The Best Compact ultrazoom

[seabrapedro]

Budget

* What budget have you allocated for buying this camera?

i Can Spend up to 700€ (964.423 USD)

Size

* What size camera are you looking for? Or does size not matter at all to you?

Size and weight don't matter much.

Features

How many megapixels will suffice for you?

minimum 7 megapixels

* What optical zoom will you need? (None, Standard = 3x-4x, Ultrazoom = 10x-12x, Other - Specify)

I will need to Take photos from 1 to 15 meters with detail

* How important is “image quality” to you? (Rate using a scale of 1-10)

8 to 10

Do you care for manual controls?

I don't think so.....


General Usage

* What will you generally use the camera for?

I need the camera to shoot dogs from at least a distance of 1 to 15 meters.
In two specific types of environment:

1 in Winter and Autumn inside of pavilions(dog shows, indoor) with little light.

2 In Summer/Spring on gardens(dog shows outdoors) with heavy and direct sun light.

Notes: The kind of dogs i'm talking about are totally Black or Black and White (white with black spots, like cows). This kind of colors are somewhat of a problem because sometimes in photos the black dogs can look like shadows, losing detail. Some other times, the pictures of black and white dogs taken outside, with direct sun light the dogs white areas reflect the light.

* Will you be making big prints of your photos or not?

The pictures will illustrate in magazines and websites.

Will you be shooting a lot of indoor photos or low light photos?

Yes I Will.

Will you be shooting sports and/or action photos?

mostly action photos because the dog are rarely stalled.


Miscellaneous

Are there particular brands you like or hate?

I Don't Have particular brands

Are there particular models you already have in mind?

Yes, Newer Compact ultrazoom models :
Canon PowerShot S5 IS
Olympus SP-550 UZ
Sony DSC-H9
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8

(If applicable) Do you need any of the following special features? (Wide Angle, Image Stabilization, Weatherproof, Hotshoe, Rotating LCD)

I'll need Image Stabilization and Rotating LCD it's always good to have.
I Don't Have the knowledge if I'm going to need Wide Angle, Weatherproof, Hotshoe, because I don't understand the concepts .

[Visual Reality]

The problems you are having with the black and white dogs is under and overexposure. Too much light outside and not enough inside. This will necessitate manual control, whether you want it or not. Shooting in automatic mode all the time will guarantee that you continue to have this problem with any camera no matter how much money you throw at it.

Due to your requirements I don't think any compact camera is for you. An Ultrazoom may work here though. However, something inside is telling me that just maybe, a Nikon D40 (or other bottom-end DSLR) would do best here. Let's see if anyone else agrees.

The D40 will best all compact and ultrazoom cameras in low light, fast action, or just about any other situation. You would have to live without a movie mode, and being able to zoom 30-400mm+ with the same lens though.

[SpecialK]

I think the issue is not inside or outside, but that the dogs are black and white which is at the edge of the dynamic range of a camera. This is why there is a thing called "blown highlights" that bother some people. Even though the exposure may be correct, the very bright white may be overexposed and lose all details which can not be recovered. If you underexpose slightly to keep the highlights, then the shadows start to "block up". Ansel Adams and that group divided the range of tones between pure black and pure white into 7 "zones". Todays cameras have a range of about 5 zones if I'm not mistaken.

As mentioned, if the lighting is constant, manual exposure will give consistent results.

Ultrazoom compacts do not perform well in low light (high ISO) conditions, and will be generally grainy under those situations. They also suffer a bit of "shutter lag" which is the interval between pressing the button and recording the image. That interval has been getting smaller with recent technology, however.

The Nikon D40 with a 55-200 VR (stabilized) lens may work. The Pentax K100D with a Pentax 50-200 or Sigma 70-300 is also an option. Ideally, for indoors situations you would want a "faster" lens with an f-stop of f2.8 though such a lens will cost as much as the camera and either of the lenses above combined.

[seabrapedro]

The NIKON D40 + objectiva 55-200 or PENTAX K100D + teleobjectiva 50-200 are very expensive for my budget ( I Can Spend up to 700€ (964.423 USD) because them can cost 700€ to 800€ and I need sometimes a movie mode. these are the reasons to try to choose a Compact ultrazoom.........

[seabrapedro]

I deceived myself The NIKON D40 + objectiva 55-200 or PENTAX K100D + teleobjectiva 50-200 can cost 800 to 950€

[seabrapedro]

whot do you think abaut this camera?
Fujifilm FinePix IS-1

[AlexMonro]

whot do you think abaut this camera?
Fujifilm FinePix IS-1

That's a special infrared version of the Fuji S9600.

I don't think you need the infrared, but the standard S9600 might be a good choice. It would be better for the low light indoor shots than most of the other cameras that you listed, particular if you need a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of a dog that's moving.

A DSLR such as the Nikon D40, Canon 400D or Pentax K100 would potentially be capable of even better results in low light, although if you needed to take detailed close up shots from 15m away, you might need to buy an aditional telephoto zoom lens, for a fe hundred euro upwards, and you wouldn't be able to make movies with a DSLR.

It might be an idea to contact some of the magazines that you're thinking of submitting pictures to to see if they have any minimum requirements for resolution (megapixels). If 6MP is adequate, and you don't need to fit an external flash, you might also want to consider the Fuji S6500, which would be slightly better in low light. You only need about 1MP or less for most website images, but it's easy to downsize an image on the computer using an image editor program such as Photoshop, PaintShopPro or The GIMP.

To get the right exposure for black dogs, and possibly also for the black & white dogs, you'll have to learn a bit about exposure compensation - camera light meters assume that scenes are an average mid grey, and can be confused by subjects that are very dark or very bright. If you learn to use RAW mode, which both the Fuji cameras have, you'll have more options to correct the image on the computer after shooting to get the right balence of black & white.

[Visual Reality]

Basically the Canon S3/S5 are your best bet IMO from your requirements, they just will not do low light photography well. They will do fast action at high shutter speeds but it better be very bright outside or you won't get enough light. An SLR would be perfect for the photo side of things, but you miss out on everything else.