Is it worth buying a cheap compact camera?

[holyzombiejesus]

I fancy buying one because I like buying nice things. But am thinking it could be a waste of money. At what price point does a compact become better than your phone's camera? I'd like a decent one but don't have a huge budget and I'm not sure how often I'd use the thing either: I like the idea of taking more photographs when out and about but never ever bother in practice. Used to use my Lomo lca a lot but film is just stupidly expensive and hard to get processed now. I also just ended up with piles and piles of shit photos.   

[touchingcloth]

How compact do you want it? Pocketable?

The main advantage is creative control over shutter speed (manually controllable on some phones) and aperture (not controllable on phones at all, in my experience at least), and having buttons rather than a touch screen to operate it with.

If you want something that will fit in your pocket, a phone upgrade will be a better place to spend your money. If you're happy to hang something round your neck, then maybe £400+, for something nice and second hand? Depends a lot on what exactly you want from it.

[Ignatius_S]

I fancy buying one because I like buying nice things. But am thinking it could be a waste of money. At what price point does a compact become better than your phone's camera? I'd like a decent one but don't have a huge budget and I'm not sure how often I'd use the thing either: I like the idea of taking more photographs when out and about but never ever bother in practice. Used to use my Lomo lca a lot but film is just stupidly expensive and hard to get processed now. I also just ended up with piles and piles of shit photos.   

'Better' is relative - some compact cameras have much better optical zooms, for instance. Some people value that, others don't. What are you looking for? Personally, a factor for me is how much I enjoy using something as I'll use it more.

With the second point, possibly consider getting something cheaper than the top of your budget and see if how you get on with it. What are you looking for and how much are you looking to spend?

[Ignatius_S]

How compact do you want it? Pocketable?

The main advantage is creative control over shutter speed (manually controllable on some phones) and aperture (not controllable on phones at all, in my experience at least), and having buttons rather than a touch screen to operate it with.

If you want something that will fit in your pocket, a phone upgrade will be a better place to spend your money. If you're happy to hang something round your neck, then maybe £400+, for something nice and second hand? Depends a lot on what exactly you want from it.

To a degree, I would agree but there are so many factors at play and the extent of how much will vary on individuals. Part of the recent interest in older digital cameras is due to people being fed up with clean, rather homogeneous phone photos and wanting something that looking more retro straight out of the bat.

Sensor size is a big factor for most people that I know.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Quality wise the pictures aren't going to look better than a phone (although phone's use a whole bunch of post-processing to get their results) but there's something more enjoyable and conducive to the feeling of creativity when taking pictures with an actual camera that makes them worthwhile. Although I'd maybe go a step further and get a proper "old" camera with film.

[Johnboy]

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[Neomod]

Might be worth visiting MPB

I bought an Olympus OM D body and Lumix lens for £300 last year and it's a lot of fun as a small handy second camera.

[Papa Wheelie]

Massive recommendation: I got a Ricoh GR3 recently as my everyday carry. It's miniscule, genuinely pocketable and the APS-C sensor is much better than a top tier phone. 28mm equivalent lens is extremely sharp wide open and even stopped down to F8. The IBIS is excellent, I've got plenty of crisp handheld low-light shots at 1". 24.2 MP is better than my Olympus OM-1, which is a wildlife beast, arguably the best M43 camera. The raw files are DNG and it has very good film simulation options, not as good as Fuji and without the same community but surprisingly great, especially the BW options. If you're into street photography, the snap focus is brilliant once you get a feel for it. It's also the most unobtrusive camera I've ever had. You can be in the thick of a scene and get great quality photos without causing any discomfort or self-consciousness. All those times I wished I had my camera on me, never a problem now.

Currently on offer at Amazon for £849 but you can probably get the GR2 second-hand for half that, and some people prefer it.

[Sebastian Cobb]

If I was going to go for a compact these days I'd consider a mirrorless job unless compactness was the main issue.

It used to be that Panasonic Lumix's were a good buy, since they were made in partnership with Leica and shared glass and components.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It used to be that Panasonic Lumix's were a good buy, since they were made in partnership with Leica and shared glass and components.

I have a Lumix G7, and a Lumix S1H with Sigma lenses. Great cameras but the latter is a full frame beast about 4X the size/weight of a compact that physically hurts to hold for more than a minute or two. The former I would recommend as they're relatively cheap (about £450 new/£250 used with kit lens) and have the look and feel of a proper professional camera but with mod-cons like remote operation from your phone, although obviously won't fit in a pocket.

