Are compact cameras still a thing??

 I also shoot B&W on a Nikon FM with 24mm f2.8 Nikkor

I sold an FM to get my first Nikon DSLR (which I still have). Looking on eBay, the FM I had is now selling for 10-20 times what the DSLR is worth 🤷🏻‍♂️

Keep an eye on my local charity shops for another. I noticed Oxfam has quite a busy camera section on their site…

https://onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk/cameras/category/cameras

In time-honoured STW tradition of not addressing the OPs requirements, I’ll suggest the Ricoh GR3 or GR3x. Fixed focal length, very small, easy to use, great image quality, rather expensive. I regret selling mine. I had it and the Fujifilm X100V and I couldn’t justify keeping both, so I sold the Ricoh. Unfortunately that was the wrong choice and I couldn’t get on with the Fujifilm so I sold that as well.

I oscillate between “best camera is the one you have with you, so take a small camera everywhere” and “what’s the point of taking a photo if it isn’t as sharp (etc) as it can be” so just taking my “big” camera or nothing.

nedrapierFull Member
Lovely, supernova. Are the panos cropped or stitched?

Stitched.

In time-honoured STW tradition of not addressing the OPs requirements, I’ll suggest the Ricoh GR3 or GR3x

Hold my beer.

Fixed focal length

Fixed focus

3 shutter speeds

16 photos.

850g.

Still at least the lense pops in and out to save a whopping 20mm

Keep an eye on my local charity shops for another. I noticed Oxfam has quite a busy camera section on their site…

Look at your local auction  house. Look at the camera job lots.

Every camera I keep has been on top of profit of selling a few selectbpieces

Real shame Panasonic discontinued the Lumix TZ range.

Great quality, big optical zoom, easy to use while wearing gloves.

I just looked at my Lumix, it’s a TZ and I detest it. I haven’t used it in years. The lack of luminosity of the screen makes it unusable on bright snowy days. It’s impossible to navigate the menus without the screen so impossible to use unless you stick your head inside a rucksac or under a coat to set it up for a pic. As for using it with gloves, surgical gloves maybe. What finished it for me was the number of lost video opportunites due to being lost in menus or unable to see anything on the screen. I really can’t think of a more irritating device and I own a car with a touch screen and Android Auto.

This thread has prompted me unearth my Canon Ixus – 960 IS with Ti body.

Lovely camera – should start using it again; my DSLR has it’s place but I don’t want to carry camera bag/multiple lenses/tripod unless there’s a specific objective.

The camera on my S22 is good but I can carry the Ixus with me as well.

Now, where’s the battery charger?

I still use mine loads, an Ixus of some sort. The camera in my phone’s really good tbh but it’s still in my phone, it doesn’t have the nice buttons and ease of use that you can only really get with a tool-for-one-job.

Also getting pictures off my phone keeps on ****ing with me, updates or badtempered USB cables or needing to log into something, it’s not every time but maybe 1 time out of 10 I go to do it and something bloody annoying happens. It all feels like a case of “do it only the way we want you to”. “We’ve improved your android user experience so now you don’t know how to do anything”, cheers for that

This thread’s now cost me money!

Dug out the tiny WX220 this afternoon. Works fine but the zoom switch/motor is borked so fixed focal length only. Not super sophisticated by any means (18MP/10x zoom/no manual mode or raw) but still a hoot to use and the form factor is great, so off to eBay it was for one (hopefully) with a working zoom. Will probably once again become my go to carry it anywhere camera.

As an aside it’s so small I still don’t get why Sony (or anyone else) don’t take a compact like this and graft a phone onto it. I’d happily take the extra thickness as a trade off for a ‘proper’ phone camera. As far as I can tell, the Sony compacts used the same processing as contemporary Sony phones anyway.

Damn, now I have to resist trawling eBay again for one of these…

Nikon have just bought Red so we could be about to get some very expensive but high quality compact / phone cameras that’ll make the iPhone seem cheap.

Xiaomi does a camera kit for their flagship Android that looks a bit like that Samsung camera/phone hybrid thing.

