Suggestion for a camera

[wiiawiwb]

My best pictures were taken back in the days when I had a 35mm film camera set to auto mode except for manual focus.  Nowadays, my "auto-focus" digital camera is worth beans in the woods.  If I'm trying to get a shot of something in the woods, invariably the camera would

autofocus on a branch in front of it.  

 

What would be a good choice, or two, for a digital camera where I can auto focus like in the old days? 

[Guest Busker]

Any Digital SLR with a manual focus mode should do the trick for you.

 

After that, it really is down to personal preference. Years ago I bought Canon and as such got an extra telephoto lens. If I was buying today, I would probably go with Nikon as I think their lenses perform better. That said, they're not cheap.

[SWWASAS]

I agree autofucus is a problem.  Most cameras at the DLSR level have manual focus settings.      The first thing I did when I started field research was buy one of these DSLRs and some expensive long lenses.   But I soon tired of carrying it.    Too big and too heavy especially with a telephoto lens.       Then I decided that while a good DLSR with a telephoto lens would get the best still picture,  the opportunity to get that would be very unlikely.     Most BF encounters do not last long enough for you to take off a lens cap,  power up the camera, focus if you are in manual mode, and press the shutter release.   Then there is the issue of whether or not BF knows what a camera is.    Pretty hard to hide a DSLR and have it ready to take pictures at the same time.      Yes I wanted a still camera to document footprints etc but I really did not want to carry around 3 or 4 pounds of camera.     So I got a small digital camera with a huge zoom.     20X optical and 30X digital.    That would give me the chance should I ever encounter an unsuspecting BF that is pre-occupied enough that I could get a still photo.    It also takes digital video.       But what I realized I really wanted was a nearly instant on video camera.     Small so I could mount it on my hiking pole.   Plant the hiking pole and you have video nearly as stable as it was taken with a tripod.    A couple of times I felt like I was being followed and just turned the camera around on the hiking pole,  and pointed it behind me while looking ahead.   Nothing showed but why not try?  And should I get a P/G like moment with a BF I could get HD Video of a BF and have something to compare with the P/G film.     So basically what is your objective for the camera?      That makes a difference.     My still camera is a Cannon SX260HS.      I got it in green so it looks less camera like.   Some cameras like the SX260HS have a focus learning feature.     Focus on an image of a BF and you can teach it that that subject is what you want in focus.     It does a pretty good job of rejecting branches and vegetation.     It will prioritize a face.     But like you say, it takes autofocus a second or two for the camera to decide what the subject is.   

Edited January 30, 2017 by SWWASAS

[Guest Cryptic Megafauna]

Fly you camera system, the have a dual fleer and HD video downlink payload.

Can be remoted up to 100 miles. Manual or automated flight, flight controller and remove video controller.

 

[TritonTr196]

My Bigfoot camera of choice is my sony cybershot hx300 which has 50x optical zoom. I can zoom in on you a few miles away and take a picture of you picking your nose when you thought no one could ever see you. I use it on the manual focus mode. Auto focus is the Bigfoot hunters kryptonite. I use a camera monopod that is also made for a hiking staff. I don't care about needing to get a quick close up picture if bigfoot ran in front of us, this why i wear a gopro on my headstrap and another gopro on a backstrap. I'm covered front and back with video. What i use my camera for is to take photo's of evidence and since I have such an incredible long distance zoom, when i get to an open area i can zoom out and thoroughly check the farthest tree lines or couple miles down a power line to see if anything is walking around or looking at us from a distance.

[MIB]

I don't think there is a single camera that covers all the needs.   

 

My point 'n' shoot is a comparatively cheap Fuji FinePix T410.   I haven't had any issues with it messing up the focus distance because of branches or anything like that.   It's not stabilized and even at 10x it needs a tripod or I get some blur.    The only issue I've had with it is sometimes the lens mechanism doesn't want to focus when I first power it up after it's been sitting for a few days so I have to whack it on something a time or two.  It's good for the rest of the day.  Oh, and it beeps on power-up which would be a bad thing trying to get a picture of a close by bigfoot.   I've been using it exclusively for about 3 years.   It replaced a similar camera that accidentally went lens first into a rock and bent the mechanism.     

 

I was going to buy a DSLR body to adapt to my rather nice spotting scope but the camera store kept hard-selling the Sony Rebel T-6 with a pile of lenses.   A bit of study showed that the "big" lens they thought I needed had about 6x optical zoom.      My spotting scope goes to 40x and at the time was the best American-made "glass" available.   Not impressed with the camera store.   Further study located "mega zoom" cameras in the same rough price range as the DSLR body so I'll probably go that route.   I'm looking hard at the Nikon CoolPix P900.    It's got 83x optical zoom.   There are a couple others from 40-60X I'm also considering.  

