Dan, I never used a "bridge camera". I do love my Nikon D80. You may want to check the product reviews from www.cnet.com. I saw pros and cons on the Sony Nex5 you ask about. From the prices of bridge cameras would you not do just as well by getting a full size DSLR like a Nikon D80 or if I bought another today I would get a D90. I think you would get more camera and versatility for a little more money. If you are against a full size, Nikon has the Coolpix P90 listed as a bridge camera. Don't get me wrong I think Sony has good cameras also. What is your reason that you want a bridge camera? Size, money, etc. The only advantage I see for a bridge camera is the smaller size. I had a old Minolta SRT202 35mm film camera that I was unable to give away. So I just went full size DSLR. Sometimes I do get tired of packing and carrying it around but I'm always happy with the photos when I get home. I hope this helps, I know this is kind of and old post.
Thanks for your report. Yes, the Nikon DSLR's are great, but after years of carrying around an extra lens or two with my Canon AE1-Program, the thought of this again with a DSLR makes me think twice.
I did play with the Sony NEX-5 and I like it a lot, but again, only the one short focal length lens and they are heavy when they are the telephoto zoom type.
I ended up buying a Panasonic FZ100 extended zoom camera over the holidays. It's a 24x zoom with an additional 4x digital. It does video in 720p or 1080i, saves pictures as JPEG or JPEG / RAW for more editing control.
I have a 32 gig class 6 chip and also a 4 gig class 2 chip. The speed of this camera is amazing and the write time for both chips is great. The point and shoot function in iA mode is very quick, just look at the subject and press the shutter button and you’ve got the picture. Even in dark settings, like our New Years Eve outing, was great, although cameras are not the best with lots of video functions, especially in low light. Out in the sun light the video is very good and maintains the stabilization built into the camera.
It has a 3” articulating LCD that makes overhead and down low shots a lot easier to compose. The camera is a 14.1 mp camera in 4:3 and goes down to 12.5 in 3:2 aspect ratio.
There is also a panoramic assist setup that lets you take a picture, move to the right and then line up the ghost picture over the new shot and then snap. This can go from left to right, right to left or down up or up down. It works very well on the couple I’ve tried so far.
The Panasonic is also a full manual with all the normal speeds and aperture settings one might expect. I did a couple 8 second exposures and they did quite well for me.
The FZ100 has a good heft feel to it and does not feel overly plastic. It has a hot shoe for additional synchronized flash when needed. It has a stereo mic for video recordings and burst mode both mechanical shutter and electronic shutter at up to 60 fps, although the per picture resolution drops considerably. It does the 11 fps at full resolution for those sports shots. It also lets you pre-focus so you can do running shots or even auto focus tracking for following a car or runner when taking a moving shot.
All in all so far, I’m happy with this Panasonic FZ100 and I think carrying this in my saddlebag without a lot of extra lenses will be a lot of fun with the optical 24x zoom on this thing.
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Topic: Extended Zoom or "Bridge Digital Camera" Questions? (Read 766 times)