fotoman150

I'm not sure what it is about photographers but some get really mean. Once I was at the camera store buying a flash bracket and in walks this guy who is notorious for being smug and conceited about himself and his abilities as a photographer. I was quaint and greeted him and said I'm trying to remove some shadows from my shots ( by getting a bracket so the flash casts the shadow downward behind the subject). His response was "I've been removing shadows for years." Not sure what causes this phenomenon.

As for minutiae, my assistant is an engineer and does everything left brain. He asked me how to calibrate his lens to the camera. Honestly, I wasn't even aware that there was a such thing until recently. Then, he wanted to straighten up the room where a bride was getting ready. I had to explain to him the mess was part of it all. He wanted to shoot the shoes right next to each other rather than jumbled up. Some people get into photography because they like the numbers and equipment. I call them digit heads. Not bad if you can make the switch to creativity also. You throw the shoes on the floor and however they land it's art!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Good Point. Stepping it up a notch, the Panasonic Leica Micro 4/3 lenses are excellent. They are also priced as if they were excellent. The 12mm, 15mm, 25mm, 42.5mm, and 45mm primes are quite nice — ESPECIALLY that 42.5mm f/1.2 Nocticron. The 8-18mm zoom, 12-60mm zoom, and 100-400mm zoom are also excellent. (Remember that with the 2X crop factor, these lenses capture fields of view similar to full frame 24, 30, 50, 85, 90 macro, 16-36, 24-120, and 200-800mm lenses! And they NEVER NEED micro adjustment.

cdayton

Other sites show the sensor sizes I cited. It accounts for the difference between your pictures.

gessman Loc: Colorado

Dave, regarding "how do I know in advance," as you probably know, getting a good idea of the quality you will get from a specific camera or in comparison to others can be facilitated by reading the reviews at places like DPReview and DXO Mark or perhaps other review sites you can find with Google Search. Since you said you are the "standard" I will not assume much. Your camera you purchase most likely will need some menu tweaking for improved resolution, contrast, and color saturation levels you will come to prefer. I wouldn't concern myself with getting a lot in the frame because the best way to achieve that, and you might want to read about it, is to do multiple shots and composite them in post processing. I will say that the more you get in your frame for a single shot, the more your camera will shoot up the cost continuum. To keep the cost down and still get an equally all-inclusive outcome, multiple shots, as I mentioned, will be your best outcome for the least amount of input in terms of dollars. It isn't a very complicated process and you can start reading about it here: https://digital-photography-school.com/shoot-panoramic-photos/. You are by no means limited to only combining two frames to get wide shots using this idea. You can combine as many shots as you wish withing the limits imposed by the software you're using. You can take shots in both horizontal and vertical matrices or in combination and put them together. A piece of free software that will do those things excellently comes from Microsoft and is named ICE. It can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52459. On down the download page you will find instructions you can download and install.

Now, if I have offended you with too much information you didn't ask for, please just forgive me and ignore it. I made these suggestions based on my understanding of what you said you wanted to know and do. Good luck with it either way.

P. S. As to your two images, it appears to me, as someone already suggested, that the one on the left is slightly underexposed and the one on the right is slightly overexposed. In all likelihood both cameras could be adjusted in the menu to bring them closer together but I would still allow for a little variance in manufacturing and considering the idea of "you get what you pay for."

One more thought - you can still have the same size image like 4"x3," 8"x10", etc., but you will just have a lot more compressed information in each image and they will be high impact images as you described.

SOLINA DAVE

Thanks for that information. That will keep me busy exploring those suggestions. And you certainly haven't offended me by giving me too much information. That's what I'm after. I'm reasonably adept at filtering, and retaining what I believe may be relevant at the time. Often though, it can be overwhelming.

Thanks again....................Dave

gessman Loc: Colorado

My pleasure. I hope you find what you're looking for.

gessman Loc: Colorado

To help simplify, here's how to use the comparisons on DPReview: First go here:

https://www.dpreview.com/products/compare/cameras In center page you will see some boxes that let you pick two cameras from the list on the left. It will actually let you pick more cameras if you're up to looking at more than two at a time. You pick the cameras to compare by clicking on the camera. What you click on will be deposited in one of the boxes. Once your chosen number of boxes are populated, click on "compare" up top and you will get all the stats on those two cameras side-by-side. Here's the two you asked about:

https://www.dpreview.com/products/compare/side-by-side?products=canon_sx720hs&products=panasonic_dmczs60. It would be my opinion that the advantages see-saw back and forth between the two but on balance I would go with the tz80 for the most suitable features that I prefer. I think it's just a superior camera in that price range, especially for the frames per second rate but then I like to shoot a bit of action occasionally. I'm not trying to influence you at all but just stating my preference. Maybe stepping you through that will take some of the confusion out of it. Again, you can compare more than two at a time.

You will find ICE easy to use. You get your shots lined up in order and drag and drop them into ICE and sit back and watch.

Photogirl17 Loc: Glenwood, Ark.

Amen well said Truckster and I will add the more you get out there and shoot, the more you will learn.

truckster Loc: Tampa Bay Area

You have received many replies, some contradict others ... it still comes down to your educated guess. Use what you think you might need and disregard the rest , the choice is yours, Dave ...

SOLINA DAVE

Thanks Truckster. What your saying makes sense. You're right. It does come down to my educated guess. It might be an incorrect guess, but it's mine!
It's been an interesting road, but I think I finally got an answer that seems to make sense. That being, that there's always going to be some slight variation between lenses, affecting the image, even though the identical specs. led me to believe that wasn't the case. There's only one thing that's perfect, and it's not a camera.
Also, aside from the most obvious influence on picture quality, the person pushing down the shutter button, there seems to be many other contributing factors that potentially could influence the final images. I'll have to, over a period of time, educate myself a little bit more in regards to those items in the mix.
And finally, many thanks to those who were helpful in providing me with very useful, and valuable information. I appreciate your interest, more than you might know................Dave

Here's a shot that I took, after helping it off the highway. I don't think it really cared. I took this picture, one of thousands, with my 11 year old Lumix DMC-TZ1 compact.(the first of the compact travel zooms) Maybe when I get it together a bit more, I can figure out how to keep the backgroung blur, and clean up the focus on the shell to match it's face and legs. Know what I mean?

(Download)