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Hi, hopefully you can help me decide on a new camera.

I am a amature photographer and have had a Pentax Spotmatic for years. I love its ease of use, the exposure meter is extremely easy to use, you just manual focus & decide on the shutter speed versus lens aperture opening.

But I'm going digital and still want to use a SLR to maintain some control over the shots, but my wife will also be using it and is totally turned off by cameras with too many options, too many choices & will most likely use only the auto feature that sets focus & exposure for you.

But we had a a small digital point & shoot that took decent photos for her but was very slow to snap the photo once you depressed the shutter release & her only 2 requests for the new camera, that it was easy for her to operate & that it had a fast shutter response.

We have been comparing the Panasonic Lumix LX5, The Panasonic ZS10, the Canon EOS Rebel T2i, the Canon Powershot S95, the Canon EOS 60D, the Nikon D5100 and a ton of others with the Panasonic Lumix LX5 & the Canon Rebel T2i the front runners. What I'd really like is a digital version of the Pentax Spotmatic, it was so simple & easy to operate & produced great photos without being complicated.

Also do digital full frame format cameras produce significantly better photos then the digital cameras with APS-C format, or is the difference only noticable if you are a professional photographer?

Thanks for any help /advice you can offer.

Steve

Merle Loc: Ormond Beach, FL

You might also want to consider the Canon G11. It is a very advanced camera - shoots in Raw and Jpeg and is also very easy to use. Takes excellent photos.

sinatraman Loc: Vero Beach Florida, Earth,alpha quaudrant

the main advantage of a full frame sensor is that with aps sensor will multiple the focal length off your lens (Dont ask me why.Damit Jim Im a photographer not a doctor" so that say a 100mm lens becomes a 140 mm lens. This is great for your telephotos but it kills your wide angles. the full frame doesnt have this multiplication. a 35mm lens is a 35mm lens not a50mm. Also the bigger the frame the less cramed the pixels. I am sure there is a difference in quality but I dont know if it is noticeable.. I know there is a difference in price and it is noticeable!!! The problem with panasonic is they use lecia lenses which are great but expensive. You are better off with a camera from a company that only makes cameras such as nikon pentax olympus or cannon.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

The only problem I see is that the list of cameras you are looking at vary from point & shoot through dSLRs. Most all affordable digital cameras use the APS-C size sensor and have exceptional quality output so don't worry about that. If I were in your shoes and wanting to replace an SLR that has removable lenses, then I'd go with a dSLR that also uses removable lenses. The body will be a one time investment (unless it dies for some reason) and from that point on your investment will be in good lenses instead of upgrading bodies.

You also don't have to worry about whether you can operate it with all manual settings like your Pentax. I'm not aware of a dSLR that can't be operated fully manual if you choose to. You can choose aperture priority or shutter priority, manually focus if you want to, set the ISO to anything you want, set your own exposure, blah, blah, blah and have at it. My Sony even has a depth of field preview button.

Yet dSLRs can also be set to AUTO mode and it will set everything for your wife to create what it considers to be a perfect exposure with hundreds of sensors all over the shots and a computer comparing the current shot being taken with a list of thousands of possibilities in it's memory. It auto-focus it for her, and reduce handshake with stabilization. Some will even take a series of 3 exposures slightly under, what it considers by the body's computer to be perfect, and slightly over to give her a choice of which one she likes best. Many dSLRs will expose to the faces of the people in the shot (an idea that came from the point & shoot world). Some will even wait until the human subjects are smiling before letting the shutter release. All have internal flashes that are very accurate and surprisingly strong.

Everything you want to do manually is available in a dSLR. Everything she wants to do automatically is also available in a dSLR. So that problem is solved. You can spend time setting everything creatively or she can practically hold a dSLR up in front of her blindfolded and push the button with excellent exposure and focus results.

As for brand, I've had 5 Panasonic digitals and their main problem has always been low light shooting. The camera will boost ISO to get a decent exposure but the gain circuit is typically noisy and causes objectionable grain or "noise." In typical daylight they do very well. So, if you're expecting film quality in low light Panasonic is not the way to go. I'm also not aware of them having a dSLR with removable lenses but I might be wrong.

Recommendations on this forum for newbies or upgraders are usually: Nikon D5100, Canon T3si (step up from the T2si), or Sony Alpha 55. They are all exceptional cameras that can be operated manual or auto and will give you quality output that will probably exceed your old Pentax.

That's not to talk bad about your Pentax. It was a major player in its day and is world renowned. A friend of mine had one and my brother and I had a couple other Pentaxes, one from East Germany and one from West Germany.

If you have the time and desire to post process the shots with an Adobe software package you can even save poorly exposed digital shots (and scans of film prints for that matter), "airbrush retouch" your subjects, saturate or fade your colors, change color shots to B&W or sepiatone, and all kinds of other cool functions that are addictive. With those capabilities you can certainly far exceed your film experiences of the past.

It was said for years that digital would have to reach 11MP resolution to equal 35mm film and digital has exceeded that by far with the cameras I've listed all being above 12 and as high as 16MP. A 12 to 18MP sensor on any dSLR and some fine quality lenses and you will be in photographic heaven!

Since you are starting anew with no experience with any of those three camera brands, you might want to find a shop where you can rent them each for a week and see what kind of results you get with each one. Then compare additional lens prices to see what your total investment will become eventually to have a whole system.

For fast shutter response, the Sony Alpha 55 beats all competitors because of a new type of viewfinder mirror that doesn't have to flip up out of the way. You can research that online for yourself, just by going to the Sony website. Thus it works very quickly and its continuous shooting speed (like a motor drive on film) is faster than anything on the market today. I have the Sony myself but it's personal preference.

A very important factor in how fast the "shutter" seems to respond is the memory card you are using. It's actually how fast the camera's electronics can respond that is most of the problem you found with the point & shoot. With your new dSLR camera buy ONLY Class 10 high speed SDHC cards. How fast the camera responds is very dependent on how fast it can ram the last shot onto the memory card and clear itself for the next shot. A typical high resolution JPG file from a digital camera is usually less than 4MB and a Class 10 card has a write speed of 20MB per second, so you can see that the file can travel from camera to card very quickly. My Sony only slows down (and is still acceptable) when I shoot in RAW+JPG mode which records both types of files at the same time. That's a LOT of info to transfer.

Hope this helps your adventure.

sinatraman Loc: Vero Beach Florida, Earth,alpha quaudrant

here is a wacky crazy idea!!! You like your old pentax right? You probably have several pentax lenses right? Why don't you....... look at PENTAX. They have a great line of both dslrs and point and shoots. They are a real camera company and their products are innovative and interesting.I am a nikonian but if I was starting out I would definetly consider pentax.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

His lenses are thread on, if I remember right, and I don't believe Pentax still uses that. His lenses are also not auto-focus or auto-exposure and that's what his wife wants.