[Papa Wheelie]

In my experience, even a smaller, mirrorless M43 camera is still far from pocketable and you might as well just take out your main camera in a small shoulder bag. The Ricoh is the only camera I've ever used where I will literally take it everywhere and not even think about it until I want to use it immediately. One-second startup, instant snap focus, 24MP DNG.

[touchingcloth]

To a degree, I would agree but there are so many factors at play and the extent of how much will vary on individuals. Part of the recent interest in older digital cameras is due to people being fed up with clean, rather homogeneous phone photos and wanting something that looking more retro straight out of the bat.

Sensor size is a big factor for most people that I know.

To some extent, sensor size is fakable in development. And image cleanliness doesn't even need to be faked if you try shooting in raw on a phone - those tiny sensors are absolute dogshit in terms of noise performance, and you really see how much work the software is doing once you see the raw images.

Personally, what I most value in a dedicated camera is easy control of shutter speed in particular, though even this is manually controllable on a phone if you're happy with touchscreen controls and viewing on a screen rather than through a viewfinder, neither of which work well for me. I use a flash sometimes as well, which rules a phone out as my sole camera.

In my experience, even a smaller, mirrorless M43 camera is still far from pocketable and you might as well just take out your main camera in a small shoulder bag. The Ricoh is the only camera I've ever used where I will literally take it everywhere and not even think about it until I want to use it immediately. One-second startup, instant snap focus, 24MP DNG.

I use a Fujifilm X100, and the main thing that swayed me over the Ricohs at the time was the optical/electronic viewfinder. If I wanted something pocketable (I love the X100, but that it needs to be worn on a strap is its biggest downside) it would be a Ricoh or a Sony RX100, I think, though they both have smaller sensors and slower lenses.

I fancy buying one because I like buying nice things. But am thinking it could be a waste of money. At what price point does a compact become better than your phone's camera? I'd like a decent one but don't have a huge budget and I'm not sure how often I'd use the thing either: I like the idea of taking more photographs when out and about but never ever bother in practice. Used to use my Lomo lca a lot but film is just stupidly expensive and hard to get processed now. I also just ended up with piles and piles of shit photos.   

On the bolded bit, it would be good to know more about why you don't take as many pictures as you want. My favourite out and about photos are almost all taken on my phone, because that's the camera I always have when I'm out and about. If your phone has a bad camera, screen, battery, responsiveness, etc., then that might be a vote in favour of an upgrade rather than a cheap compact, because phones can take great pictures for just about anything that doesn't involve lights or telephoto lenses.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I never really find myself adjusting shutter speed on a phone, but I do quite often pull the exposure compensation down by a couple of stops if firing off a couple of photos at a gig or something.

Although come to think of it, if I'm using my film or digital slr's, I typically use manual aperture with automatic shutter (of course sometimes that means I'm effectively guiding the shutter speed into an area I want by fiddling with the aperture) unless using flash where I tend to force a lowish speed to get some ambient light in there. So maybe it's just the way my habits have developed.

[holyzombiejesus]

To some extent, sensor size is fakable in development. And image cleanliness doesn't even need to be faked if you try shooting in raw on a phone - those tiny sensors are absolute dogshit in terms of noise performance, and you really see how much work the software is doing once you see the raw images.

Personally, what I most value in a dedicated camera is easy control of shutter speed in particular, though even this is manually controllable on a phone if you're happy with touchscreen controls and viewing on a screen rather than through a viewfinder, neither of which work well for me. I use a flash sometimes as well, which rules a phone out as my sole camera.

I use a Fujifilm X100, and the main thing that swayed me over the Ricohs at the time was the optical/electronic viewfinder. If I wanted something pocketable (I love the X100, but that it needs to be worn on a strap is its biggest downside) it would be a Ricoh or a Sony RX100, I think, though they both have smaller sensors and slower lenses.

On the bolded bit, it would be good to know more about why you don't take as many pictures as you want. My favourite out and about photos are almost all taken on my phone, because that's the camera I always have when I'm out and about. If your phone has a bad camera, screen, battery, responsiveness, etc., then that might be a vote in favour of an upgrade rather than a cheap compact, because phones can take great pictures for just about anything that doesn't involve lights or telephoto lenses.

I have a google pixel phone and it's ok but I just don't really like taking photos with it, partly because it feels like there's a kind of disconnect between taking the photo and the actual picture. Possibly I'm just old and silly. Also, never really got round to working out what my phone camera can do so I sometimes struggle just to retrieve the few photos that I do take.

