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Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

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Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#61

Post by 999900000999 »

goblin89 wrote: post #46
999900000999 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. This is a bizarre article. The elephant in the room is on the lower end most mid-range phones will beat a digital camera under 300$. I wouldn't give a kid an expensive camera. Kids drop things. If you give Junior an 850$ camera and he loses it that's on you. Then again, this is HN. Maybe he makes 700k TC per year and money is no object. Even then he admits for a few hundred more you can get a muc…

This picks apart image quality from an iPhone 15 Pro Max regarding noise and usable dynamic range: https://youtu.be/bSm3LXNF7pI?feature=shared&t=1360 For anything more than basic software-processed output and utility snaps or selfies, this high-end phone loses pretty terribly to an average hybrid consumer camera.

What’s the net output for the majority of photos?

Probably a social media post at best. I don’t think most viewers are going to be that critical. The best camera is always the one you have on you .

Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#62

Post by 0_____0 »

Clamchop wrote: post #27
999900000999 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. This is a bizarre article. The elephant in the room is on the lower end most mid-range phones will beat a digital camera under 300$. I wouldn't give a kid an expensive camera. Kids drop things. If you give Junior an 850$ camera and he loses it that's on you. Then again, this is HN. Maybe he makes 700k TC per year and money is no object. Even then he admits for a few hundred more you can get a muc…

Price sensitivity re: children and breaking things is going to depend on financial situation and intention. This is a person that shoots a $10k Leica, so I'm going to guess there's more than enough money and a strong intent to share an "authentic" photography experience (a camera of traditional form) with their kids. The latter appears to be this camera's gimmick. They describe this camera as "cheap" even!

The Kodak Brownie addressed exactly this issue and was released 125 years ago!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Brownie

Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#63

Post by semi-extrinsic »

jcynix wrote: post #45
chamsom wrote: post #9

According to this essay, the options for his kids are a $50 toy "camera" and an $850 niche camera possibly targeted at people who usually own the $2,000 line of the same brand. Surely there's something in between? I can't help but wonder if this is a purchase for himself.

For kids, I'd buy a small used micro four thirds camera with a pancake lens. Cheaper and later expandable if they enjoy taking pictures. Or, if it needs to be a zoomable lens, I'd look for some used (but well maintained) Digital Ixus or PowerShot. With either of these they can learn much more about photography than with a toy camera.

Canon PowerShot is the way. I grew up on those. It's the perfect type of camera for letting kids/teenagers figure out how photography works as they grow up.

I've taken pictures with a 7MP 1/1.8" sensor PowerShot that look so good the prints still hang in several family members' houses. And not because they are photos of people, I'm talking macros and underwater photography (the latter with an original Canon waterproof case and a DIY-contraption with an optically slaved 1970s Nikonos flash).

If you put the work in and ignored the DSLR crowd, those cameras were fantastic. I had a full tilt LCD screen in 2005. That feature is completely standard today, but it took the DSLRs a full decade to catch up. On the later models you got 20x, even 40x optical zoom with decent apertures.

With CHDK we had global electronic shutter working down to 1/30,000 of a second. We wrote code than ran on our cameras to do motion detection for stuff like lightning photography. We scripted timelapses with exposure control that factored in sunset timings. We scripted focus and exposure bracketing for HDR and infinite DoF. That was twenty years ago, on an undocumented 32-bit architecture that people painstakingly reverse engineered.

The only thing we could never get was bokeh on the telephoto end. Optics is a harsh mistress.

Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#64

Post by ezst »

PaulHoule wrote: post #54
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you let guests shoot the 90mm in full auto mode? Personally I've found that the general population has a really hard time operating a camera. My partner and I can both do photography though I'm more serious about it and we frequently travel with cameras. When we want someone else to take pictures, even on Auto mode I find others have a hard time. If we're in a hurry and want a picture taken by someone else we just…

Usually it would be aperture priority (f/2.8) in a situation where I know what the light is so I can set the ISO and leave it there. I develop with DxO so I am not worried about noise or the shutter speed too long but I do worry about hitting 1/8000 sec -- so usually it would be a situation where the lighting is predictable. The autofocus can be set in a mode where it will reliably lock on the subject's eye. I would…

For me it's the AF. Every. Single. Time. People on smartphone, used to near-infinite depth of field, just forgot/never learned about focusing, and handing them a camera just too often results with the background being in focus and the subject blurry.

Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#65

Post by CobaltFire »

999900000999 wrote: post #17
chamsom wrote: post #9

According to this essay, the options for his kids are a $50 toy "camera" and an $850 niche camera possibly targeted at people who usually own the $2,000 line of the same brand. Surely there's something in between? I can't help but wonder if this is a purchase for himself.

My thoughts exactly. This is a bizarre article. The elephant in the room is on the lower end most mid-range phones will beat a digital camera under 300$. I wouldn't give a kid an expensive camera. Kids drop things. If you give Junior an 850$ camera and he loses it that's on you. Then again, this is HN. Maybe he makes 700k TC per year and money is no object. Even then he admits for a few hundred more you can get a muc…

My wifes new Kodak Pixpro FZ55 ($130) absolutely smokes my iPhone 15 Pro.

I shoot a Panasonic G9 II and thats a completely different level.

Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#66

Post by CobaltFire »

goblin89 wrote: post #46
999900000999 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. This is a bizarre article. The elephant in the room is on the lower end most mid-range phones will beat a digital camera under 300$. I wouldn't give a kid an expensive camera. Kids drop things. If you give Junior an 850$ camera and he loses it that's on you. Then again, this is HN. Maybe he makes 700k TC per year and money is no object. Even then he admits for a few hundred more you can get a muc…

This picks apart image quality from an iPhone 15 Pro Max regarding noise and usable dynamic range: https://youtu.be/bSm3LXNF7pI?feature=shared&t=1360 For anything more than basic software-processed output and utility snaps or selfies, this high-end phone loses pretty terribly to an average hybrid consumer camera.

Absolutely. We have an iPhone 15 Pro Max, a Kodak Pixpro FZ55, and a Panasonic G9 II + Panasonic Leica 12-60.

The iPhone can't even hope to touch the cheap Kodak, much less the actual mirrorless.

Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#67

Post by CobaltFire »

jcynix wrote: post #45
chamsom wrote: post #9

According to this essay, the options for his kids are a $50 toy "camera" and an $850 niche camera possibly targeted at people who usually own the $2,000 line of the same brand. Surely there's something in between? I can't help but wonder if this is a purchase for himself.

For kids, I'd buy a small used micro four thirds camera with a pancake lens. Cheaper and later expandable if they enjoy taking pictures. Or, if it needs to be a zoomable lens, I'd look for some used (but well maintained) Digital Ixus or PowerShot. With either of these they can learn much more about photography than with a toy camera.

As a long time micro four thirds shooter:

The Panasonic 20/1.7 is an amazing little lens but its autofocus is absolutely horrible. I used to carry it and an E-M5 (the first one) and the shots were great but AF was near useless.

Re: Fujifilm X half: Is it the perfect family camera?

#69

Post by CobaltFire »

yazantapuz wrote: post #15
lokl wrote: post #12

Used cameras and lenses can offer tremendous value.

This. My humble setup is a Sony a100 with some good old Minolta lenses.

My first SLR was an A100.

Fond memories, I carried that camera all over the world for 6 years.

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