 

The first purpose of the camera is a spot I located.   I've mentioned that "roar" a couple times.   There's a 10 or so year old fire scar adjacent to one of the locations that came from.   Across the river canyon there's a high point overlooking it.  The closest part of the burn scar is about 1400 feet lower and a mile away.   It slopes up and away.   The center of the burn is about 2-1/2 miles over and about 500 feet lower.   The brush is getting tall so getting into the burn is somewhat pointless, can't see over the brush, but from across the canyon, looking somewhat down onto the slope, I might be able to see something.   There are closer spots beyond the fire that are elevated but since the burn slopes down and away from them, visibility won't be as good.    I haven't been to the top ... not sure if they can be hiked or if they have to be climbed with some rock climbing gear.  

 

I don't see packing the big spotting scope or high magnification camera into the deep woods where pictures will be within 75-100 yards.   Each has a use, something it does best and other things it does far from best.  Choose the right hammer for the size of the nail.

 

MIB

 

[SWWASAS]

I do see some merit in having an astronomical quality telescope tripod mounted camera situated on some ridge line.    And just train it during daylight and dusk hours into some valley below or up at some ridge where there might be BF activity.     These telescopes have hundreds of times magnification and feed an electronic image into a computer.     Astronomers use what is called layering and snap images of a distant object at selected intervals.        Their use is because the atmosphere makes varying light conditions and a single photograph may not have a sharp image  (think twinkling stars).     So they overlay multiple images and use a composite image to get the best quality image of the distant nebula or whatever they are photographing.       The beauty of this for our purposes is that it can gather images with very little light.      Moonlight might be sufficient to image a BF moving through a forest.   And certainly daylight or dusk can give better than that.      With a fixed background of forest, anything moving relative to that would be very evident, moving against the fixed background of the forest.    Something miles away may image well and have no idea it is being watched.      It just takes parking on a hill or ridge line for days at a time and gathering images into a computer.    Something for someone like me to look forward to when I can no longer hike far enough to do field work.    IR and UV spectrum's can be utilized too with the appropriate cameras and filters.     I guess you could call this setup a middle class mans drone.   Certainly doable without the expense of a real drone capable of carrying the same camera gear.   

Edited January 31, 2017 by SWWASAS

[Airdale]

I've been seriously interested in photography since 1965 and embraced digital about 14 years ago. I also live in a rural subdivision and take a lot of wildlife photos so have some thoughts on this. The big functional differences, aside from lens focal length, between DSLR and/or ILC (interchangeable lens compacts that replace the mirror and pentaprism of a DSLR with electronic viewfinders) and so called Superzoom cameras are sensor size and speed of operation. The larger the sensor, the larger the lens needed to fill the frame with an image at a given focal length, so the lens focal length of cameras with sensors smaller than full frame is expressed as an equivalent of the full frame focal length. The Nikon D900 83 X lens is roughly equivalent to a 2,400 mm lens on a full frame camera. That works out to just under 8', not practical to haul around in the woods, except maybe for a Bigfoot. The trade-off of the powerful lens is that the smaller sensor is generally going to have less resolution, expressed as mega-pixels, than larger sensor. While some small sensor cameras pack in a lot of MP, each is smaller than those on a larger sensor of the same resolution resulting in reduced light gathering ability per pixel and less sensitivity in low light (among other things). The chart below compares the relative size of sensors used in most cameras.

 

 

The other factor, speed of operation is determined by the power of the camera's processor and software and to some extent the hardware components. The speed refers to how fast the auto-focus and auto-exposure work and how fast still images can be recorded at a given resolution before the buffer fills up and stops to load images to the memory card. As a general rule, DSLR and ILC cameras have faster processors, larger buffers and more powerful software so they not only focus and adjust exposure faster, but the delay between powering up the camera and taking the first photo is much shorter. One final thing to mention regarding zoom lenses, regardless the type of camera or sensor size, on most the maximum aperture (governing the amount of light that can pass through the lens to the sensor) declines as the lens is zoomed out. In zooms for full frame cameras, only very expensive lenses maintain a constant maximum aperture regardless of focal length.

I currently have a DSLR and an older Superzoom, both made by Canon.

 

There is a camera I've been researching that combines some of the traits of each type; it is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ300K 4K 24X F2.8 Long Zoom Digital Camera. The lens is designed by Leica and is one of the highest quality optics in this type of camera and while its zoom is only 24 X it maintains the maximum f 2.8 aperture throughout that range. It also has a powerful processor and software allowing it to focus and set aperture as fast or faster than all but the highest end DSLRs. It shoots 4K video and allows you to make still photos while filming without interruption. It can be set to record JPEG and/or RAW images. JPEG uses data compression to decrease the file size of each image but introduces undesirable artifacts. RAW files contain all of the image data to be recorded allowing more options in adjusting the images after they have been downloaded. Cost on that model is just under $600, and I've seen it discounted $100 by both B&H Photo and Adorama. It's the best compromise between the two types of cameras that I've seen yet.

