Point & Shoots: Compensating For Our Small Sensors (Buy the S110/RX100/X20)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Point & Shoots: Compensating For Our Small Sensors (Buy the S110/RX100/X20)

subx: Jan 12, 2003; If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

qirex posted:

I got my S95 last week, I'm pretty impressed so far. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of indoor shots seem to have a yellowish cast to them, is this from not setting the white balance?

Indoor shots lit from normal light bulbs will always have a yellow tint or be "warm". It's a pretty quick and painless fix in post. Just use whatever adjustment sliders you have to "cool" the photo, which the exact process will obviously depend upon what software you are using.

You can probably change it on the camera too, but honestly I never change my white balance settings as its easy to forget to change it back when you go outside.

subx fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Nov 30, 2010

# ¿ Nov 30, 2010 18:07

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 08:20

subx: Jan 12, 2003; If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

VomitOnLino posted:

If you want I can upload roughly 100MB of pictures for you to trawl through, all taken with this camera. Of course it doesn't have to be THIS one camera -- I'm basically just trying to dispel the myth that you need a $300+ camera to take good pictures, no matter how much the gear-heads and arm-chair photographers insist on it.

I think people are just saying you are going to spend $300 on a camera that will do everything he listed. If he can compromise a bit on a point or two, he can get away with quite a bit less.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2011 07:01

subx: Jan 12, 2003; If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes should fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

Chainclaw posted:

I haven't been able to find a good thread anywhere on the forums that includes / compares cell phone cameras with point and shoots. This thread at least covers point and shoots.

Currently, our camera situation is: I have an iPhone 4, my gf has an iPhone 3GS, and I have a Casio Exilim that is about 5 years old. My gf is in the design program at an art school, and while she doesn't do much photographic art, she takes a lot of photos for reference, and every once in a while uses a heavily photoshopped photo for some assignment. The iPhone 3GS camera is OK for Facebook pics of "look at this silly thing", but mostly useless for her school needs. The Casio Exilim has not aged well, it's only 5 megapixels, she complains that the pictures are often grainy, and it is missing a lot of modern settings like a macro mode. My iPhone 4 is a better camera than the Exilim in most ways, and the usability and convenience of it is really nice: being able to instantly upload photos, limited image editing software on-platform is fantastic, using the touch screen to focus is a great feature, and having a camera on a device I use all the time is great. On the other hand, point and shoots, especially above a certain price point are just going to offer an image quality and other features like optical zoom that you just won't get on most phones.

She doesn't need a new camera right now, but would like one soon, and we want to plan out what we are getting. My questions are: At about what price point are point and shoots going to be better than high end smart phone? I know these don't directly correlate, but it's the decision we are trying to make, so anything you have would be useful. We're willing to save up for a S90 / S95 if it's absolutely worth it, but if we can get away with something cheaper that would be great.

To me it sounds like any newer camera will be a huge upgrade, but I'd base some of it on how much low light shooting you (and your gf) do.

The grainy thing is because of the small sensors P&S and Phone cameras have, they don't let in as much light, so when light isn't ideal they get grainy. A better camera can do various things to help in low light (better lens, software, sensor), and that's a large part of the expense of something like the S95.

A flash helps of course, but the small flashes on a P&S or iPhone won't be very effective beyond like 6-10 feet.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2011 05:34

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