images contain very little noise even with flash and default noise reduction; the resolution, clarity, and sharpness were far higher than I anticipated with default settings; the flattish jpeg images are not difficult to liven up in post-processing; the menus are intuitive and accompanied by helpful on screen reminders; even with my big fingers, I've yet to make a mistake with the tiny controls.

So I'm delighted - thanks Tim for bringing the camera to my attention.

Michael_Stones said:

Based on Tim's endorsement and comparisons, and after reading the Luminous Landscape review, I trotted over to the local electronics store last Thursday to look at the Sony. Although primarily a film-and-scan man, I've carried a matchbox sized 3MP Pentax Optio (the first of that line, I think) everywhere for the past five years. It's given great service despite limitations of outmoded technology and got me back into photography after an absence of years. I used it primarily to experiment with the composition of photos to shoot with film - kind of a Polaroid substitute - and for snapshots.

What I hoped for in the Sony was a large bright viewing screen, a near zero-lag between pressing the shooting button and the picture being taken, a reasonable image quality, and (most important) a small enough size to fit the holster on my belt. The Sony had it all, it seemed, so I bought one.

A week of shooting later, I'm more than impressed. The default settings gave a slight blue cast that was easy to correct, after which the colors were fairly realistic; the ISO 100 images contain very little noise even with flash and default noise reduction; the resolution, clarity, and sharpness were far higher than I anticipated with default settings; the flattish jpeg images are not difficult to liven up in post-processing; the menus are intuitive and accompanied by helpful on screen reminders; even with my big fingers, I've yet to make a mistake with the tiny controls.

So I'm delighted - thanks Tim for bringing the camera to my attention.

Click to expand...

My pleasure Michael, I'm glad you like it as much as I do. Nowadays I reach for it whenever I leave the house and I have just started to make some 20X30" prints and they hold up pleasingly well. FWIW, now that I have committed the cardinal sin of buying a JPEG only camera, I am starting to wonder if there's not some minor advantage to setting the in-camera sharpness to standard rather than low, since it does a good job...

Best

Tim

If only W300 were wider

I'd really like to see the W300 with a wider field of view. In this regard, the Fujifilm F100 offers more, including presumably better low light performance.

Well, I bit, too. Reading others' positive comments on the Sony W300 convinced me that it was worth a try. I've not yet used it extensively but, like others, I am encouraged by what I see.

Here is a quite wide image taken at ISO 80 f/5.6 at 1/200 sec. on an overcast afternoon. With all of the camera's default settings it managed to capture a pretty darn good image with wide tonality.


Now for a 100% detail from that image, once again presented pretty much straight out of the camera. You can see that the default sharpness setting, and the camera's pretty good little lens, produces quite a bit of sharp detail. You can also see that that lens can produce a bit of chromatic aberration deep into the frame, which I discovered on many other images with high luminance-contrast boundaries. Fortunately with today's software such distortions are easily eliminated with little or no visual consequence.


Thus far the Sony looks like a very good I-don't-want-to-carry-a-camera camera. It's not, at least to my eye, quite up to my I-only-want-to-carry-a-small-camera camera, the Canon PowerShot G9. But it does record a remarkably sharp image with relatively low noise up to ISO 400 (and bearable noise at 800). The lcd display is excellent and the optical viewfinder (which I really have no interest in using) is better than the G9's. Usability, in general, is not quite as smooth as the G9. While the controls are well-placed access to basic settings, especially ISO, requires navigation through a menu. The camera, in general, has a sturdy feeling...cerainly better than a Kodak EasyShare soccer mom purse cam.

The argument for carrying a decent camera at almost all times is compelling. As Jay Maisel is fond of chanting, "The more you shoot, the luckier you get." Hey, if I had not had the Sony WD300 I certainly would have missed this dapper fellow gliding behind a Marc Di Suvero sculpture.

Ken, glad to hear that more and more people are discovering the delights of this little gem. Treat yourself to the underwater housing - it is GREAT fun!

And as your Di Suvero shot shows, preset the focus and the Sony is no slouch when it comes to capturing the exact right moment!

Tim

Ken Tanaka said:

The argument for carrying a decent camera at almost all times is compelling. As Jay Maisel is fond of chanting, "The more you shoot, the luckier you get." Hey, if I had not had the Sony WD300 I certainly would have missed this dapper fellow gliding behind a Marc Di Suvero sculpture.

Click to expand...

Is this in Denver, Colarado?

Asher

Nope. Right here in sunny Chicago.

To all you W300 owners:

I read a review/article on the W300 somewhere (can't remember where now) in which the author suggested using the lower resolution setting on the W300 (6 MP was it?) to obtain what he claimed was even better file quality.

Has anyone tried this? Is it a reasonable assumption if planned output is no larger than 8x10?

Chris Kresser said:

To all you W300 owners:

I read a review/article on the W300 somewhere (can't remember where now) in which the author suggested using the lower resolution setting on the W300 (6 MP was it?) to obtain what he claimed was even better file quality.

Has anyone tried this? Is it a reasonable assumption if planned output is no larger than 8x10?

Click to expand...