I would like to go back to 35mm and my LC-A but it seems like such an expensive extravagance nowadays. Film was so cheap just a few years back and now it's definitely up in the luxury bracket.

I think my main query was answered up thread when you mentioned a budget of about £400. I kind of switched off then. In my mind I was picturing something cool and compact for about £200 that I could fiddle with and then probably tire of. Think I'm probably best of using my phone more.

I would like to take more pictures. I decided last year that I would try and take at least one 'considered' photo a day. I took one on January 1st (and that was only cause it looked nice out the window when I was lying in bed) and didn't bother again.

[touchingcloth]

My phone is relatively old now, and just has a single rear camera rather than 420 of them like the modern ones seem to have.

Do the multi-camera phones use them to take multiple images at once so that you can fake the aperture size after shooting?

[El Unicornio, mang]

Do the multi-camera phones use them to take multiple images at once so that you can fake the aperture size after shooting?

Not sure about others but the model I have (S21 Ultra) has four different lenses which you can switch between manually in pro mode and each one has a different aperture. They're fixed with each lens so I guess the phone is doing extra work at times to compensate, and the "bokeh" effect is just clever background blurring.

Primary: 108 MP 24 mm-equivalent f/1.8-aperture
Ultra-wide: 12 MP 13 mm-equivalent f/2.2-aperture
Tele 1: 10 MP 72 mm-equivalent f/2.4
Tele 2: 10 MP 240 mm-equivalent f/4.9-aperture

I'd recommend it as a camera phone, for ultrawide and super tele shots it's great and my go to because I don't have regular camera lenses close to being that wide or long and not worth the investment for me. Being able to get a snap of an entire beach scene, a pretty detailed shot of a lighthouse several miles away, or a macro shot of an insect crawling on the sand at the touch of a button is fantastic and would be impossible with a regular zoom lens. They go for about £250-300 refurbished. Also shoot 8k video.

This guy takes some great pics with one

[touchingcloth]

I have a google pixel phone and it's ok but I just don't really like taking photos with it, partly because it feels like there's a kind of disconnect between taking the photo and the actual picture. Possibly I'm just old and silly. Also, never really got round to working out what my phone camera can do so I sometimes struggle just to retrieve the few photos that I do take.

I would like to go back to 35mm and my LC-A but it seems like such an expensive extravagance nowadays. Film was so cheap just a few years back and now it's definitely up in the luxury bracket.

I think my main query was answered up thread when you mentioned a budget of about £400. I kind of switched off then. In my mind I was picturing something cool and compact for about £200 that I could fiddle with and then probably tire of. Think I'm probably best of using my phone more.

I would like to take more pictures. I decided last year that I would try and take at least one 'considered' photo a day. I took one on January 1st (and that was only cause it looked nice out the window when I was lying in bed) and didn't bother again.

Maybe get a manual camera app for the phone and see if that brings you more of a feeling of connection. If not, then you might be able to find something three or more generations old for closer to the £200 if you look for compact APS-C (like the Ricohs) or 4/3 (Lumix) cameras on ebay. The Sony thing I mentioned upthread has an even smaller sensor than that, so if you're hankering after 35mm then wouldn't be your thing.

Interestingly, my Canon SLR (2010) looks like it can be had for ~£100 second hand, while my Fujifilm mirrorless (2014) is much more expensive second hand, so it could be that cameras from around 2014 had reached a point in sensor design where they're as good as they need to be without many compromises (which is certainly my experience - it's a pretty night and day difference in quality between the two cameras, with the Canon only really coping well in daylight), if that helps steer towards ages of cameras that are still pleasant to use today.

[touchingcloth]

Not sure about others but the model I have (S21 Ultra) has four different lenses which you can switch between manually in pro mode and each one has a different aperture. They're fixed with each lens so I guess the phone is doing extra work at times to compensate, and the "bokeh" effect is just clever background blurring.

Primary: 108 MP 24 mm-equivalent f/1.8-aperture
Ultra-wide: 12 MP 13 mm-equivalent f/2.2-aperture
Tele 1: 10 MP 72 mm-equivalent f/2.4
Tele 2: 10 MP 240 mm-equivalent f/4.9-aperture

I'd recommend it as a camera phone, for ultrawide and super tele shots it's great and my go to because I don't have regular camera lenses close to being that wide or long and not worth the investment for me. Being able to get a snap of an entire beach scene, a pretty detailed shot of a lighthouse several miles away, or a macro shot of an insect crawling on the sand at the touch of a button is fantastic and would be impossible with a regular zoom lens.