 

A final note. Ignore the digital zoom rating of a camera, it is no different than cropping a smaller part of an image and enlarging that part. It makes the subject appear larger but also magnifies compression artifacts and effectively decreases image resolution.

[MIB]

I don't think 24X will cut it for the specific application location.    Closer isn't an option.  

 

So, applying your experience & expertise, which of the "super zoom" cameras (60x actual magnification or higher) is most likely to be best for my application?     I'm after the sharpest, best stills.  Rapid speed and video are considerably lower priorities.   This is a camera for getting up on high points and taking pictures down into terrain out to 2-1/2 or 3 miles hopefully with enough resolution to not just see that it is a bigfoot, but pick out anatomical details and so I can learn something about them I don't already know.

 

Thanks!   I figure it's cheapest to do my research BEFORE buying. 

 

MIB

[Airdale]

I'd go with the Nikon D900 or just introduced Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ80 MIB. I've got a Canon 20 X that I bought in 2010 and have been researching for a replacement for a couple of years. When I started the 60 X Nikon was their top contender and it was, along with Panasonic, optically one of the top performers and that hasn't changed with the 83 X D900. Though I've used Canons since the F1 purchased in Singapore in '72, the Canon superzoom optical performance has not kept pace with the competition as the power factors moved beyond about 40 X so I was looking hard at the Nikon until I read a report on the Lumix mentioned above. For me, while power is important, I've lost a fair number of shots waiting for focus to lock and having the ability to get RAW files is a plus; I do a lot of editing on my desktop, and there is only so much you can do with JPEG files before compression artifacts become problematic.

 

The Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ80 was introduced last month. It has a 60 X zoom, but in other features way outshines the Nikon. It shares the Venus processor engine with the DMC-FZ300K and has RAW file capability and Wi-fi which the Nikon does not and it is $100 less. It's so new I can't find any hands on reviews, but with the Leica lens should share it's predecessors optical specs. I actually just found it for the first time while writing this and may have to take a look at it. It appears to be quite comparable feature wise to the FZ300K I've been considering. It's $200 less than that model which I suspect is lens related; the lens on the FZ300K maintains the f 2.8 maximum aperture throughout the zoom range which makes it much more complex and expensive to manufacture than the longer lenses that generally range from f 2.8 at the shortest focal length down to f 5.9 at the longest.

 

Personally, unless time is very critical, I'd wait two or three months until some hands on reviews show up before making a decision. Imaging Resource did get some comparison photos. If you go to their website and select the Comparator, you can select any two cameras from the drop down lists to see comparison images. Thats where I found the images below, first is from the Lumix, the second from the Nikon. Both are taken with the ISO at 100, the minimum for the Nikon though the Lumix 

 

 

[MIB]

If there's new info coming, waiting is a very viable idea.    Because of this winter's incredible snowfall, I doubt I'll be able to access that overlook point 'til mid June.    Thanks ... that helps with priorities, scheduling, etc. 

[PBeaton]

What's your Canon set up AirDale ?

 

That Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ80, 60x zoom an RAW ta boot, sounds mighty fine !

https://www.dpreview.com/news/6931589637/panasonic-lumix-dc-fz80-fz82-combines-60x-zoom-and-4k-video

 

Pat...

[Airdale]

Sorry for the delay in replying Pat, been busy preparing for a trip to Virginia Mason in Seattle next week for surgery to replace the artificial hip I received in 1998 which has failed in an unusual way.

 

With the SX-20 I use a 58 mm adapter as I have a number of filters that size from my film shooting days. I have a U.V. filter on it all the time to cut haze as well as protect the lens, and usually a Hoya circular polarizer with a slight warm tint. The adapter is a bayonet mount so if I need them off in a hurry a quick twist is all it takes. I use it with a hand strap made from part of the original neck strap and some 2" webbing; it mounts to the tripod socket and neck strap mount on the right and allows me to keep the camera handy and operate most of the controls without needing a tight grip.

 

I also have a Canon Rebel T3i with the 18 - 55 mm kit lens and it has a circular polarizer on most of the time. I actually use the SX-20 a lot more than the DSLR. I have one of the Light L16 cameras on pre-order and will likely wait until that is in hand before deciding if I need to replace the SX-20. Here is a link to the Light website if you're not familiar with it, hoping to have it before too many more months have passed.

https://light.co/

 

[wiiawiwb]

I am obviously naive (or ignorant) because I was shocked when I saw the size of the digital SLRs.  Holy moly they are big.  My 35mm Minolta was puny by comparison. I may have to rethink things. I don't want something so massive and wouldn't have any place to carry it where it would be at the ready.

 

Plan B.

Edited February 14, 2017 by wiiawiwb

[Airdale]

The full frame DSLR's are generally larger and considerably more expensive than the ones with APS sized sensors and the mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras are smaller yet. I would make a list of the most important features for your use, see which cameras have most or all of them, then read hands on reviews from a number of sources as well as user reviews. Be advised that most of the top review sites weill generally be at least a bit less biased than the average user review.