Choosing a new Compact Camera

 

Preparing for a Holiday  I have recently been preparing for a holiday which involves packing light. Weather conditions could be severe so changing lenses is not on the agenda. I selected for my main kit a Panasonic Lumix GH3 with Lumix 14-140mm  "travel zoom" lens mounted for the duration.  But I wanted a compact as backup in case the main camera or lens failed, got dropped in the ocean, eaten by a seal or some such misadventure.

What Kind of Compact  I like cameras onto which you can get a decent grip as opposed to those onto which you can only place the fingertips. I like cameras which have good viewing arrangements, a user friendly interface and well executed ergonomics. Image quality sufficient for A3 or even A2 prints and good performance would be a bonus.  A zoom lens with about 5x zoom range would be required to keep one's distance from large creatures with teeth emerging from the sea. The facility for RAW capture is essential.  Also essential is that the RAW files are supported by Adobe Camera Raw. I have no interest in Video, Wi-Fi, touchscreens, art filters or Scene Modes.

A superzoom might seem the obvious answer but these generally have a very small sensor to the detriment of picture quality and most are as large as a micro four thirds camera with lens mounted.

What's on offer ?  There are many compact cameras on the market with quite a few  in the upper range, suitable for the expert/enthusiast photographer and potentially of interest to me.

With so much apparent competition for the discerning buyer's dollar you might think that finding a suitable one would be easy.

I say "apparent" competition because unfortunately, I found all of the cameras on my short list had significant deficiencies, mainly with regard to performance, ergonomics and the user interface.    On the basis of published reviews, all appeared to have sufficient picture quality for my needs, so that was not a deciding factor for me. 

In Alphabetical Orderthe cameras on my short list were:

Canon G16  I have a history with Canon G cameras, having owned over the years the G7, G9, G10 and G12. Each had it's strengths and weaknesses, but worked reliably and had  a good lens. None was a wonderful camera but none was a disaster. 

The G16 is like many recent Canon products: cautiously delivering minor incremental upgrades to an existing product line but  bringing very little innovation to the genre and failing to make worthwhile ergonomic improvements.

The G16 has a good lens with nice wide aperture and 5.1x zoom range. The body is large enough to get ahold  of  and there is a reasonably comprehensive suite of  direct controls. The 12's articulated monitor has been deleted so the camera could be made slimmer. That should have been the trigger for replacing the antiquated optical viewfinder with an EVF of reasonable quality. But no, Panasonic and even Nikon got there ahead of Canon.

At the time of purchase the G16 was priced competitively which was a significant factor for me.

Fujifilm X20  Some years ago I bought a Fuji X10 and used this for several months. Fuji cameras have a history of innovation in sensor technology and user interface design. This tends to  make their products  interesting for techno- enthusiasts but not always successful as cameras. The X10 had a multitude of problems and issues including the infamous "white orbs", labrynthine complexity of  controls for the EXR sensor when shooting RAW and many ergonomic problems. The X10 did not last long in my camera drawer.

Fuji promises the X20 is "much improved" .............well they would say that.  But I am wary of Fuji.  The company has a history of producing innovative new cameras which are loaded with bugs, faults and foibles. The problems are somewhat rectified over the next two or three iterations of that model sequence.   Then Fuji drops that model line and moves on to the next new big idea with a new round of  bugs and faults.

The X20 body and control layout is basically the same as that of the X10 with a couple of  button functions switched around.  The much vaunted optical viewfinder has only about 85% (linear) coverage and is subject to parallax error as usual with "rangefinder" type OVF's. 

Also, it's a somewhat largish expression of the compact genre.

Nikon P7800  On paper, this one looks like the bees knees. Or to be more specific, the embodiment of my ideal  Proper Camera.   It has a handle, full suite of hard controls, fully articulated monitor, very nice lens with  7.1x reach, wide aperture and very good sharpness on all the tests I could find.  Picture quality appears to be at least up there with most of them.

But it's sloooowwww  Slow to fire up, slow to write files to the card, RAW shot to shot times are excruciatingly slow. The P7700 and P7100 were grindingly slow. Nikon keeps snatching failure from the gates of success. To make it worse, the control layout was described  by one reviewer thus...."it feels as though the ........controls have been piled onto the camera at random".

Oh, yes, and for a compact, it's not all that.......you know.........compact.

Nikon P330   Here is another potentially nice and genuinely compact camera rendered useless to me by it's tediously slow shot to shot times especially with RAW capture.

It is an enduring source of wonder to me that the same company which makes the super fast 1 Series V2 (the rocket camera) can at the same time turn off  buyers with the unbelievably and in my view unacceptably slow P7800 and P330.

Olympus XZ-2    My only experience with Olympus is of the OMD-EM-1 Micro Four Thirds camera, which I found  "interesting" but in some respects incomprehensible. So I am wary of the Olympus way of doing things.  There is  no inbuilt eye level viewfinder. I had also read some very unflattering reviews of the XZ-1 user interface which did not bode well for the XZ-2.

Panasonic LX7    At one time I owned a Lumix LX5. It was a rather nice little compact which really was compact and punched above it's weight for picture quality. I made some nice looking photos with that camera. The LX7 appears to be more of the same, with an even better, wide aperture lens. But there is no inbuilt viewfinder and one reviewer found the rear control dial hard to operate. In addition the buttons and 4 way cursor are small and difficult to operate by feel.

Panasonic LF1  Yes! The small compact gets an EVF, at last. If the lens had a wider aperture at the long end I might be interested. But then it would be larger of course.

Sony RX100/RX100Mk2  These cameras have generated an amazing amount of excited comment from reviewers and bloggers. Their main claim to fame is that they have the largest sensor and highest technical image quality scores of  all the compact cameras (Largest sensor, most pixels, highest DXO Mark score).  But there is a lot more to a camera than technical numbers.

I recently tested the RX100 which had been purchased for a family member going on an ultra long hiking trip solo with full pack. So it was probably the right choice for that person. But image quality outdoors was indistinguishable from the G12 (although the RX100  was much better at high ISO levels indoors). The lens was acceptable but closed to a small aperture at the long end and was unable to reveal all the information potentially contained in a 20 Mpx sensor. Handling and ergonomics were unimpressive. The thing is so small it is hard to hold properly. There is no built in viewfinder.  You can buy one as a clip on for the RX100Mk2.  But with the (expensive) accessory EVF fitted the unit is no longer particularly compact.   The price, even without the EVF  was substantially higher than the other cameras. After using the RX100  for a week I was not inclined to buy one for myself.

My Selection of the Best advanced Compact Camera is.......................None of them.   Every one of them has one or more serious deficiencies of ergonomics, user interface or performance which I suspect drives even more people to smartphones for their photographic needs. 

I bought the Canon. Not because I think it is a wonderful camera because that is not the case.

But Canon G cameras have in the past been  reliable tools for me and that, together with sharp pricing and a cashback deal from Canon Australia,  got it over the line. Just.

The G16 desperately needs a decent quality EVF plus several performance and ergonomic improvements if the G lineage is to survive. I will post a review of the G16 in due course.