essential skills: digital photography in available light
Fixed lens digital cameras are sometimes referred to as ‘Digicams’, ‘Prosumer cameras’, ‘Bridge
cameras’ or ‘EVFs’ (an acronym for ‘Electronic ViewFinders’). There is no traditional name
because this is an entirely new breed of camera where typical examples in the genre are neither
compact nor feature the mirror and pentaprism mechanisms to enable them to be called an SLR.
The quality and list of professional features that these cameras boast has been growing over the
last few years and the spec sheets have raised more than a few eyebrows amongst professional
photographers. Although the size of these cameras has been growing (largely in response to the
huge optical zooms that are integral to most of the models on offer) their price point has pretty
much remained the same.Let’s play spot the DSLR - The Fuji s9500 and Olympus E-Comparing features
The new Fuji s9500 now has a 9 megapixel sensor and a 10.7x optical zoom range via a twist-
barrel (rather than electronic) zoom control whilst the Samsung Pro 815 has an 8 megapixel
sensor and boasts a whopping 15x optical zoom spanning a colossal 28mm to 420mm zoom
range (35mm equivalent). With the arrival of these impressive lenses the need to change a lens
(which is obviously not possible if the lens is fi xed) has been rendered a non-issue. In fact the
inability to change the lens can be viewed a positive point when you consider that the ‘dust on the
sensor’ issue* has always been a non-issue for the fi xed lens digicams. The one thing you cannot
describe these prosumer level digicams as, is ‘compact’. The three prosumer digicams mentioned
here are either about the same physical size and weight as some of the lighter DSLRs (Olympus
E-500, Pentax ist and Canon EOS 350D Rebel - to name but a few) or, as is the case with the
Sony R1, even heavier.
* Only Olympus have addressed the problem of dust on the sensor to date. Olympus DSLR
cameras use a ‘Supersonic wave fi lter’ that vibrates the dust off the sensor when the
camera is powered up.