Thing is. When you start putting high-end cameras on or attached to specific phones. You are then at the mercy of the phone. I have old phones that no longer get updates and is essentially useless (funnily enough I actually use it as a back light for film negatives) as a phone and then what… You carry it asa camera and have a separate phone? Bin the decent camera?

By contrast I have a Lumix gf1 (or fg I forget) that’s at least 12years old. It’s still perfectly functional. How many people have a 12yearold usable android or iPhone?

Any recommendations for a good compact camera with small zoom that I could use with gloves and one handed while paragliding? I see some spectacular views but would like to get some photos! Phone is in use as a flight instrument so not that.

Surely for zoom you just paraglide closer?

Action camera with a wrist mount?

@TomB – might depend on the thickness of the gloves. I’ve used my TZ40 single handed with thinner MTB gloves on. I used to carry it in a bath mounted feed bag so that I could whip it out while riding. The power button is slightly recessed so I reckon it would be hard to operate it with a thick glove. The shutter button would be fine though.

Top tip: I use Sugru to mould a little dome on top of my shutter button so I can feel it with thicker gloves on.

Chapeau @scotroutes. Many years ago a friend gave me a Victorian cast iron bath as a present. Two of us laboured hard to get it up the stairs to my first floor flat. I suspect you have a mighty ftp and an interesting granny gear on your well equipped steed.

Any recommendations for a good compact camera with small zoom that I could use with gloves and one handed while paragliding? I see some spectacular views but would like to get some photos! Phone is in use as a flight instrument so not that.

I’d suggest a 360 cam, unless the focus of your flying is photography. Switch it on, forget about it, and focus on your flying. You can use timelapse if you want to save on space and battery life, and plug in a battery pack if you’re going xc and need it to run all day. It won’t get particularly good quality shots, but it’ll get shots – no matter whether you’re looking in the wrong direction, eating a sandwich, busy on the rear risers keeping your wing open… you get the idea.
Some gratuitous shots from Sunday, using an insta360 X2:

I was thinking

That the for

@joshvegas Wow! do you ever expose film in that Minolta16? I have one in a box somehere. 40+years ago as an enthusiastic teenager I built a raser blade film cutter jig to split 35mm FP4 out of a bulkloader into the two casettes I had for it. Processed in a dish in the dark as no tank to fit, and made some really low fi grainy pictures. So small a format that such limited enlargement was possible, it really was an almost completely useless photographic tool! but kind of a fun design!

I’ve a couple of Panasonic TZs sitting in a cupboard somewhere. I enquired about trading the older one in during a GoPro offer, they just gave me a discount code to nigh on the same amount without sending it in.

“just looked at my Lumix, it’s a TZ and I detest it. I haven’t used it in years. The lack of luminosity of the screen makes it unusable on bright snowy days. It’s impossible to navigate the menus without the screen so impossible to use unless you stick your head inside a rucksac or under a coat to set it up for a pic. As for using it with gloves, surgical gloves maybe. ”

Got to agree with Edukator here. Got a Lumix for the wife based on popular recommendations, probably on here, and it was a piece of shit. Just loathsome.

I’d really love to get a decent compact if such things exist. Criteria:
Compact
Sticky
Easy to use with gloves on
Easy to use in bright sunlight

Perhaps a zoom
Probably decent resolution.

But all those fuckawful unnecessary modes that the damn thing goes into, and then can’t be got out of, whilst I’m holding it precariously at arms length half way up/ down a gully can just **** off.

I have a Fuji X30 I put back in its’ box with the intension of selling it on as I haven’t used it in 18 months. A really nice compact camera that takes great pics and seems to have developed a bit of a cult following, if online SH prices are anything to go by. I just cannot find the external charger having only ever used the USB cable so was hoping it would turn up and I could sell it on. If anyone has a use for it drop me a PM.

We like the Olympus TGx as they are rugged and waterproof and ours have survived years of battering  immersion in sea water and all kinds of other mistreatment.

It even taught me not to take pictures of lions mane jelly fish with my hand under the water.

Then I still have a functioning phone for emergencies.

