PigPog

I’ve had my Nikon D90 for a while now, and I like it a lot. I have Nikon’s 18-200 VR lens, and both SB-600 and SB-800 flashes. I carry all of these with me every day. I use a LowePro Slingshot 200, which makes it all quite easy to carry, and keeps the camera quite quick and easy to get to. Even so, it’s a lot to carry, especially when you’re just nipping to the shops, or going to work and back.

There’s a camera in my phone (Nokia E71), but it’s awful.

I’d been thinking for a while that I’d really like a compact camera, that I could take everywhere, without needing the weight and size of my usual kit. My birthday is coming up, and my parents kindly said they’d send my birthday money early so I could spend it when I had time off work.

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My first thought was a Canon Ixus. I’ve had an Ixus before, and loved it. I’ve had other Canon cameras before, and never been disappointed. It was the safe choice, and the most likely choice, but I was going to take the chance to have a look around and read some reviews.

I wanted some decent zoom range, especially at the wide end. The more zoom range the better. I also wanted it to be small. The bigger the zoom range, generally, the bigger the camera. I had some trade-off issues to work out.

The front-runner for a while was the Canon Ixus 120 IS » [ | : UK, US]. It had a reasonable zoom range, 3x, starting from 28mm. It was very small, and very nicely designed. Like almost all Ixus cameras, though, it had no manual control, and the zoom range still wasn’t great. I was finding some good recommendations for Panasonic’s Lumix range. Their ‘travel zoom’ cameras had an amazingly good zoom range for their size, but still seemed a bit bigger than I wanted.

I had a look at what our local camera shops had in stock. I really like Cameras Plus, but they didn’t have anything much of interest. J&A Cameras had a few brands in stock, and opened the cabinet for me to poke a few. I really liked the feel of the Panasonics, but didn’t quite like anything they had enough to go for it.

After a little more reading online, I was starting to feel a little frustrated. There were plenty of reasonable options, but nothing stood out. The Ixus 120 was still the best option, and I loved the way it looked, but it certainly didn’t stand out on features.

Then, I happened on a review of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX550 » [ | : UK, US]. It had a 5x zoom, starting at 25mm, which improved a bit on the Ixus. It wasn’t much bigger. The styling wasn’t quite as nice, but still looked pretty good to me – brushed metal is always a win. It had full manual control. I also wanted to use pics straight from the camera as far as possible, and it had two ‘rough’ modes that looked like they might take the sort of pics I like.

I really wanted to go somewhere and just buy it, but that didn’t seem to be an option. Nowhere seemed to actually stock it at a store. Amazon had it, though, and could deliver it the next day, so I ordered there.

It arrived the next day.

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So far, it’s doing just what I wanted. The Film Grain mode takes wonderfully ‘dirty’ low-res mono shots. The Pinhole mode takes nice low-res, low-saturation shots, with lots of vignetting. In its normal modes, it takes decent quality shots.

It’s nice and small, fits well in a pocket, as well as in a very small bag, and it makes pics I’m happy to throw straight at Flickr, without processing first.

Once we sold our house, and had a bit of money to spare, I wanted to upgrade my camera kit.  I had a Nikon D40, with the kit 18-55 lens, along with a 55-200 VR lens.  Together, they could handle most things, but there were a few problems:

• I often missed shots because I had the wrong lens on the camera.  Things that move often do so, or fly away, before you’ve had time to change lenses.  Also, if I had the wrong lens on the camera for a shot, I’d often just not take the shot rather than stop in the street swapping lenses around.
• Although I was generally impressed with the D40 for the low price, it’s not especially speedy, especially with RAW files.
• 6 megapixels.  Plenty for most things I want to do, but doesn’t leave a lot of spare for cropping.
• Lighting is very limited with the built-in flash.  I could add an off-camera flash to the D40, but only by adding a controller, or an SB-800 to act as a controller alongside another flash.  Both options are expensive.

I also had a Canon G9, and had taken to carrying and using it more often than the D40, but it was far too slow to use for everything.

My solution was this kit:

• Nikon D90
• Nikon 18-200 VR lens
• Nikon SB-600 flash

So far, it’s done everything I’d hoped and more.  I don’t carry the G9 now, but Sam uses it.  The old Ixus she was using has found a new home.

The Camera

The camera itself is much more of a step-up from the D40 than I’d expected.  It’s quite a bit faster in taking pictures, but seems to make a really big difference in focusing speed, too.  It’s the first camera I’ve used where I get the best results by just letting it look after the focusing all on its own, even letting it choose the focus points to use.  It just gets shots the D40 couldn’t get.

The image quality is great, as you’d expect.  The performance at higher ISO is much better.  RAW files that Aperture wouldn’t open were a problem, but Apple fixed that one in an update.  Handling is very good, and it feels nicely solid.  The metering seems accurate, so I just leave it to get on with it.

The Lens

No more losing shots because I have the wrong lens on the camera – now I only have one lens.  There are obviously image quality trade-offs to get so much zoom range in a single lens, but nothing that’s been too noticeable to me so far.  Being able to go from moderately wide to moderately telephoto in a second is very liberating.  I love being able to grab the camera and take a photo without having to worry about whether I have to take it apart and change lenses first.

The Flash

I’ve never used anything but on-camera built-in flash before.  I’ve been reading Strobist for a while, though, and it starts to get to you.  The SB-600 seemed a better deal than the SB-800, especially as Jessops did it for £50 less when bought with the D90.  I’ve not done enough experimenting with it to give much opinion yet, but I’m impressed so far.

Once everything is set up in the first place, taking a shot with off-camera lighting is very easy:

• Pull camera and flash from my bag.
• Switch on the flash, and attach its little ‘foot’ if it needs to stand upright.
• Point the flash where I want it.
• Switch on the camera, and press the button to pop up the built-in flash (it uses this to talk to the SB-600).
• Take pictures.

The camera and flash between them look after everything else.

The Kit

It’s a neat kit.  In total, about the same size as the D40 kit with two lenses, but can do much more.  It’s probably a bit heavier.  It all fits in a nice small Lowepro shoulder bag, so I carry it everywhere.  I’m tempted to add another flash – maybe an SB-800 next, so I can do two-flash setups – but I’m not in a great hurry for that.  Maybe in time for the trip to London that I seem to have been persuaded to go on.