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What digital compact packs the sharpest lens?

sideshowbob said:
People say this all the time, but it isn't really true. For example, somebody like our very own guybat is an excellent photographer, but as soon as he started using a Rolleiflex rather than his previous DSLR his pictures became an order of magnitude better, because the Rollei is a far better camera in just about every way for his style of photography.
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maybe - but the opposite is also true - just because you have a good / espensive camera - it doesn't automatically make you a good photographer... :)
 
People say this all the time, but it isn't really true. For example, somebody like our very own guybat is an excellent photographer, but as soon as he started using a Rolleiflex rather than his previous DSLR his pictures became an order of magnitude better, because the Rollei is a far better camera in just about every way for his style of photography.
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that's simple - using the rollei he's slowing down, thinking, and considering his images. rather than the blat-blat-blat that most use their DSLRs for.

One example from a kit-obsessed bunch on a hifi forum does not a strongest argument break.
 
auric said:
kodak4000.jpg
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Wow! my first camera!

Haven't seen one of them in a while. I put a lot of rolls through that puppy. Errr ..... Disks.
 
Not really Rico. I took pictures just as slowly, and just as rarely, with a dSLR as with the Rollei. Three or four shots a day is good for me. But as soon as I got the Rollei, I saw, framed, and thought differently. Qualitatively differently. It was a different, more passive and receptive way of looking.

New or different cameras don't necessarily improve your photography. But just occasionally, you can a find a camera that fits with and works with the way you want to think and see.
 
I'm with Rico on the above argument.
I recently bought the Best Camera app for my iPhone and I'm hooked. I'm taking loads more photos than I would have done with my DSLR, and the thing is ALWAYS with me.
Here's a shot I took at work:

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I really couldn't have made that shot any better with my 40D and any lens I can afford. And I might attract the wrong attention photographing 30mm ammunition!

Tony

PS. http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/09/best-camera-iphone-app-book-community.html
 
Rico said:
One example from a kit-obsessed bunch on a hifi forum does not a strongest argument break.
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Your argument is pretty weak, I'm afraid.

I gave just one, local, example, but the fact is that virtually every internationally exhibited famous fine art photographer I can think of is strongly associated with the use of one or two favourite cameras, which suggests gear choice is important to pretty much every working photographer. And this is not at all surprising. Photography is an art, but it's an art that is instantiated through technology, and different technologies produce different results. Most of my favourite photographers use medium and large format equipment, and I think you can be sure that if they thought they could get the same results with compact equipment then they would use it in preference. But they can't, so they continue to use heavy and idiosyncratic cameras, because they perform better for their purposes.

I can't think of any real working photographers who don't have a strong preference for a particular camera or cameras, which suggests they recognise that gear choice does make a difference.
 
sideshowbob said:
Most of my favourite photographers use medium and large format equipment, and I think you can be sure that if they thought they could get the same results with compact equipment then they would use it in preference
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I agree with pretty much everything you say, except there is always one exception to the "nobody uses compacts" rule of thumb and that is Joe Cornish who shoots quite a lot of stuff with a Ricoh GRD2
 
Anex said:
He didn't say nobody uses compacts.
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Anex, I wasn't meaning to be literal, I think Ian meant that nobody that he likes the photography of uses a compact.

Ian, you might want to have a look at Joe Cornish's work with the GRD2, it is pretty amazing stuff from a camera that you already have (unless you've sold it?)
 
Not using compacts wasn't my point at all. Alex Majoli uses them exclusively, and he's a great photographer. My point was that all working photographers have strong opinions about which cameras they prefer to use, and that's because some cameras are better tools for them than others, and the idea that "it's not about the gear" is just wrong. Photographers make gear choices all the time, because different equipment renders the same image differently, and every photographer worth his salt has strong preferences for a particular style or styles of rendering.
 
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