Could Someone Please Define "Point and Shoot"?

[barryindallas]

I'm still surprised that my new S8000fd is considered a "point and shoot" cameras by many reviewers. My first camera, a $20 Kodak Instamatic, was a "point and shoot" No settings at all, just drop in the film and go. My manual for the Fuji is 161 pages with so many settings, I'll probably only use about a 1/3 of them, hardly a camera for a beginning photographer, IMHO. It may not be a DSLR but it comes awfully close to one.:)

[TheObiJuan]

Features do not differentiate its status, technology does.
It is a point n' shoot because it uses electronic capture versus an actual shutter like DSLRs.

I admit, the feature set is nice.
Some might refer to this camera as an advanced P&S.

[barryindallas]

They could define it as something else other than P & S, kind of misleading to someone used to fixed focus/shutter speed cameras.

[Honest Gaza]

Personally, and no doubt incorrectly, I refer to a non-DSLR as a "point & shoot" (but always with inverted commas).

Merely giving a generic distinction between DSLR and non-DSLR.....not meant to offend or belittle....but to differentiate between the two types.

I had an FZ-20 which I hardly thought of as a simple featureless camera. I referred to that as an "advanced P&S" camera.

[TheObiJuan]

If advanced Point and Shoot is not good enough, how about SLR-Like Point & Shoot?

It's just a name,who cares as long as the camera does what's it's supposed to?

[barryindallas]

If advanced Point and Shoot is not good enough, how about SLR-Like Point & Shoot?

It's just a name,who cares as long as the camera does what's it's supposed to?

Maybe there should be a system like

DSLR-1 (A digital SLR type camera that can't interchange lenses

DSLR-2 (A digital SLR type that can use different lenses

Afterall they are both "like" SLRs as "single" means one lens. LOL

Geeze, now I'm all confused.

[tim11]

how about SLR-Like Point & Shoot?


What's the point of trying to confuse yourself, Barry? Like TheObiJuan, I refer to Pana FZ, Canon S#, Fuji S*** cameras as DSLR lookalike PnS.

[Razr]

"Point and shoot": non-SLR camera

"Bridge" cameras: sophisticated point & shoot cameras with advanced SLR-like features and capabilities.

"SLR/ DSLR": a camera body that uses film catridges/sensors and different (interchangeable) lens

"Field" camera: (uses cut film as opposed to roll film and/or medium to large digital sensor) "backs".
**Though field (cut film) cameras also use interchangeable lenses, they are not SLRs, nor are they "point and shoot" cameras.

[David Metsky]

"SLR/ DSLR": a camera body that uses film catridges/sensors and different (interchangeable) lens
SLR = Single Lens Reflex
If the camera doesn't have a flip up mirror in the optical path, it isn't an SLR. Interchangeable lenses really don't enter into it, but nearly all SLRs have them.

[TheObiJuan]

That's true David.
I remember Sigma introducing a DSLR with a fixed 28mm lens?
P10 I think?

[tim11]

...and what's a 'range finder' camera?

[Razr]

SLR = Single Lens Reflex
If the camera doesn't have a flip up mirror in the optical path, it isn't an SLR. Interchangeable lenses really don't enter into it, but nearly all SLRs have them.
I personally have no such knowlege of a camera as you describe it.
All such cameras as you describe them are plain P&S cameras.
As you note, without the instant return mirror, such a camera cannot properly be called an SLR body.

[TheObiJuan]

...and what's a 'range finder' camera?

A rangefinder.

[David Metsky]

I personally have no such knowlege of a camera as you describe it.
All such cameras as you describe them are plain P&S cameras.
As mentioned in a previous post, there have been SLRs and dSLRs made without interchangeable lenses in the past. They have never caught on and we probably won't see any more of them.

[Marburg]

Maybe there should be a system like

DSLR-1 (A digital SLR type camera that can't interchange lenses

DSLR-2 (A digital SLR type that can use different lenses

Afterall they are both "like" SLRs as "single" means one lens. LOL

Geeze, now I'm all confused.

Hi Barry,
The pros at Houston Camera Exchange said the difference between a point and shoot and a dslr is the fixed lenses. Thus the S8000, S9000/S9100 are top of the line point and shoot but have the features of an entry to mid-level dslr. One of the guys there said he calls it a pre-dslr camera. I like the idea of DSLR-1 and DSLR-2

Marburg

[David Metsky]

The pros at Houston Camera Exchange said the difference between a point and shoot and a dslr is the fixed lenses.

The pros at Houston Camera Exchange are wrong.

SLR = Single Lens Reflex

Which means you are always have an optical viewfinder that is looking through the actual lens. It means your CCD doesn't have to be on all the time since no light is falling on it most of the time -- which means you can have bigger, power hungry and heat generating CCDs. With current technology this means that there's no video (can't keep those heat generating big CCDs running constantly for video) and no preview (although we now have LiveView).

Even if you had a fixed lens, all these differences would still be there. There's not much point going through all that and putting a fixed lens on the camera. You can only get ultrazooms (10x-18x) by having a small sensor, which doesn't generate as much heat, which doesn't need to be kept off when not in use, which doesn't need to be an SLR.