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| Until recently fixed zoom lens cameras have struggled in low light. This hand held photo was made with a Panasonic LX100. ISO 1600, f1.7, 1/40 second. |
There has been much discussion recently in blogs and camera forums about the contest for market dominance between Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) and Mirrorless (MILC) interchangeable lens camera types.
However this contest may be sidelined by the rise of two other camera types.
The first of these is of course, the smart phone which has become the favourite picture taking device in the modern world.
Until recently if you wanted better picture quality than a smart phone you had to get a DSLR or MILC.
But there is another camera type which is capable of making very good pictures.
That is the Fixed Lens camera (FLC). Some of these come with a single focal length lens, attractive to a very small buyer group happy to live without a zoom.
But the great majority have a zoom lens (FZLC) which is more appealing to a wide buyer demographic.
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| Like most FZLCs the Panasonic FZ1000 does not have an ultrawide focal length. But Photoshop comes to the rescue. This panorama was made from a sequence of hand held RAW captures, stitched in Photoshop to produce a RAW panorama file. The stitching software has coped well with potential parallax errors which could have arisen with the juxtaposition of near and far trees. |
Sales figures for these cameras are presently unknown as they have been buried in the ‘compact’ category.
This category includes budget compacts, advanced compacts, superzooms and travel zooms of various configurations. Some of these are not compact at all as anyone who has held a Nikon P900 will know.
Some have been called ‘bridge’ cameras, presumably suggesting they are some kind of intermediate between compacts on the one hand and DSLR/MILCs on the other.
But cameras like the Sony RX10 and Panasonic FZ1000 are not a bridge from any camera type to any other type. They are a fully fledged, stand alone, all purpose solution to the majority of photographic requirements for the majority of photographers.
Shipments of cameras in the ‘compact’ category fell precipitously from 2012 to 2014 but appear to have steadied since the beginning of 2014 according to CIPA data of shipments by Japanese camera companies, published in Mirrorless Rumors 01 May 2015.
It is possible that the apparent plateau in ‘compact’ sales since the beginning of 2014 might be due to advanced compacts and superzooms.
I think that the future of cameras for the great majority of amateur users lies in the Fixed Zoom Lens (FZL) category.
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| The FZ1000 has a maximum optical zoom of FLE400mm which is not great by modern FZLC standards. But a few years ago 400mm was regarded as a superzoom lens. The surf club in the foreground is 1.3 kilometers from the camera, the city buildings in the background are 14 K away. Plenty of detail in this hand held shot thanks to the very good lens and OIS. |
Last year I sold all my interchangeable lens cameras (ILC) in favour of a Panasonic FZ1000 and have never regretted that decision.
Interchangeable lenses and interchangeable lens cameras (ILC) are the 20th Century’s answer to the problem of providing a range of focal lengths from very wide to very long.
The ILC strategy is successful but the downside is the need to buy, carry and change lenses as subject requirements alter.
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| This is a simple crop of the photo above this one, from an original RAW capture. This is a 6.3Mpx crop from the original FZ1000 20 Mpx photo. The original is good enough that the crop is successful and retains quite good picture quality. This crop was chosen to match the maximum optical zoom of the TZ70. When printed with the FZ1000 crop beside the TZ70 full frame, I found the FZ1000 crop shown here to be slightly sharper than the TZ70 version at the same size. The focal length equivalent is 720mm. |
The 21st Century has seen great advances in the technology of compact, high quality budget priced zoom lenses and small sensors.
These developments have allowed manufacturers to create cameras with fixed zoom lenses covering almost all the angles of view most photographers will require, together with picture quality good enough for most purposes most of the time.
This allows the photographer to have an entire camera kit in a single device with no need to change lenses, ever. This is less expensive, lighter and more user friendly than a multi lens kit on an ILC.
Until quite recently the main argument against the FZLC has been poor picture quality compared with an ILC, especially in low light when high ISO sensitivity settings are required.
This is still to some extent true particularly for cameras with small sensors but some FZLCs now have sensors as large as the smaller ILCs so the picture quality gap is closing.
The second argument against FZLCs is that none of them has an ultrawide zoom setting. For many users this will not even register as a problem.
However for those times when an ultrawide view is required a multi frame panorama is a workable solution in many cases.
There are two ways to achieve this.
Many cameras now offer in camera auto panorama stitching, some providing very good results.
An alternative is to make multiple overlapping exposures and merge to panorama in image editing software. The latest version of Adobe Photoshop (or Lightroom) can do this even with RAW files and output a RAW file for further adjustment.
The third argument against FZLCs is that as a result of the small sensor sizes used in these cameras, focal lengths are short making it difficult to render backgrounds smoothly out of focus.
This characteristic might be a problem if the background is required to be completely out of focus for instance in sport or portraiture but could also be an advantage for documentary work where everything is required to be sharp.
Wide aperture lenses are a partial solution to achieving smoothly out of focus backgrounds.
However there are some situations such as sporting venues which present very busy, intrusive backgrounds which I suspect will always benefit from a full frame sensor.
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| The Panasonic LX100 which I used for this photo is quite capable of holding follow focus on the action. But the background is intrusive. In fairness to the LX100 I would have to say this background would likely look intrusive with any camera as it is so close to the playing area. ISO 1600, f2.6, 1/250 sec, AFC, Burst M. I will use 1/500 sec next time as the fast moving players were too often blurred at 1/250 sec. |
Next: five FZLCs compared
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