Digital Photography Holidays

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Should I buy the Fuji Finepix S9600, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 or the Nikon Coolpix P5100?

I am a complete amatuer at photography but have always enjoyed using my point and shoot and have had decent results with my home/holiday snaps and am keen to go one step further. I am taking a digital photography course in about a months time, nothing too complicated just a 6-8 week course to learn all the basics etc. So I am looking to buy a half decent what they seem to call bridge camera and seem to have almost narrowed it down to the 3 above. So just looking for some advice really or should go for one of the above or should I spend another £70+ and go for a Cannon G9 or something else, I'm confused and very indecisive. All advice appreciated, thanks..

Despite their generic labelling as “bridge” cameras, they're actually quite different, in terms of what they offer:

- The Panasonic FZ18 basically offers an almost insanely long optical zoom, although it's optically stabilized and (compared to other 18x-zoom cameras) has somewhat better optical quality; but the ISO performance is relatively poor, because that huge zoom mandates a small sensor that can't possibly offer better ISO quality.

- The Nikon Coolpix P5100 follows the opposite idea: a short optical zoom, and a large sensor (not quite DSLR-size, but still clearly larger than the Panasonic FZ18's) that allows it to have a quite better ISO performance, therefore making the camera much more able for liw-light situations (especially since the P5100 also has an optical stabilizer, and a pretty effective one, at that).

- The Fujifilm S9600 would be a compromise... sort of. It's actually larger than the Panasonic FZ18, and yet has a more modest 10x optical zoom (not stabilized, though)... so it can afford to have a sensor even larger than the Nikon P5100's, therefore an even better ISO performance.



All in all, the Fujifilm S9600 is the best of the three, as long as you don't consider its size and weight a problem, and you don't really need as much zoom as the Panasonic offers.

Call For Help - Chris Pirillo - Holiday Digital Photography


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