Camera for PJ shows needed.

InHiding19

Someone stole my camera saturday night and now I need to buy a new one. I leave for Europe on saturday and was wondering if you guys had any suggestions on what to buy. I will probably buy one online and have it overnighted. Do you guys have any suggestions for one in 150-250 range that will take good concert photos. I think this is related to shutter speed, but I don't know crap about photography.

pjsteelerfan

I have a Cannon that is pretty good that I got for somewhere in that range.

AtlantaJammer

pjsteelerfan wrote:

I have a Cannon that is pretty good that I got for somewhere in that range.

Cannons are the shit. Awesome video as well!

mfc2006

I have a Kodak V1073-HD. nice camera at a good price.
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier. ... stid=17393

also---it's cheaper on other sites.

demetrios

I'm gonna try & bring one of these to the show's! Right up close to Ed!

mfc2006

demetrios wrote:

I'm gonna try & bring one of these to the show's! Right up close to Ed!

that's gonna be a pain going through security, D!

strummers

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... eda3051-21

I've got that one and its a great compact, just wish it had more manual settings - there is the next model up from that one out now (with 12x zoom), but not sure what that one's like.

Most of these are taken with the TZ5 (other than some taken with my mobile phone and the DeeExpus/Aimless Mules ones taken with my D300):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/strummers2 ... 697147698/

For concerts its best to have one that has some control over shutter speed and iso. Fast shutter speed will capture the action (slower will make it more blurry), but the fast shutter speed means less light is let in, so you need a camera that performs well on a high iso setting. The TZ5 has a pretty good balance between being able to manually adjust some settings (or having them within certain limits) and having a pretty good auto mode.

acutejam

I see it's getting dropped from a lot of the point-n-shoot digital cams specs, but what you're looking for is APERTURE -- the hole that lets the light through. You want a big hole to let LOTS of light through. The smaller the F-stop number (or f/value), the larger the lens opening (aperture).

For 35MM and DSL's it's called "Fast Glass." So far I've seen f2.8 on many digital point-n-shoots with only a few f2.0 or f2.4s. (Some have a range, some only one value.)

Wedding photographers and new parents look for lenses with f 1.2, f1.4 or f1.8 to be able to shoot without a flash (disrupt events, strobing a baby's eyes). Shoot without the flash by getting as low an F-STOP as you can and learn to use your camera's APERTURE PRIORITY mode, specify a low f-stop and let it gauge shutter speed.

ISO relates to a film's sensitivy to light and has morphed into the digital camera's sensor's sensitivity -- higher ISO begins to introduce noise (or grain in film). So yes, Low ISO camera's are another good standard.

benjs

The best point-and-shoot for concert photography, in my opinion, to date, is the Canon PowerShot G9. It's not a current camera, it's one generation old (will be two within about three or four months or so, for those of you looking at the G10), but has larger pixels than the G10 since it's ten megapixels rather than nine, meaning greater low-light performance. It allows you to change ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and shoot in RAW. If you do a craigslist search, you may get lucky and find one used at your price point since it's roughly two or three years old now. Otherwise, I'd say go Canon. I've had nothing but good experiences with their point and shoots, and it's what my dad's photography store almost always tends to recommend first as well based on the staff's good experiences as well.

strummers

acutejam wrote:

I see it's getting dropped from a lot of the point-n-shoot digital cams specs, but what you're looking for is APERTURE -- the hole that lets the light through. You want a big hole to let LOTS of light through. The smaller the F-stop number (or f/value), the larger the lens opening (aperture).

For 35MM and DSL's it's called "Fast Glass." So far I've seen f2.8 on many digital point-n-shoots with only a few f2.0 or f2.4s. (Some have a range, some only one value.)

Wedding photographers and new parents look for lenses with f 1.2, f1.4 or f1.8 to be able to shoot without a flash (disrupt events, strobing a baby's eyes). Shoot without the flash by getting as low an F-STOP as you can and learn to use your camera's APERTURE PRIORITY mode, specify a low f-stop and let it gauge shutter speed.

ISO relates to a film's sensitivy to light and has morphed into the digital camera's sensor's sensitivity -- higher ISO begins to introduce noise (or grain in film). So yes, Low ISO camera's are another good standard.

Yeah, ideally aperture is the best thing to look for - but most (if not all) of the current compacts don't tend to have it as a separate option. More likely they'll have different 'scene' modes instead, such as 'night' mode. Also, from what I've found from using a few different compacts is if you select a low iso your images tend to be on the dark side. Therefore you need a camera that is capable of working in low light situations and is able to perform well at a higher iso without introducing too much noise.

acutejam

Good point above -- they often just don't list aperture. I'm finding it buried under "LENS TYPE" most often and haven't seen many in the 2.0-3.0 range quite yet.

here's the canon D10: Zoom lens - 6.2 mm - 18.6 mm - F/2.8-4.9