Verdict on Nikon p500 vs Canon SX 30is

[drrajnishpatel]

Dear Friends,

I am planning to purchase a Bridge camera, and have finally narrowed down to either Nikon p500 or Canon SX 30is, but i want someone more knowledgable to guide me perfectly to help me buy the best of the two without having to feel miserable of having bought a wrong one ... recently I bought a fujifilm jz300 compact with 10x optical zoom and landed into trouble of having no control over the most important 2 components, the fujifilm does not permit controll on Aperture and Shutter speed in any modes...

[Shadowman]

Not familiar with these particular brands but I do own the Nikon P90 and it's a good camera with a few quirks. If it is possible get into a camera store and try each physically, comparing technical specifications is a great method of evaluating a camera but once you know the capabilities of the model and feel that it meets your needs and expectations, the next aspect of camera choice is your interaction with the equipment. Canon has quite a few reviews on their website and some of the comments are unfavorable, so start there and see if it will effect your needs.

[Black Pearl]

I've played with the Canon SX30is countless times at work and its a fantastic camera - I've had less time to experiment with the Nikon but it does have some very strong plus-points:

A slightly wider lens - personally I'd rather have that over a handful of mm's on the top end.
A 2011 generation backside illuminated sensor - likely to be better in low light/high ISO's
Full HD 1080p video recording - I've watched last years P100 output on a 50" Panasonic plasma and it was superb.
The back screen is better - I'd swear it was the same as the one on my D300s and other Nikon D-SLR's which are all brilliant.


You need to go to your local photography store as has been recommended and have a play as you may find one feels better to you and that could be the decider. Please, please don't just buy one online 'cos its cheaper' it could end up being an even bigger mistake than your Fujifilm.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Rajnish (?),

Welcome to the CiC forums from me, great to have you join us.

Personally, having had a quick peruse of the specifications, I wouldn't buy either of these because;
a) No RAW capability
b) No optical viewfinder (fortunately, niether are reliant on the LCD alone and do have "EVF" or electronic viewfinders)

If you want to get the most from your photographs, you will one day have to get into PP (post processing) and what you can achieve in PP from a RAW image, compared to a jpg image, is a far better end result, one that will often be indistiguishable from a DSLR, especially in good light.

The lack of an optical viewfinder may not be too big a problem for you - it depends what you want to shoot. Timing of critical action shots will be much harder using an EVF due to the delay between real life and you seeing it happen in EVF.

Hope that helps,

[Black Pearl]

The EVF, whether you like it or not, is here to stay and will replace the optical path through our cameras in all but the very high-end offering. Think not? The fastest growing market in the UK (and many other countries) is the Compact System Cameras - Olympus PEN (no EVF unless you buy one) - Panasonic G Series (not all with an EVF at all) - Samsung NX (not all with a EVF at all) - Sony NEX (no EVF at all) and Nikon have said there is one in the pipe-line. Canon will follow as will Fuji and speaking of Sony they have said ALL their future offering will be like the A33/A55 being SLT models and not SLR model. If you haven'y used one of these I urge you to go try, you may be very surprised at just how good they are.

Back to the cameras in question: It is not possible to make an optical viewfinder with a 35/36x zoom and both keep the cost down to a point where anyone would buy it and keep the size down to a point where anyone would carry the darn thing about. Also I'm not aware of a manufacturer who offers a 36x optical zoom for the front of their DSLR's and this is where the cameras in question come into their own. Someone considering buying one doesn't usually want a DSLR as they are expensive, bulky, heavy, limited in lens range and often too complicated and so off-putting.

For all but the very, very, very image quality conscience the advantages of shooting RAW are irrelevant. The vast majority of amateur photographers I speak to on a daily basis don't shoot RAW and quite frankly they don't care about the absolute IQ, instead preferring to go out and take nice pictures to view on their HD televisions or digital picture frames, stick on their laptops and if I badger them into it occasionally even print the odd one or two.

[inkista]

... I wouldn't buy either of these because;
a) No RAW capability
b) No optical viewfinder (fortunately, niether are reliant on the LCD alone and do have "EVF" or electronic viewfinders)

I have a G9 with an optical viewfinder. It sucks mightily; no information, 80% coverage, not corrected for parallax, and a third of it's obscured if I use a lensmate. I still use the LCD instead. While an optical viewfinder is nice to have, with a P&S digital, to me, it's not so much a dealbreaker. Even if you get one, they tend to suck (we're not talking about the X100, here).

On the RAW capability front, the SX30IS has a beta version of the CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) available to it to use RAW (and play tetris, but that's another story). I admit, it's not the most polished-looking interface, but it doesn't void your warranty, is eminently removable, and gives you RAW capability on cameras that don't have it built in.

[Dave Humphries]

If you haven'y used one of these I urge you to go try, you may be very surprised at just how good they are.

Oh, I have Robin,

I speak from experience of shooting with a Fuji Finepix S6500 for about 2 years.

The delay was the main (and unavoidable) problem, although in time, there will be electronic workarounds offered to counter it on newer/future models "pre-capture", I'll call it

I agree the trend in camera development seems to be toward the large (often interchangable) lens, large sensor 'bridge' camera. Indeed it would be tempting, as you say, they do have certain advantages - presummably one can zoom the EVF to critically manually focus on the newer models too. (Please don't tell me people have given that up too these days )

Maybe, being still vaguely in the TV industry, I'm twitchy about delays (reality:camera, satellite:studio, satellite/DTT:viewer and everything in between with a framestore in it, right upto and including TVs that are essentially computers, all of which which (for TV), knacker the lip-sync. without careful 'engineering'), the "d" in digital stands for "delay"

[Black Pearl]

Go find a store that has a PEN in with one of their 1.4 million pixel viewfinders on it - beautiful.

The best integration is definitely on the Sony SLT bodies, where the EVF is sharp, fast, has a really cool virtual horizon and when you change the exposure in manual mode the display can be set to show you the actual results live. A friend uses one and he's into macro big time, its good enough to allow precise manual focus which is probably the hardest test to throw at it.


Tetris on a camera......now theres an idea