Bridge Cameras

[Polarbear]

Wifey is a technophobe (even more than me!!!).

She has got into bird photography and decided her camera is not up to the job of catching birds at any distance. It's an Olympus bridge camera with a 16x optical zoom.

She had a DSLR at one time and it stayed in the cupboard because she couldn't be bothered to carry it, extra lenses and whatever around so one of them is out of the question. Also, in reality is one of those new fangled mirrorless ones as she wants everything in a single package, nothing extra to carry around and not a million settings to confuse her.

I have a decent Canon point and shoot she can slip in her pocket but she wants a good zoom and has seen bridge cameras with up to 60x zoom.

There are quite a few on the market with prices from £150 to infinity. Name brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony etc. starting from the high £200's.

Has anyone any experience of these cameras? Going on spec/price I'd probably plump for the Nikon Coolpix B500 or the Canon SX540 just because of the name and they won't break the bank.

Anyone with any knowledge. (She's paying and I'll nick it when she gets bored with it. )
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[ThunderGuts]

So I can't offer specific advice on bridge cameras, but you mention lenses with massive zoom capabilities; as a rule the greater the zoom range of a lens, the prone it'll be to some sort of image degradation (any or many of things such as distortion, colour, contrast, sharpness, chromatic aberrations etc.). Put simply, this is because the optical arrangement of a lens simply can't be naturally brilliant at everything, so a degree of compromise is introduced (this is why "prime" lenses, i.e. fixed focal lengths, traditionally are the budget way to optically excellent lenses as they've been optimised for that specific focal length). Spend big money (four figures plus) and some very clever and high quality optics can offset some issues to a degree. The next issue is light; for a given focal length of lens, to get more light into the camera (to make for shorter shutter speeds - important with "flighty" subjects and long lenses which will shake around a fair bit compared with a GoPro) you need bigger glass. Bigger glass is expensive, so economy lenses will tend to have quite small apertures meaning unless it's really bright, you'll need to crank up the ISO setting to get a decent exposure - say hello to noise. This is why the lenses at football matches are massive - they're probably nowhere near as longer focal length as the 60x zoom cameras you've seen can effectively offer, but they can get enough natural light to exposure at a good shutter speed, even under stadium lights and produce crisp results.

It's probably going to boil down to expectation; if you're photographing "snaps" and aren't too fussed with ultimate image quality then you can probably be fairly relaxed about your choices including bridge cameras - use reviews, many of which will include full-resolution sample images to give an idea of the quality. If you think the photos may get printed up and hung on the wall, you might want to think about something higher quality. Probably a dSLR (most have an auto mode which requires little or no fiddling with settings) then your choices of lenses is much better, you'll get a bigger sensor (generally) and more flexibility in general (although there are rubbish dSLR lenses too where again manufacturers are trying to satisfy consumer demand for lenses that can do everything, cost peanuts and are compact - but something has to give).

Probably not that much help on reflection.
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TG.

[weasley]

Also, to clarify the whole "60x" zoom thing, this means that the telephoto end is mathematically 60x larger than the wide-angle end, (so for example a 10mm - 600mm lens would be 60x). However, the reality of exactly how 'close' it will get you depends on factors such as the sensor sixe and the focal length comparred to that. This is why for a long time a lot of manufacturers made '35mm equivalence' claims too, since the 35mm format (24x36mm image size - known in DSLR terms as 'full frame') was dominant for decades.

In this world, a 'standard' lens was around 50mm - this was a lens that would give the same sort of view you would see with your eye. So a 600mm lens on a 35mm camera was effectively a 12x zoom. However, the smaller the sensor the larger the effective zoom rate, but lots of all-in-one cameras do not readily publish their sensor size so a supposed "60x" zoom will certainly not be 60x bigger than what your eye can see and will be somewhat less than that. One camera's "60x" may actually offer less magnification than another's "40x" depending on how wide-angle the lens starts.

For very long lenses a lot of the issues have been mentioned above but there is also the issue of shake - a long lens requires a steady hand and, ideally, a tripod. Cameras these days have anti-shake capabilities but these often work by cropping the image, leading to greater image quality loss.

One thing to consider - if you get a camera with a decent lens and a really good sensor there's no reason you shouldn't be able to zoom and crop your pictures to a reasonable quality. Some people dismiss 'post-processing' as cheating, but zooming, cropping, dodging, burning, vignetting and other similar techniques were all considered to be skilled techniques when it was done in a darkroom; the principles are the same.

To answer the question though, it depends what your wife is trying to achieve. You won't be getting National Geographic images out of a consumer bridge camera (well, not without a lot of trying and maybe a little luck) so expectations have to be set accordingly. I have been photographing for decades and even I sometimes resent lugging several kilogrammes of kit around, especially when I don't get the shots I was looking for. That said, for that time when you nail an image, it was worth every gram. I probably have less than 10 images I would hold up proudly, in a lifetime of probably tens of thousands of images.
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Yamaha XJ600 | Yamaha YZF600R Thundercat | KTM 990 SMT | BMW F900XR TE

[Polarbear]

I totally understand where you both are coming r=from but I'm not going to be able to change her mind about a bridge camera and bigger is better as far a she is concerned ( ) so it's going to be a 60ish times zoom bridge. The question is really whether one is noticeably better than the rest in it's class or just go for a name?
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[ThunderGuts]

I'd set a budget, then scour for reviews at that price point and see what you find. Might be worth considering a second-hand camera a year or two old. Digital cameras depreciate fairly steeply, but the tech has been at a high level for years now and you may get more for your money.

