Moving on and looking for advice

[jnjkerbin]

Hi everyone,

At the moment I have a Fujifilm A850 camera and I'm looking to move forward from it. By budget is £200 although could potentially stretch to £300 if I save more. I am specifically looking for a better optical zoom. Also, I was looking at a friends camera the other day which seemed to chop up the pixels to sharpen the picture and I'd be interested in seeing something like that.

Thanks for any help.

Joe

 

[JohnB57]

Hey Joe. What exactly do you want to achieve? There's a lot of advice - and some disagreement! - in earlier threads about the best sort of camera for rail photography so you need to be sure what suits your precise needs. Questions you need to ask yourself: -

• Do you want to make prints, if so how big?
• Do you need portability/pocketability?
• What are the extremes of the required zoom range - i.e. how near and how far away do you want to be from the subject and how big is the subject?
• How much easy control do you need over focus/exposure etc?
• How fast do you need the camera to respond (most compacts have a noticeable delay when pressing the shutter release)?

You'll certainly be able to do pretty well on your budget, but answering these will help point you to one type of camera over another.

Sharpening is done both in camera - JPEGs always have a degree of sharpening together with other adjustments - and also afterwards in software. The trick is to get as sharp a picture as possible in the first place!

 

[jnjkerbin]

Thanks for the reply!

• Do you want to make prints, if so how big?

No.

• Do you need portability/pocketability?

Not really although I'd prefer something reasonably unobtrusive.

• What are the extremes of the required zoom range - i.e. how near and how far away do you want to be from the subject and how big is the subject.

I want to think more about a camera which is better on focusing on distant objects rather than close-up ones.

• How much easy control do you need over focus/exposure etc?

I want a reasonable level of control although I still want the camera to work out some things for itself. ie I want the facility to take a quick shot as well as sometimes spending more time preparing the camera.

• How fast do you need the camera to respond (most compacts have a noticeable delay when pressing the shutter release)?

I don't really need a particularly quick response camera.

I would not only use this for train photography but also for social things, scenery, buildings etc.

Hope this helps!

Joe

 

[JohnB57]

From what you say, maybe a bridge camera would suit best but it's worth looking at advice and reviews like this. Lumix, Canon, Fuji, Nikon etc all make pretty nice gear in your price range.

For what it's worth, the optical viewfinder and fast response of a DSLR make that for me the best tool for the job. Problem would be that for your budget, you'd only get a similar zoom range to your Fuji and they are quite large in comparison.

Good luck and maybe someone else can help with recommendations in your price range.

 

[jnjkerbin]

Thanks very much! You've given me dome interestimg things to think about.

Joe