I have been toying with buying a new camera. I have a very nice SLR, but am thinking about buying a new compact camera to slip into my pocket to replace my old Sony Cybershot. My 'phone takes pictures, but the lack of control means it's just a toy.
So I started looking at the descriptions. Number of Megapixels - fair enough, although no-one actually points out that squeezing millions more on to a little sensor is not necessarily a good idea. DIGIC 4 processor - what the hell is that when it's at home? Face detection AF/AE/FE/WB - I can guess some of those but don't really know if I need them.
Why do all marketing people think that meaningless acronyms are a good idea? Perhaps it's because they are bored with telling us that the product is new, improved, faster and sexier - amazing, as you're hardly likely to bring out a product that is old, worse, slower and boring are you? (As it happens I would probably be interested in a mobile 'phone that had less functions, as all I want it do is make calls and send texts, but that's another story).
My requirements are actually very simple. I want an optical viewfinder as the screen on the back is totally useless when you're outside, and I want it take a picture when I click the shutter - not seconds later when you have missed the action. I would also like it to take RAW rather than JPEG, as I can't see the point of processing the photo in the camera and losing half the info, when I have a very good powerful PC with Adobe CS4, which does the job much better. (Sorry about all the acronyms in that paragraph!)
Unfortunately, as usual, the technicians want to show off all their features rather than asking the user what they actually want. Sound familiar? I'll stick to my old Cybershot thanks; it has an optical viewfinder and an excellent lens, it's just a bit slow on shutter release - a problem of many compact cameras and that's actually the main reason I bought the SLR.
By the way, TOSH is an English slang term for nonsense.
So I started looking at the descriptions. Number of Megapixels - fair enough, although no-one actually points out that squeezing millions more on to a little sensor is not necessarily a good idea. DIGIC 4 processor - what the hell is that when it's at home? Face detection AF/AE/FE/WB - I can guess some of those but don't really know if I need them.
Why do all marketing people think that meaningless acronyms are a good idea? Perhaps it's because they are bored with telling us that the product is new, improved, faster and sexier - amazing, as you're hardly likely to bring out a product that is old, worse, slower and boring are you? (As it happens I would probably be interested in a mobile 'phone that had less functions, as all I want it do is make calls and send texts, but that's another story).
My requirements are actually very simple. I want an optical viewfinder as the screen on the back is totally useless when you're outside, and I want it take a picture when I click the shutter - not seconds later when you have missed the action. I would also like it to take RAW rather than JPEG, as I can't see the point of processing the photo in the camera and losing half the info, when I have a very good powerful PC with Adobe CS4, which does the job much better. (Sorry about all the acronyms in that paragraph!)
Unfortunately, as usual, the technicians want to show off all their features rather than asking the user what they actually want. Sound familiar? I'll stick to my old Cybershot thanks; it has an optical viewfinder and an excellent lens, it's just a bit slow on shutter release - a problem of many compact cameras and that's actually the main reason I bought the SLR.
By the way, TOSH is an English slang term for nonsense.
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