Upgrading my camera??

[Sheryl]

As most of you know I've been photographing with a Kodak digital point and shoot camera. I am so ready to make a move up to a better camera. I mostly shoot landscapes. In the future I may want to include wildlife. I've been checking out 2 cameras. The Nikon P7000 and the Nikon D3100. I'm having a difficult time choosing between the two. I'm on a fairly tight budget so that is a consideration. But I find both of these to be affordable. Do I want to get the D3100 with the 18-55vr lens and save to get a better lens later or do I want to start with the P7000 and then later move up to a dSLR? Or should I choose something totally different? Any opinions or suggestions will be very much appreciated. Please if you have any questions for me feel free to ask.
   Thanks,
  Sheryl
       

[shooters_desire]

Sheryl this looks like it will solve all your problems. Check it out, I'm impressed. You might find one locally as well. If not Aderama has one for you. Plus money left ovewr to get a good sd card & Tripod
http://www.adorama.com/IFJFPHS20.html?utm_term=Other&utm_medium=Shopping%20Site&utm_campaign=Other&utm_source=gbase

[Sheryl]

This one sounds fantastic! I think it has everything I'm looking for in a camera. Thanks so much for finding it for me! Its a Fuji film fine pix H520EXR with 24mm-720. AND its in my price range. This may be the one. I hope anyone reading this will look up the link and give me their opinion.

[shooters_desire]

http://www.bestpriceforsale.net/fujifilm-finepix-hs20-16-mp-digital-camera-best-price-for-sale/

[Seven_Wishes]

It’s predecessor had good user and tech reviews... As well as reading the tech reviews/specs ( http://www.dpreview.com/news/1101/11010513fujifilmhs20exr.asp  ) try find some user reviews, after all these are the ones that use the camera in the real world.

The lens will cover nearly every eventuality, but this could be its biggest draw back, packing so much in between wide angle and ultra zoom will bound to have some trade off in image quality.

It’s as close as you will probably get to a DSLR without actually buying one ... It will be a good introduction to many of the features you would expect to find on a DSLR and would make a good learning tool if you are not familiar with using aperture, shutter speeds, ISO, exposure compensation and such likes. Compare features like for like with the D3100.

Generally speaking Fuji make good cameras in this specific field.

[Harry7mc]

I would also consider the Fuji,
 My first proper step into digital was via a Fuji 603 bridge camera It was/is a super camera to use.
Fuji have always produced good Optics so I think the Latest should be OK.
ps I still have a 9600 that is good to carry around
 handle it at adealers if you can.

[BigAl]

I had a look at the spec for the FinePix HS20EXR and could not find anything to fault. For many photographers who are stepping up from the simple point-and-shoot camera, this could be the way to go.

On the plus side you have performance and range of features. For a similar priced DSLR you would have to trade off the goodies to get the ability to swap lenses.

When you move up in the camera standards you have to be prepared to spend mega-bucks if you're really serious about the hobby.

[RockArea]

Hi Sheryl

You’ve posed a well thought out question on whether to buy a budget DSLR or a well specced compact with lots of excellent features. Now there’s also the suggestion of a bridge camera which seems to come with all the features you’re looking for in one hit.

First off – the Nikon D3100. This is an entry level model but comes from a highly respected manufacturer. The body has all the features you need at this stage and it could be a good few years before you feel the need to upgrade it. As far as lenses go there are four choices, you can buy it as a kit with the 18-55VR lens or for a bit more money you can get it with 2 lenses an 18-55 VR + 55-200 VR or with and 18-55 VR + 55 -300 VR.  The fourth option is to buy the body only and match it with a lens of your choice, a Sigma 18-200 or 18-250 with optical stabilizer, which are frequently thought of as good budget all round performers. Another option is the Tamron 18-270 VR which in my experience is a good all rounder although none of these perform quite as well as the Nikon lenses. With a DSLR you’re buying into a brand and if you spend wisely on lenses, they’ll still be useful to you even when you do feel it necessary to upgrade to a better body.

The Nikon P7000 – This is probably the best of the current super compact with an excellent spec. My brother has recently bought one (his other camera is a D200 which is a fine pro/semi pro camera so he’s used to quality). Although as I said the spec is very high, with all compacts it requires a lot of delving in menus to set up particular features and this results for most people in these features not getting used. Even so you have a quality camera with a zoom range between 28 and 200mm. All compacts struggle to get those shallow depth of field shots (sharp with the background blurred) that are so useful in portrait shooting.

