Hi,
I would like some advice from the forum. I presently use a Canon T4i with a Tamron 18-400 lens and am very happy with this. However, I am going on a Viking River cruise this summer and would like a lighter camera so am looking at buying a point and shoot.
Here are what I think is important (other suggestions are welcomed).
1. Light
2. Good zoom, I would say at least 20x
3. 20mp
4. Auto mode, A mode, and other modes would be nice
5. $ up to 700 or so.
6. I usually edit my pics. I switched to a Chromebook so use Polarr. I used to use Photoshop Lightroom but it really
isn't made for a chromebook.
7. I have looked at the Canon SX70 and Canon SX740. They were both introduced in 2018, 2 months apart, not sure
why. However, I am leaning towards the SX70, but would like other opinions.

OK, I guess that's it. Not too many camera stores left around to get the feely and touch. I do have one in my area that I will visit but your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thannks,
Mike

I also have both of these cameras. The D850 came first as a second camera when I was very heavily into night sky photography. But a lot of the time, 46MP is just complete overkill for the "daytime" shooting that I do. So I bought a D500 for use in more casual situations. Sort of like when I had Olympus film cameras for "most of the time," but added a couple of Mamiya 120/220 cameras & lenses for more serious shooting.

While the D850 has (and I have used) a DX format option, along with several other format choices, it is, without debate, a bulky camera. In particular, it is significantly thicker (front to back) than any other camera I own. That pushed me to look at the D500 for those times when 21 MP is more appropriate. To me, the D500 is ergonomically much more pleasant camera to shoot. I have said before that it is the best shooting camera I have owned, as well as the best ergonomically.

There are a couple of other considerations. The first is that the control layout and operating systems of these two cameras are identical. Shooting one is the same as shooting the other. Mine are set up with identical menu customizations and identical Picture Control configurations. The second is that sensor density is nearly identical between the two cameras. A lens that performs well on one of them will perform well on the other. Their low light performance is very close to the same, and their "rendering" performance is almost identical. It is somewhere between difficult and impossible to visually identify which camera produced which exposures.

Just as a note...since I have almost exclusively purchased FX lenses through the years, both cameras tend to get used with the same lenses. There are a couple of exceptions. I do have and use a 17-55mm f/2.8 DX Nikkor on the D500, and until it died recently, I very occasionally used a 18-200mm DX Nikkor zoom. And to answer the question that will inevitably arise, if I need wide angle, I take the D850.

I just took a quick look at shutter counts. It appears that about 2/3 of my exposures over the past four years are made with the D500 and the remaining third with the D850. So it has in no way been relegated to the shelf or closet. In fact, I like these cameras so well that I now have two of each. Default configuration is that one of each of them has a 24-120mm f/4 Nikkor zoom and the other has the "normal" f/2.8 zoom...17-55mm and 24-70mm ready to go.

So no, I do not think it is silly to have both of these cameras. My suggestion is to get your D00 out and use it more.

My club had a January challenge wherein people would post the same composition, or as close as that human can do it, one taken by their smartphones and the other with their best digital camera.
Some were lower cost cameras and older iPhones etc. but several sets had the latest from Google and Apple. These were up against Sony and Fuji full frame mirrorless.
We could choose one or the other or choose " too close to call"
The shots taken in low light had the smartphones almost 2 to 1. Granted no flash was used on any.
The shots where a greater DoF was expected the cameras had it 1.5 to 1.
Others had too close to call as the most frequently made choice.
We all know the advantage of the smartphones starting with the old adage the best camera is the one you have with you as well as its multipurpose function such as texting and even talking.
So if you have a similar experience I'd love to read your reply. If you would like to speculate could you kindly post your own topic.
Thanks

There was a post about the EOS XTi recently, a camera that was my first DSLR. I purchased that 10MP Rebel body in Dec 2006, so I'm approaching 20 years in digital overall. To create this retrospective post, I reached into the LR catalog looking for similar images to ask the question: can you see the difference?

Wrigley Building by Paul Sager, on Flickr


Wrigley Building


I'm unsure if I have UHH to thank for the impetus to change from an XTi to an EOS 7D, before then changing again to the current EOS 5DIII. The following series of image pairs will tend to be at least 10 years apart. The two bees compare a 100mm macro with a 180mm macro.

Bee and flower


Coneflower visitor


The exposure details and lenses of all the images are available from Flickr, using the URL links that are the image titles. I couldn't find any images that used the same lens on both cameras, for similar images. The best I could find was similar subjects and views, in a landscape format.

Buckingham Fountain


Buckingham Fountain


If you "need" a new camera, there's always a question of: why? Maybe you need more resolution. Maybe you need more frames per second. Maybe you need more external controls. Maybe better noise performance? Maybe better Auto Focus performance? But, what if it's really just that you need a better lens? And therefore, maybe, you don't really need more pixels or more controls or more frames or NR or AF performance?

Chicago


Chicago Skyline - Willis Tower


I wanted to just compare a 10MP cropped sensor to a 22MP full-frame, but the sequence of agave, below, adds the wrinkle of a circa 1987 f/1.8 prime against a nearly as old film-era zoom and the newest IS enabled zoom. Even though all these images are down-sized to 2048-pixels on the wide side (and linked as 1600px), I think for most of the images, one can see the resolution differences of the two / three cameras.

United States Botanic Garden


DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun


Wesley Bolin Memorial Park


Of these final two images, I think the Rebel actually wins the 1 to 1. All the images in this post were processed in LR6. The XTi images are a mixture of JPEG files and RAW against the RAW files of the EOS 7D and 5DIII. The bottom image suffers a bit from the 2x extender added to the 500mm L prime. It looks good, but I think there's more details in the upclose of the XTi at 52mm than the more distant shot from the effective 700mm of the prime.

United States Botanic Garden


Swamp Rose Mallow


Hopefully, these examples cause some serious questions about: Is it the camera, the software, the photographer or the lens?

Remember, the longer you read UHH, the more expensive it gets. Try not to get caught up in the hype.

Other than just being unrealistic, the composite is fine, nearly perfect. It seems there's just a bit too much space on the left side. I'd try having the margin cut through the bush just a bit higher, through the first branch point upward rather than keeping that horizontal section leaving the frame. Try pulling-in the upper left corner to adjust just slightly the left margin and top margin of the frame.

The back-light of that left-side bush is probably the least realistic portion as the lighting is from the wrong direction to create that backlight from the moon's position. Though, painting-out that back-light might be impossible to accomplish for a better result.

You might look too at the blending of the left-side of the moon's circle. The right-side blends more naturally into the black of night as compared to the jagged edge of the left-side.

At 18 13/16 × 15 1/8 inches, and clearly PhotoShopped -- maybe with beta v0.01 software -- , Steichen was clearly using a camera of yesteryear, with a pixel resolution even lower than the initial versions of what became the DSLRinosaurs. Today's 24MP standard, even in cropped-sensor models, could deliver so much more.

https://arthur.io/art/edward-steichen/flatiron-building

As said earlier, the math is easy:

A good photograph has the most pixels.
A good photographer has a mirrorless camera.
A great photographer masters PhotoShop.