Sony Cybershot RX100.5A in the city 15 November 2019

The number of photography websites  confidently predicting the total demise of the compact camera has risen sharply in recent months. The purveyors of this view are not prescient or even particularly clever. If one simply projects the recorded downward trajectory of compact camera sales year-on-year the line will hit zero tomorrow. Or next month. Or next year. Sometime, anyway. Soon say the savants.

Smart phones have won the battle, compact cameras are done.

Maybe they are right. But I think that if camera makers revisited the compact camera concept with some refreshed and innovative ideas they could turn the tide around or at least stem the current freefall.

In particular it seems to me that camera makers appear to have the idea that they are producing gadgets. Things. Stuff. 

Of course I cannot read their collective corporate minds but that is how it looks to me based on the flow of compromised, half baked products which we see.

I believe they would do better to understand that they are really selling an experience and they need to clarify exactly what that experience might be.

I will return to this theme in a separate post soon but in the meantime we still have some compacts capable of making very good pictures in a variety of circumstances.

One of these is the Sony RX100.5A. None of the RX100 series models will win a prize for ergonomics but they are all capable picture takers.

This post shows some photos taken with the RX100.5A in Sydney at various times this year.

I cannot say I find the experience of using this camera rewarding but I continue to use it for the time being because it comes with fewer operational faults and failings than similar compacts from Canon , Nikon, Ricoh and Panasonic.

It’s the least unacceptable of the bunch. Not much of a recommendation but there it is.

See my Compendium of compromised compacts on this blog.

At least the Sony has a viewfinder although it is a pesky nuisance to use. 

Smartphones have none. I was recently using my smartphone in bright sunlight and found it impossible to get a clear view of the subject on the screen.

Sony RX10.4 on Lord Howe Island 15 November 2019

Fourteen frames stitched in Photoshop using the new content aware fill for panoramas which worked like a charm

Lord Howe is a small (about 10x2 kilometres) rocky island in the Tasman sea about 550 kilometres East of Australia. It was listed as  a World Heritage area in 1982. It has the most southerly coral reef on the planet.

I recently spent a week there enjoying the sights.

As I knew birds and BIFs would be prominent photographic subjects I elected to take my Sony RX10.4 bridge camera. This has more reach and speed than the Lumix FZ1000.2.

The Sony proved very suitable particularly with birds in flight which are relatively easy to photograph on lord Howe as some of them will come in close to humans.

White tern. These birds lay their egg directly onto the branch of a Norfolk island pine tree. 

Thousands of sooty terns breeding

Checking out the photographer. The sooty tern was so close I had to use the wide end of the zoom

Pee wee lunch

Buff banded rail

 

Banyan tree

Panasonic Lumix FZ1000.2 at sculptures by the sea 14 November 2019

Each year Sydney hosts a sculpture festival with works displayed on the pedestrian path from Tamarama beach to Bondi Beach. Many of the sculptures are elaborately conceived and constructed to fit a precise location on the rocky headland overlooking the sea.

I thought this year’s entries might have lacked a little of the extravagant style seen in previous years.

Nevertheless there was plenty to interest the huge crowds which always show up for this event.

The Lumix FZ1000.2 was the ideal device to capture the show and the red wattle bird which came down to see what all the fuss was about.

The FZ1000.2 is my favourite all purpose, go anywhere, do anything camera.  It can deliver consistently good results for general photography, landscape, action, and just about anything else, in a compact light, modestly priced package with excellent ergonomics.