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Not anything earth shaking, but I mostly use P&S cameras on travel, rather than lug my SLR. But I am fussy about the image quality, and poor control logic and ergonomics drive me up the wall. I have 6 or 7 of these things and several more have gone bye-bye when I found out how flawed they were.Anyhow, I just bought a Canon Classic 120 to replace an Olympus SuperZoom 120 (Ritz Camera's version of the Olympus 3500). Thought I'd leave a few comments here. The Canon is discontinued, but my local shop had 3 left. The NYC stores have them as well. The Popular Photography review on the camera, for once, is dead on. A very good lens, comparable in sharpness and color to my AF Nikkor 28-105 and maybe better contrast. Lots of "snap". The flash is powerful, very uniform, conservatively rated (Pop Photo was right here as well) and has a very good output control system. This is a matter of the control electronics, metering, and the control algorithm. Fill flash is consistently very well done.
I take a lot of travel shots, and one of my pet peaves is the over enthusiastic use of flash by P&S cameras. I have a very nice collection of shots of a "sun ball" in the bus window. The Canaon has a "Personal" setting on it's mode selector wheel, which allows you to set up the camera and then store the settings. On mine I set it for spot AF and flash OFF. Fine for a lot of things like available light, shooting through bus windows, and for the museum where "flash is not allowed".
There's a lot of other settings under a flap on the back, but if you use the Personal mode intelligently, along with the other wheel selected modes, you nearly never need theose other controls.
With selected P&S models, I find I don't need the SLR unless I'm going to need extra long shots where 300-400 mm are needed.
Now the Canon Classic 120 is not perfect. The lens is slow (f/4.5-f/10.9), the focal length only goes down to 38 mm, and it's not weatherproof. So it gets kitted up with an Olympus Stylus Epic and a pair of mini binoculars which supplies 35 mm at f/2.8, weatherproofing, and some backup. With 6 rolls of film, spare batteries, and the carry case, it's 2 lbs. But then the Epic doens't have a great flash (hot at the center, and the flash metering is too heavily center weighted), so I also travel with a Pentax Espio Mini (UC-1 in the USA)which has a very good flash, a sharp lens, and is 32 mm @ f/3.5. The Pentax is my "dinner camera". Easily pocketable, excellent flash, warmish lens, and the wider view of the 32 mm lens is perfect for shots at parties and in dining rooms on board ship and in restaurants.
On extended trips we also carry my wife's Olympus Epic Zoom 80. A very sharp little camera which is light, compact, weatherproof, and convenient. It provides a backup to the Canon, and is great to put in a shirt or pants pocket for walking tours.
I always carry at least one spare P&S and on several trips, have ended up lending one of mine to a friend who's camera has died. Most recently a friend's Minolta (an ancient model) conked out on a Rhine River cruise. I loaned him my Yashica T4 Super, and he got along until he could buy a new camera for himself. Sorry, but I fail to see what all the fuss is about with the T4. OK, it has a good lens. But it's bigger and clunkier than the Epic, and in my book not as sharp. The controls were designed by someone who doesn't take pictures. Have you noticed that! That a lot of the cameras out there feel like the guy who designed them never used a camera? P&S and SLR's both! Design by committee?
So when do I lug the SLR? When I need the long lens, or when I need really good macro.
Any other P&S fanciers out there?
Follow Ups:
As I stated above, I like my Contax T2 as a P&S because it is so compact, but it also has the option of aperture priority and estimating distance. I like my Fuji FinePix for travel as well, but it's too bulky to slip in a pocket and you have to think about charging up batteries as well. Now if the Contax TVS was as good as the T2, I would be very happy.
I used to carry an Eddie Bauer 110 & make really big prints from it. Made wonderful big blobs of color that would come together as a picture when you got about 10-feet away.Most I use my M-6 for P&S purposes. Sometimes I use my Nikonos V for P&S - but it is guess-o-matic for distance, kinda tanky in size & weighs more than the M-6. Rollei makes a couple of really nice P&S cameras as does Leica. Bought a Leica for my dad one time - he promptly dropped it, but continued to use it with duct tape holding it together. Worked fine for at least 5-6 years.
I just got a Canon S45 digital. Wouldn't exactly call it P&S because you can make it work better if you set it for aperture or shutter priority & set some of the other things yourself. But, for a cheap little digital it has some unique features + I got the underwater housing for doing some setup shots before attacking the final with the Nikonos V.
I keep trying to forget the 110's. Awful things. I got one to take skiing. It was flat and thin and I figured if I fell on it I wouldn't break a rib. So I'm safe and I have dozens of lousy ski pictures of my wife and kids.An M6 is sort of overkill for a P&S, but if you have one, why not? I'm more after keeping the weight and bulk down. The Nikonos doesn't do well in the weight department either. I tried carrying a Pentax ME Super with a 35 mm lens as a classy P&S, but then I wanted filters, and a flash, and well, gee it has interchangeable lenses, so let's throw in a 100 f/2.8, and maybe the 28, and....gosh this bag gets heavy by the end of the day! At least with a P&S I'm not tempted to add a lot of stuff.
By 1988 or so the better 35 mm P&S models were pretty decent. Like the Nikon L35AF. I bought those for my two daughters, and they were so sharp I bought myself one. We took a Caribean cruise the next year, and my wife's Ricoh TF-500D with 35 & 70 mm lenses (not a zoom) got consistently better pictures than my Minolta Maxxum 7000i. After we got the pictures back I traded the Minolta for a used Nikon FE-2, and bought a second Ricoh for myself. I've been using one P&S or another ever since. Currently, I have 8 of them. We're going on a cruise around Cape Horn next week, so the Nikon SLR and 4 P&S are making the trip. Most of the time, it'll be the P&S that get used. The SLR is going primarily for shots of the wildlife we hope to see. For that, a P&S just won't do.
Jerry
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