Hi Chris,

I haven't tried it and can't because I don't have the camera with me but at up to 10x8 I can't see it making any difference noticeable in print.

t

Chris Kresser said:

To all you W300 owners:

I read a review/article on the W300 somewhere (can't remember where now) in which the author suggested using the lower resolution setting on the W300 (6 MP was it?) to obtain what he claimed was even better file quality.

Click to expand...

Hard to comment without having read the article, but I'm sure that anything below 3264 x 2448 px(approx. 8MP) would produce visually worse 8x10in output. It of course depends on the print quality, but for uncompromised quality I would stick to the full resolution and optimize for output (e.g. with "Qimage") from that. I'm pretty sure that will give visually superior results compared to any of the downsampled file versions, given your 8x10in goal.

If the author was talking about on screen display, then things may be slightly different (mainly due to workflow benefits), but Im confident that I could produce better looking screen files from a native resolution file than an automated in camera downsampling one could.

Bart

I don not agree with such a conclusion, Chris. You'll get the best detail from using the camera's full resolution. Skillful, careful size reductions at your computer will produce far better results in print than starting with a tighter compression out of the camera.

This new Panasonic Lumix LX-3 looks like it could be a step in the right direction. Manual controls, RAW, 24-60mm equivalent f/2-2.8 lens, hotshoe, add-on optical viewfinder... maybe it will break the specifications logjam we have suffered in compact cams for the last few years.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Yes! I saw that announcement as well for the LX-3. It certainly looks great on paper, and I want to say THANK YOU to Panasonic for resisting the megapixel madness. The LX-3 resolution is actually a tiny bit smaller than the LX-2. They claim that the S/N ratio was improved by 3db. Regardless of how this camera turns out, I'm hoping that Panasonic's move will pave the way for Ricoh and others to do the same.

This picture boggles my mind! I just think it's terrific. AND I appreciate your initial comparisons (in part, perhaps, because I wasn't in the market for any of them.) I'd thought myself pretty close to buying a DP1, however, when I remembered this thread, and so it's become much less academic.

So, have your rankings changed since your first encounter, especially in re the DP1? Do your conclusions change at all when using black & white?

Thanks so much,

Thomas

Thomas Turnbull said:

This picture boggles my mind! I just think it's terrific. AND I appreciate your initial comparisons (in part, perhaps, because I wasn't in the market for any of them.) I'd thought myself pretty close to buying a DP1, however, when I remembered this thread, and so it's become much less academic.

So, have your rankings changed since your first encounter, especially in re the DP1? Do your conclusions change at all when using black & white?

Thanks so much,

Thomas

Click to expand...

Hi Thomas,

I have found myself rarely using the Sigma. At base ISO and when you have time to take it slow, it can give really nice results but it is not a camera for snappy or spontaneous use, its ISO range is limited, it gets odd colour shifts as ISO goes higher and it tends to give strangely aliased edges on curves.

The Ricoh I use a fair amount because its ergonomics are so spot on and I know how to get what I want out of it.

The Sony is very useful and flexible but it gets left in my holiday home because I have an underwater housing for it, so I don't use it as regularly as the Ricoh.

If I had to choose to own just one, for all purposes, it would be the Ricoh. It has the worst IQ but it is still 'good enough' if you know what it does and how it does it. But if I had all three on a shelf by the front door, the one I'd grab on the way out when I wasn't going to shoot but needed a 'just in case' camera that was small, light, fast and had good IQ - well that would be the Sony.

Best

T

Canon G10

Greetings,

undoubtedly you will hear more about this baby in the next few days, as a teaser, I can say, this will be my first serious pocket camera that I have no problem using for 13x19 fine art prints.

I am talking about the new Canon G10 with 15MP.

The IQ results are most astonishing and can compete with high end systems in the 30,000 dollar range, and this camera sells for something like 500 dollar, hard to believe, I know and you probably think I am kidding, but mark my words, I am not!

However, I leave it up to the professional testers to come to conclusions.

I already ordered one.

Had not seen the Panasonic before and it is a whole different approach then the G1 that is actually out in the stores today. But the Leica brandname on the lens is not to be expected in micro Four Thirds.

Martin

Leonardo,

Tell me about these beautiful cameras. We need educating. Yes they are beautiful and the lenses are interchangable. However, I can't see the names and would love to know more and your experience with them.

Asher

sorry, I was placing the images when my wife reminded me we had to go to a event at the Japanese society here...

what I meant to say is that the entire carry-everywhere field will probably be getting in tho a new level with the introduction of the MICRO FOUR THIRDS.

Two things are different and one is the same as all existing sub-35mm. One is that this format has the same sensor size as the "big" Four Thirds and it is larger than what we normally see, the other is that lenses are interchangeable, so you can live home with a prime 50mm equivalent f 1:1.4 --as Asher likes to do-- that is as small or smaller than a M6 from Leica what brings us to the one thing that is similar to point and shoots: size.

This is the link for the PANASONIC http://www.photographion.com/micro-thirds-m43-camera-body-photos/

There is not a lot of information about this camera, but you can see that it is a 12MP .. there is at leas a 21mm f 1:2.4 super compact lens and a 12-24

I don't like the looks of the Olympus as much as the Panasonic, but I'm sure that when Oly comes to market they will have something as interesting as PANASONIC...

I hope I can have money saved for when that happens... meanwhile my carry-everywhere has to be the D300...