I took my new iPhone 15 and 2011 Olympus XZ-1 compact to Italy last week but only managed to do one comparison shot.
7AB23E76-071F-4100-B0BB-D6D8336D5BCE_1_105_c by Ian Pemberton[/url], on Flickr

P4079698 by Ian Pemberton[/url], on Flickr

Compact set on P mode with -0.3 exposure compensation which is normally pretty good for street photography but you can see how the tower in the background is blown out compared to the iPhone. That said, the foreground IMHO looks more natural on the compact especially the water surface and the poles.

The iPhone wins hands down with hand held nightshots which I wouldn’t even bother attempting with the compact.

702D76A2-79FC-43FE-B1FC-0F2E2A283022_1_105_c by Ian Pemberton[/url], on Flickr

@cojacal yeah. Only been test rolls so far you can cut down q patterson tank reel to hold it (and still retain 35mm capacity).

I am in the process of trying to learn printing. I’ll show a picture when i do a 16mm.

The idea is to cut 120 sown for some 127 cameras (127 is discontinued) i have and use the offcuts in the minolta or the agfamatic.

I’ve put my Sony RX100 IV in my car to try and force myself to use it.

Will post up if I get round to taking anything of note

shinton, has the iPhone used HDR to get the tower exposed correctly despite being much brighter than the majority of the scene? I guess a 2011 compact doesn’t have HDR.

I’m sure some of the camera blogs will have done a current generation comparison.

@bikesandboots yes the default setting for iPhone is HDR so it always takes a few shots in rapid succession with different exposures and blends them together.

yes the default setting for iPhone is HDR so it always takes a few shots in rapid succession with different exposures and blends them together.

See, this is the crunch. Could you be bothered to take bracketed exposures with the camera and merge them in LR, you’d probably (possibly) get a better finished shot.

It’s the fact that the phone has the software to do it’s own editing to a greater degree than the camera that adds to the convenience.

Like for like, I doubt the phone could take a better single raw image than the camera. But lack of faff for mostly social media usage gives it the trump card

My Olympus Pen does bracketed exposure and focus too, so pretty easy to achieve the same effect. I use focus stacking quite a bit.

Remember these? APS film, found this one for 99p so using it this week. Had a part-exposed film in it too, so who knows what pics I’ll find.

My olympus pen does heehaw other than perform almost perfectly. And squeeze 72 shots out of a 36exp roll.

Half frame? So is normal orientation portrait, you have to hold it vertical for landscape?

Do you know what the best *compact* camera (which is not really mega compact) is the Sony a7c.

Absolutely rammed with features and high end full frame spec.  It’s a proper camera that is small for a full frame body.

When I had the rx100 I always ended up using the a7c. There is a nice compact 20-60mm compact kit lens too.

If not that then my Xiaomi 13 Ultra does the job.

The a7c is still fiddly to use but much better than the rx100.

But obviously very pricey.

I’m not a zoom shooter preferring primes anyway. But compacts tend to go down the zoom route.

Half frame? So is normal orientation portrait, you have to hold it vertical for landscape?

Correct. Forever walking round looking like am doing it wrong. You get used to it. The square formats are harder to adjust to you desperately want to rotate to get the framing you want and nothing happens (with the exception of the weird camera i posted earlier in the thread… Rotate that and the shutter speed changes!)

The pen is a great camera, same deal as the trip. It won’t let you take a bad exposure, it doesn’t take batteries, its fixed focus with a sharp lense. It limits any kind of artistic endeavour other than framing but for 72 exposures you get a lovely set of photos for a weekend away.

I find myself wanting a Fuji X-T5, but can’t justify it until I start making use of the cameras I already own

Also want a decent camera phone as the (when I bought it) top end Samsung S22 Ultra is awful. Don’t really want to switch to Apple though. Like the look of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, but it gets a lot of negative comments on the FB page

Suspect that a few of the compacts mentioned eg Sony rx100 IV or a7c will have a setting somewhere to do autoHDR exposures….

But suspect Shinton’s older Olympus doesn’t.