Be Excellent To Each Other

I have been given a voucher for curry's. We would like a better camera, than our Kodak point and click. I am not ready for an slr and it is out of our price range. What is a bridge camera? What should I be looking for? Also my stepson is wanting to do more photography so nothing too expensive he can kill.

I think that is enough questions

How much is your voucher for?

£130 so will need to put too. Just not a clue about cameras.

How much do you want to add to it? For £200 you can get some pretty nice top-end compacts.

A bridge camera is pretty much a legacy term for a compact camera that provides all the manual controls that an SLR does. Most decent compacts include those controls by default these days.

Oh cool. Any makes and models to recommend?

I'm a bit fan of the Panasonics. Like this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-Lumix ... 167&sr=1-7

I had a Canon Powershot S5 IS, and was pretty impressed with it. Took some really high-quality photos. I only upgraded to go full SLR. I think there's a new model out, and I wouldn't hesitate to get one.

Edit: appears the latest model is the SX40 HS and can be had for £293 from Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-PowerShot ... 799&sr=8-1

I've had 2 canon cameras and I agree, they're great. They're simple enough for kids to use too so I'd definitely consider one.

Well, first off you can get the lovely D3100 for £359 from Currys, and it has a very good 18-55mm kit lens. It's a great beginner's camera, with bundles of awards, and gives lovely results. My friend J'Atkinson bought one a month ago and loves it. It'll get you results as good as my D90 too, if not better, once you know how to use it. It also has friendly hand-holding controls and settings such as 'landscape, portrait, night' etc. Here's the Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1628661@N21/pool/

Search within it for 18-55mm and you'll see how it fields with a kit lens.

Anyway:

A bridge camera is essentially what it says, it's a bridge between the compact and the SLR. On one you'll find a proper DSLR style sensor, a degree of manual controls and tweaks such as aperture priority, shutter priority, full manual mode, etc with 'guide' settings such as landscape, portrait, night et al. The downside to a bridge camera is that the lens cannot be changed and there's no capacity for additional flash options. They're also a bit bulkier than a handy compact. You're stuck with what you've got. That being said there are some very good ones out there and they are far more likely to house what I personally consider nearly essential in any camera - a viewfinder. (Though iPhones to be honest are pretty bloody impressive for what they can achieve.)

The lowering of the average price for a fully fledged DSLR now means that bridge cameras are in a more precarious position. The advantage for you is that you can get good quality at a far lower cost now. So, if I were going for a Bridge which would I choose?

Well, I shoot in low light a lot and judge built-in flash units to be the devil's own, so I consider a good ISO performance fairly important. To that end, the Finepix HS30 is a good bet at £299.99 from the Curry's website. They also have the very good PANASONIC DMC-FZ48EB-K but at £369 you might as well be getting the D3100 for the better ISO, processing power, lovely kit lens and future nice lenses option.

As for Canon, they're very good with the compacts (better than Nikon even) if you're going in that direction. The Canon SX40 HS is an option with pretty good ISO and a ridiculously long zoom built in, but it hunts a bit too much on AF, the highlights get burnt out a little too easy and it feels a lot more plasticky.

Again, personally, I'd go for the D3100. But there's really no such thing as a genuinely bad camera anymore. So I do urge you to buy a Michael Freeman 'Understanding' photography guide from Waterstones. They're under a tenner and there's a good one on composition and a good one on exposure. (Or just check my thread out at viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8498 for free info! Also, check out the Flickr group photostreams on various cameras to get an idea of their 'look' and get some inspiration.

And finally, even if you're buying online, go to the Curry's shop and ask if you handle the cameras in question. I went for the Nikon D40x because it felt nicely built, had a nice viewfinder and the buttons seemed logical and easy to figure - I knew virtually nothing about specs when I bought it, other than it was a trusty name.



Let us know what you get, good hunting!

(Oh, I'd dearly love the Finepix-X100 from Fujifilm, a fantastic little rangefinder compact for street-photography, but at £800 a bit pricy!)

I'm on my third Canon Ixus point and shoot and they've all been excellent. (I'm on my third because they've each been superseded by higher specced cameras, not because they broke. My first one is over seven years old and still works.)

You can have my lumix fz45 for 100 quid if you like, much like the one craster pointed at but in a bridge body with 24x optical zoom. I upgraded to a sony nex-5 after id only used it for a fortnight in france so its basically new.

Went looking in PC world at cameras (i know but it is the place for the voucher)..

The Mrs want s a bridge camera, not sure why, but she does.

So I think there choice is between these...

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or

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help

Mrskov got the nikon coolpix l310..

Prepare for bad pics

Make her read my Photo Guide thread and they might not be so bad.

Most important thing is Focal length of lens x 1.5 = minimum shutterspeed to get a sharp shot. So beware the long, long, zoom unless you have a tripod.

Cheers Pete

I have downloaded your guide and will read it..

I need to look at all the tweeks. I was hinting at a panasonic lumix or the fuji I posted.