Moral: You get what you pay for.
On 24/04/2009, at 10:13 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
There are quite a few long zoom compact cameras around now. I guess
they'll all take reasonable pictures in reasonable light. They're
grainy in low light because of the tiny sensors they use, but the
pictures are still good for id.
A quick look at the manual of this X70 (http://www.pentaximaging.com/pdf/X70_OPM_ENGLISH.pdf
) and reading a few user comments on the web indicates that this one
might not be right for birding.
The electronic viewfinder has no dioptre adjustment. In my opinion
you need to use the viewfinder rather than the rear LCD, or it's too
hard to find the bird, especially in bright light. If your eyesight
is a little off, the lack of adjustment might make it hard to use.
Users are complaining that the small battery gives very short
battery life. Not the end of the world, but it uses a proprietary
battery, so if you want a spare it might be expensive.
It doesn't appear to be able to take a teleconverter, although 624mm
is very usable.
I find that some shots are impossible without easily accessible
manual focusing. My camera (Canon S3) requires me to hold down a
button at the front and press the up/down button on the back to
focus. It's slow and cumbersome, but often works. This one
requires you to select MF from a menu, which means it's going to be
even harder. There are a small number of compact cameras that have
a focusing ring at the front, which would surely make life much
easier, but I'd insist on at least having a dedicated MF button.
These features are, unfortunately, rarely mentioned in the specs and
reviews, so it can be hard to work out which ones have them.
The default focusing mode has a gigantic focus frame that would make
it impossible to autofocus on any bird in vegetation, even if you
had a clear view of it. It appears that you can reduce the size of
this, but it isn't clear by how much. The smaller the better, in my
opinion, to allow focusing between branches, etc. It also isn't
clear whether you can use the tracking AF in this mode
The sensor on this camera is small, making the noise problem worse.
There are other compact super zooms with larger sensors, although I
haven't checked how the costs compare.
Peter Shute
________________________________________
From:
] On Behalf Of Carl Clifford
Sent: Friday, 24 April 2009 4:42 PM
To: Ian May
Cc: Birding Aus
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Buying optics
Ian,
Pentax has just released the X70, a SLR-like compact camera with a 24X
zoom (equal to 28-624mm in 35mm) and image stabiliser and continuos
mode at 11fps. It sounds like a good little camera for the birders
backpack. They are priced around the $550 mark. I would buy one
myself, but I blew Mr Rudd's largesse yesterday.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
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