Although it's a ballache, research is everything - plenty of mugs of tea/coffee/beer and poring over reviews and sample images until you see the combination of spec/quality you like.

Personally, I'm a Canon man and have been for over 20 years - the one time I had a camera "go rogue" on me was my backup G12 about 10 years ago and even though it was out of warranty, Canon repaired it for me for free.
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TG.

[JackButler]

I gave up photography as a hobby when I found myself seriously considering spending £5k on a lens . . . .

I like birds & I like photo'ing birds, but unless you have the right gear then you'll never be happy with the results 'cos you are always comparing them to the £money shots.

I went the wildlife cam route. I set the cam, leave it for a few days, then go through the 1000's of images (don't go MMS) to keep the ones I like.

And I've had some corkers. I have some brilliant shots of our local Badger family (first time for many in the village to actually see him), a Kingfisher not 2ft from the cam, numerous hedgehogs & some spectacular shots from when I set it up close to the birdfeeders.

With a good one costing less than £150 it might be worth a try???
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I clean my guns with the tears of the snivelling, left wing scum.

[Kawasaki Jimbo]

I “moved up” to this -

https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lumix-digital-cameras/bridge-cameras/dc-fz82.html

-and it was fine but just too bulky without being noticeably better than the previous pocket camera (which broke), and I’m now much happier with this -

https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lumix-digital-cameras/superzoom-cameras/dmc-tz80eb.html

I’m just a snapper anyway. I had enough awareness to note that auto-settings weren’t always best but I’ve never bothered to learn how to optimise manually. Wildlife and aircraft don’t linger long enough for all that.

[Kawasaki Jimbo]

[A100man]

I get the big glass lens for lots of light philosophy when dealing with film and older DLSRs but I gather that the modern CCD sensors (or whatever technology) are massively more sensitive that even the very fastest films 10x or more ISO.

This hopefully means that smaller lens cameras (like the bridge ones) are in with a chance these days - just look what you can do with a modern cell phone !
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Now: A100, GT250A, XJ598, FZ750

Then: Fizz, RS200, KL250, XJ550, Laverda Alpina, XJ600, FZS600

[martin734]

When buying a camera the things to look at at are the camera lens min and max focal length. The type of zoom, whether it is optical or a mix of optical and digital (optical zoom will always give better picture quality). The sensor size and the max pixel resolution. Although you may be tempted to go for the camera with the biggest pixel count and zoom, there is a little more than that. A bigger sensor is more important than max pixel count. a 16mp camera with an APS-C sensor with give better picture quality than a 20mp camera with an 1/2.3 inch sensor. For anything more than 16mp you really need an APS-C sensor or bigger.

For bird watching you want as long a focal length as you can get. With a bridge camera with a fix lens, the lens is usually marked with a 35mm equivalent focal length, look for one that is at least 900mm.

When it comes to zoom, the bigger the zoom the bigger the range between the maximum and minimum focal length, but it does not necessarily mean that a bigger zoom will allow you to take longer range photos, that is determined by the max focal length. There are two tpes of zoom, optical, which is actually done by adjusting the focal length of the lens and digital zoom, which is done by software in the camera simply enlarging the image, but at the cost of image resolution and quality. Optical zoom is always better.

When buying, my advice would be to go to a specialist camera shop rather than a general electronics shop, the staff will be much more knowledgeable Get the staff to demonstrate the camera's features and get your wife to hold it and actually take some photos with it, some cameras are much more user friendly than others, there is also a big difference in size and weight.
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Current bike: ST1100 "Big Red"

[A100man]

[doggone]

You couldn't go far wrong with something like
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DSCRX10M3-CE3-Cyber-SHOT-DSC-RX10-III/dp/B01E7NHNW8

There's a new Mk4 (or 5?) coming out you might keep an eye out for used ones on e.g. WEX.
Probably more than you wanted to pay but not outrageous for the zoom and overall ability.

Oh look.
It's not mine BTW
https://www.wexphotovideo.com/sony-cyber-shot-rx10-iii-digital-camera-used-1767588/

[ThunderGuts]

[Polarbear]

It does look good but she's never going to fork out that much for a camera.

TBH neither would I for that. Rightly or wrongly for that amount of money I'd be looking at DSLR's and interchangeable lenses.

Anyway, thanks for all your input. Looks like she's decided on a Nikon B600. Do not ask me why but I have a horrible feeling it's because they come in red.

https://www.nikon.co.uk/en_GB/product/digital-cameras/coolpix/bridge/coolpix-b600-red
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[ThunderGuts]

[Kawasaki Jimbo]

I’ve noticed that magnification seems to wash colours out a bit. Not sure if that’s a thing or just down to my cameras.

[Islander]