The Fujifilm HS20EXR -  Wow, what a spec 24 – 720 lens. It looks like this camera will do everything you’d ever need. My question is – will it. I’ve always been impressed with Fujifilm cameras, I’ve had (still do have) a couple of compacts and always found them very good and very reliable but they’re not ‘the best’.

Drawbacks 24mm is not very wide for a landscape photographer, I’d want an 18mm wide angle at the least. 720mm is a 30x zoom, I wonder how useable it will be in the field as that front lens doesn’t look big enough to draw enough light except at extremely long exposures and I’m not convinced that the small CMOS sensor will be able to manage without producing high noise levels.

I’d want to read a full review of this, at the moment only press releases seem to be available. I’d worry that this does everything but does nothing very well.

It’s a tough one, Sheryl, and only you can decide. I’d say don’t be beguiled by the Fuji gloss, it might be a good choice for you but I’m not sure. The P7000 is a good little performer and might be just what you need, but will it restrict your ambitions.

The Nikon P3100 seems modest compared to the other two cameras but in many ways it might be the best bet. The camera body itself is quality kit and even though it is entry level, it has lots of automatic features to start you off and lots of options for getting into manual and semi automatic modes which is where real photography starts, in my opinion. I think a DSLR like this is a great starting place. You will probably want to add different lenses for macro work, ultra wide angle for landscapes and telephoto for wildlife and those will take some saving up for so it’s a bit like a gold charm bracelet. It starts off good but minimal but can end up as a stunning piece of cargo!

Good luck with your decision!

David

[Harry7mc]

The standard 18/ 55 or 18 105 nikors will relate because of the sensor crop to 28mm, at the wide end.
This should be taken into account when making you choice.

[RockArea]

I think all of the figures given so far have been 35mm equivalent, Harry, which is the usual way of quoting lens range these days.

David

[Sheryl]

Seven-Wishes, good idea to read some reviews on these cameras. But like you said the Fuji is brand new and will have no reviews. Thanks Harry for your imput as well. And to Big Al I appreciate you viewing the link for the Fuji. David , you've given me loads to consider and now I am having doubts about the Fuji. Maybe it would be better to just go with the D3100. I know it would be a good camera body and I can get started with the lens it comes with until I can afford more lenses. Like Big Al mentioned you have to be willing to spend some $ if you're serious about this hobby. Right now I'm on a pretty tight budget and the Fuji seemed to have all the features I'm looking for. But like you said , David, will it perform as well as advertised? Will it be good to shoot landscapes with since that is my primary interest? One of my goals in getting a new camera is to improve resolution quality. But I am not familiar with all the technology that comes with the dSLRs. I have no experience obviously with shutter speed, aperture and so on. So would the Fuji be better to learn with than the d3100?cAnd will it be good to use for the next several years? When I make this purchase I don't plan on purchasing another camera any time soon. I could however save for more lenses.

[shooters_desire]

well actually it does have the reviews but only a step under which would be the HS10exr. So see sheryl what updates they did to this camera compared to the older models. You may consider calling fuji customer support and asking them. Try to stick to the EXR version like we discussed. Rock is right that you won't have that wide angle so you may want to look more into the P7000 or the Canon G12. TheEXR Is pretty much the same as a dslr accept it has a built on lens. Your Quest would be finding one that has a wide angle like 12 through 18 to start off with. I'm not sure panasonic makes a EXR camera. If they so i would explore that aavenue because they use leica lenses on there cameras

[Sheryl]

Okay, I'm getting confused about the lenses. What is the optimum lens for taking landscapes and do any of these cameras we've been discussing come with one? Or which one would be the best for shooting landscapes? Remember I also want to eventually be able to shoot wildlife as well as smaller things such as flowers, insects.... That's why the Fuji sounded so appealing because it offered all in one. But would I be getting less as far as image quality? Which of these 3 would best suit my needs for now and the next several years? Plus the fact I don't know about shutter speed, aperture, exposure..... What one would be simplist to learn with plus give me quality images?

[RockArea]

Sheryl, your present camera has a zoom lens which goes from 36 - 108 mm, that's 36mm at the wide angle end and 108mm at the telephoto. For landscapes people tend to like a wide angle of 18mm or less so the Nikon D3100 standard lens (18-55VR) would fulfil that criteria. For closeups it wouldn't get as near as your present camera.

The P7000 wide angle is 28mm wider than your present camera but not as wide as the standard Nikon lens. On telephoto it goes to 200mm which is a fair range (nearly twice as long as your present camera) but not long enough for most wildlife.

The Fuji wide angle is 24mm, wider than your present camera but not as wide as the Nikon standard lens on the D3100. The telephoto is massive at 720mm which in theory should pull in eagles on mountain tops. Most wildlife shooters are pleased to have a 500mm lens which needs a very large slab of glass at the front end in order to get sufficient light. In reality I don't know, but I doubt conditions would ever be good enough to get you a good shot at that distance (or even half of it).

