love canon, but need good indoor low light camera

[randyesue]

I have an old canon s230 and just got a great low light camcorder. As I stated above, I'm looking for a good camera that can take indoor shots especially of my kids. My s230 gets REALLY noisy at anything above iso100 and no flash shots end up disasterous when changing settings.

Video and size are unimportant. I know the Fuji has a type of image stabilizer and seems to do well at higher iso. I love Canon, but will switch if need be.

Thanks in advance.

[mtclimber]

Randy-

You might want to take a look at the Fuji F-10. It is a great low light digital camera.

MT

[curtisfun]

If size is unimportant, check out the Fuji S5200, it's bigger than its bigger brother the F10, but it's quite a bit more versatile. You can add additional lenses like a Raynox .66x wide angle adaptor to it without too much fuss, and it performs alot better than the F10 if you use any zoom. F10 close down to F5.6 at full telephoto, while the S5200 close down to F3.5 at 2 clicks before full telephoto, but amazingly it goes back to F3.2 at full zoom.

I brought the S5200 to a concert on Christmas Eve, and I think out of the F10, S9500, and S5200, only the S5200 can perform as well as it did. The S9500 has resolution advantage, unfortunately its apetture close down to F4.7 at full telephoto. Obviously the F10, with only 3x optical zoom, will not do too well in this situation.

The other digicam I would recommend is the Panasonic FZ30, it has pretty respectable performance at iso400, with the combination of O.I.S. and fast lens, it is one of most versatile digicam around.

curtis

Gallery here:

http://curtisfun.myphotoalbum.com/vi...umName=album13

[Carskick]

I second the F10. I would say the S5200 were a good alternative if zoom is important, however, the pictures get noiser much quicker. The F10s ISO1600 is less noisy than the S5200s ISO800 setting. Fuji actually does not use image stabilization, instead they increase the ISO. The S5200 would really be the perfect camera if it had a larger sensor and image stabilization. clean ISO800 shots matched with image stablization would give good zoom at low light. Just imagine the posibilities... I hope you are listening, Fuji.

[curtisfun]

The F10 and the newer F11 are incredible cameras, it boost usable iso1600 images good for 8x10 prints right out of the camera. Both the S5200 and S9500 fall a little short of achieving that, you can still get 4x6 prints at iso1600. However, both cameras provides RAW mode so you can get good quality iso1600 images by post-processing them yourself, bypassing the in-camera's overly aggressive noise-reduction. Since the F10 and F11 does not have RAW mode, you cannot really do a direct noise comparison against the S5200 and S9500, but I would guess the noise level must be less because the noise-reduction used is less aggressive, resulting in less NR artifact such as watercolor and color blotches.

At wide angle, I would give the F10 and F11 a 1-1/3 fstop advantage over the S5200 and 1-fstop advantage over the S9500. If you shoot in RAW, the advantage would be more like 1/3 fstop over the S5200 and it would be come out about even when compare to the S9500.

In full telephoto zoom setting, the S5200 has a 1-fstop advantage over the F10 when shooting in Jpeg mode, it has a 2-fstop advantage over the F10 when you shoot in RAW. Compare to the S9500, the S5200 would have a 1-1/3 fstop advantage over the S9500.

So if you never bother using zoom, definitely go with the F10 or S9500, the S9500 has the advantage of wider wide angle and more MP for cropping. If you plan on using any zoom, you should definitely consider the S5200, as well as the S9500 and Panasonic FZ30.

It would be nice to fit an ultrazoom lens into the F10 sensor, but we know that would be pretty difficult to achieve due to the bigger sensor would require a much bulkier lens to get the same zoom factor. I would be quite happy with a 7x zoom lens like the Canon Pro 1, then you can attach a TCON 1.7x adapter and achieve 12x zoom.

Also, from my experience with in-door lighting, especially at night, when you are only dealing with indoor incandecent type of lighting, even iso1600 at f2.8 is still too slow to freeze subject movement unless they are standing still, so you may still have to resort to using flash.



curtis

[randyesue]

Thank you all for the input. I'm still unsure of the Fuji F10. HOw would the Canon A620 with a slave flash compare for low light?

[mtclimber]

RandyeSue-

Well, attached you will find a photo that I took with my Fuji S-5200 + a slave flashin the wide angle mode with the ISO set to ISO 100. The reach across the room was about 22 feet and I got good light coverage. However you must keep in mind that there was also a good deal of window light in the room as well.

Also keep in mind that the light output of a slave flash will vary from one model slave flash to another. Also the S-5200 is a 5mp camera while the Canon A-620 is a 7.2mp camera. So this is approximately what a Canon A-620 would look like when equipped with a slave flash.

MT

[randyesue]

Thanks mtclimber. I got a chance to borrow my friend's F-10 last night. Awesome pictures at high iso without flash - no noise, great light and clarity!!!

Here's my dilemma. I already have a Canon S230 that I carry everywhere with me. Am I just duplicating that camera (altho the F10 is much better at high iso)? I was thinking of getting something larger with a brighter lens that I'd be able to grow with.

Thanks,

Randye

[mtclimber]

Randye-

Then you might want to look at the Fuji S-5200. Here is a NO Flash photo done with the S-5200.

MT

[linuxidiot]

I am also in the market for a new camera for indoor usually low-light, and at least 4 MegaPixels, however I am wanting somewhat small. Friend has a Nikon 5200 which he loves, however I am not sure what to look for for indoor situations.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"I am wanting to upgrade from a Canon A40, with 2.0 MegaPixels.

Hope I'm not threadjacking