What are peoples thoughts on a decent compact digital for low light shots. I have had a Konica KD510z/Dimage 500, which was perfect , but sadly fell over and died .
I bought a Olympus Mju verve S as it seemed ideal for taking on trips, and whilst it was pretty good for daylight shots , its low light performance was shocking as was its ability to deal with high contrast
DSLR not really an option for me, but would like a robust compact digi to take cimbing to capture those great shots from early Alpine starts.
Small want list - 5 - 7 Mega pixels, compact, low light performance, less than £200 - card compatability would be
In reply to industrialiceman: I'd like to find one as well (for taking up multi-pitch climbs). Not even low light (ISO800 and upwards), but the ISO200/400 performance of most digital compacts is just terrible
In reply to industrialiceman: I'm sure when I was looking at the reviews of the fuji f30 one of the things noted was it's low light level performance, and that it had reasonably low noise etc. at ISO800 and occasionally even higher. I don't know much about cameras but it might be worth checking out.
My Panasonic TZ1 is fine in decent light - the colours and clarity are really good - but it is truly shocking in low light.
In reply to the OP:
That's the only criticism I have of my camera and I would specifically 'un-recommend' it if you're even remotely likely to need it for low light photos.
(I think a non-recommendation can often be just as helpful as a positive recommendation!)
In reply to industrialiceman: I bought the Canon PowerShot A710 IS about two months ago. Whilst I am certainly no expert, I have been very impressed with the pics that it has taken in low/poor light conditions.
These were taken about 6 weeks ago.
http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.php?id=64674 This one was at about 10pm the night before. I'd tweaked the settings (although I can't remember what they were as the originals are on home PC), and was amazed at the pic that came out. It was very dark and it had gathered more light than we able to see with our own eyes.
The only processing I did was cropping, resizing and sharpening. I think I slightly adjusted the saturation on the sunrise pic, but nothing on the moon one.
Don't know how a different camera would have handled those conditions, but I think mine did a good job.
I'd second with F31fd - though strictly speaking its just over £200!
Trouble is, it really struggles to focus in really low light if there's anything reflective about - it gets very confused, poor thing, when it turns it's own illuminator on.
> I'd second with F31fd - though strictly speaking its just over £200!
It's £135 on amazon
I'm looking at selling my f10 to my sister and getting either this or the F30, seem to remember reading a review that suggest the F31d isn't any improvement on the f30.
I do love my camera though and I think i'd feel guilty giving it away :-S
In reply to industrialiceman: Very easy to take a guess at the low light performance of a camera you are looking for one with a large diameter lens. This is made even worse by the small sensor size of most digital cameras meaning even less light gets to the chip. The CCD chips do varry but there is only so much you can do with the light availible. The mju being particularly bad in this regard.
I used to have a 35mm samsung that was very good in just this catogry but I would be trying to find a camera that is about the same size as the old 35mm compacts with a decent lens size. there is only so much you can do to make a camera smaller and keep it effective eventualy the designers and the punters will realise this and the size will bounce back up a bit
In reply to davidwright: I'm no camera buff, your assesment fits my experience! My first digital was a Kodak 4800 zoom at 3 MP and had a huge body and lens, some of the best ever low light shots I've had. Subsequent cameras have been smaller and less able to cope, the Mju is just terrible looks like it has been taken on 1 mp camera phone .