David

[Sheryl]

Like Harry commented I would also like to be able to handle these cameras and get a good look at them besides just viewing them on the internet. The Fuji, however has not been released yet. What is a good censor size? David mentioned that the Fuji has a small censor size. What does the censor affect?

[Sheryl]

So , David,  in other words none of these cameras would be good for both landscapes and wildlife? Except with the d3100 I can always add more lenses for wildlife and macro eventually. But the lens it comes with would only be good for landscapes. Is that correct?

[BigAl]

There is no such thing as a 'landscape lens' - i.e. one specifically built for taking landscape scenes. No, instead there are lenses that are more suited to landscape photography and that give you more opportunity for good landscape compositions.

In simple terms, the lower the focal length value, the wider the view captured. So, as David wrote, an 18mm lens will take in a much wider scene than your current 36mm one does. It means that you can get the whole view without having to decide whether or not to leave something out on the left or right (or above and below.) So, if you want flexability, you should be looking at a wide-angle zoom - one that goes from (around) 18mm to about 50mm.

[RockArea]

Perhaps I misled you there, the sensor is the digital equivalent of the film in a film camera, Sheryl. In the Fuji and the Nikon D3100 they are the same size but Fuji have put 16 megapixels in their sensor compared to 14.2 megapixels in the Nikon. More pixels in theory give you high quality images but in practice more pixels can also increase noise (that's the unpleasant graininess you can sometimes get). The sensor is one of the things that is new in the new version of the Fuji so it's hard to know how good it is. Fuji says it's very good but I'd like to see a comprehensive review by someone like dpreview. At present Dpreview is only quoting Fujis press release, they haven't tested it them selves.

BigAl's quite right in what he says about there being no such thing as a landscape lens. Many landscape photographers, me included, like to have a specialist ultrawide angle lens, but generally when we're out with our camera we like to take a variety of things. As well as landscapes we might want to take things like the catkins on a tree in spring so a 'walkaround' lens is a very useful thing. If I could only have one lens I'd go for an 18-200 VR (that's the vibration reduction, some manufacturers call it OS optical stabilisation).

[Sheryl]

Thanks guys for clearing that up. The standard lens that comes with the d3100 is 18-55. So I will have the ability to shoot landscapes and other images I just won't have the ability to shoot wildlife ,correct? I don't want to have to worry about noise. That's one of many reasons I'm wanting to upgrade is to decrease the amount of noise in my photos. I'm still confused as to what would be the ideal camera to purchase. I think I need one of you to go shopping with me. lol  I'm now leary of the Fuji even though it sounds ideal. And if the p7000 is similar to the d3100 I may as well just go with the dSLR so I won't be needing to upgrade my camera again any time soon. So now its back to the Fuji or the D3100, I think. Its such a difficult decison when I know so little about cameras. I've done some research and thought I knew some of the features I wanted in a camera. But now I'm wondering if the features are as important as the camera itself and the lens. Maybe I should focus my search there instead. ?

[Seven_Wishes]

You may find this useful with regards the Fuji ( http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/Fujifilm-FinePix-HS10-Digital-Camera-Review-21833.htm  ), while not the model that has been mentioned here, it is its direct predecessor and will give you an insight in to its capabilities with regards noise, colour, resolution, design and handling and how it compares to its nearest rivals.
With all bridge cameras there is going to be a trade off in performance and this is without doubt always going to be in the lens department .... But and some may disagree with this the trade off is minimal in all other areas when comparing with budget or entry level DSLR cameras.

The kit lens with all entry level DSLRs is not going to be the best piece of glass in the world ... The Nikon VR 18-55 while being a stabilised lens has drawbacks, the image quality is not as good as its predecessor the non VR version, the front end of the barrel rotates when focusing, not great for use with filters (polarising), as with all kit lenses of this quality it is slow f3.5-5.6 ...
The biggest issue ... Will your budget stretch to a higher quality lens other than the standard kit lens and the level of frustration that you may encounter until the purchase of your next lens.

Regardless of the lens and the acquisition of more further down the line, without doubt you are going to find not a day goes by when a wider or longer lens would have been better.

Draw up a check list of what you want from a camera now ... not in the future and compare each model against that check list ... It’s all very well in saying that if you go down the DLSR route that the lenses will fit and work on your next camera body, this is not always the case if you jump from crop frame sensor to full frame and then in some cases with third party lens manufacturers these have been known not to work at all or not in the same way on newer models.