13-240 in a phone is all kinds of exciting, so I can see why they do it now. I was never able to afford a good telephoto lens, so got used to shooting with relatively wide (85mm equivalent or less) prime lenses, so a phone with a single fixed lens works for my habits quite well. And I'm not going to search for what the other alternatives are because I don't need that temptation at this time of the year.

[Neomod]

Like with any bit of kit you buy/have, get to know it's capabilities inside out and that will make taking pictures far more enjoyable.

Also I think sometimes you need to get yourself in the right mindset to take on a photo project. I did that 365 thing a couple of years ago and yep there were a fair few mediocre images when I wasn't really feeling it but I also got some great stuff and it was the perfect exercise to get to know the camera I'd just bought

[Papa Wheelie]

I use a Fujifilm X100, and the main thing that swayed me over the Ricohs at the time was the optical/electronic viewfinder. If I wanted something pocketable (I love the X100, but that it needs to be worn on a strap is its biggest downside) it would be a Ricoh or a Sony RX100, I think, though they both have smaller sensors and slower lenses.

Wonderful camera, I love the Fuji colours and form factor. I would love a X100V when they're back in stock but probably going to stick with the GR3 for a year and see if my enthusiasm remains. Not sure about the Sony, but the GR3 performs surprisingly close, 2.8 vs F2 and 24MP vs 26. I'm used to faster primes, got a couple of 1.2, but it's fast enough in most conditions and stabilised well for low-light. The main issue for me is no weather sealing because I like shooting in the rain, especially street and architecture. Also, probably is a bit expensive for the feature set but the size and 'grabability' for the performance is priceless.

[holyzombiejesus]

I've gone a bit daft and am now thinking about trading in my Lumix GX7 (+ 2 lenses) and going for a Fujifilm X100V (or even a VI). I like the Lumix but it's cumbersome and I never carry the 42.5 lens round with me anyway. I'd probably have to find around 1k to afford the X100_ but I'm silly and have decided that I really want it. Am i being stupid?

[touchingcloth]

I've gone a bit daft and am now thinking about trading in my Lumix GX7 (+ 2 lenses) and going for a Fujifilm X100V (or even a VI). I like the Lumix but it's cumbersome and I never carry the 42.5 lens round with me anyway. I'd probably have to find around 1k to afford the X100_ but I'm silly and have decided that I really want it. Am i being stupid?

No. I have the X100T and it's incredible, absolutely no regrets over switching to it from a DSLR.

The only thing to consider is if you're used to a zoom lens, then this one has a fixed one. I pretty much always had my 50mm prime stuck on my DSLR, so it wasn't a big change to me. If you're used to a zoom you'd maybe want to consider budgeting to add the tele and wide conversion lenses, at which point you've lost some of the advantages compared to an interchangeable lens camera. Which leads me to...

...you might want to consider the X100F. You could probably afford that plus the converter lenses for the price of the V. One of the main things that has (thankfully, because the whole point of buying this camera for me was to keep me from hankering after new gear) stopped me from upgrading within the X100 line has been the changes they've made to the rear controls on the F (joy stick, not buttons) and V (touchscreen). I think if I were to upgrade it would still be to the F, because the film simulation "recipes" would let me do far less post-processing I think, and the autofocus is supposed to be a marked improvement versus the T. None of the additional features of the V make sense for my way of shooting, though I can see why the flippy screen and weatherproofing appeal to some.

[touchingcloth]

Oh, and sorry if it was my post that pushed you into considering £1,000 when £400 was an earlier tipping point!

[touchingcloth]

Oh part II (S)!

Try before you buy. I didn't love the first X100 when I tried it, and it took the hardware and firmware changes that had come along by the T to convince me that it would match how I like to shoot. The menus, button and viewfinder layouts will differ from what you're used to, and might not feel good in your hands at all.

[holyzombiejesus]

No. I have the X100T and it's incredible, absolutely no regrets over switching to it from a DSLR.

The only thing to consider is if you're used to a zoom lens, then this one has a fixed one. I pretty much always had my 50mm prime stuck on my DSLR, so it wasn't a big change to me. If you're used to a zoom you'd maybe want to consider budgeting to add the tele and wide conversion lenses, at which point you've lost some of the advantages compared to an interchangeable lens camera. Which leads me to...

...you might want to consider the X100F. You could probably afford that plus the converter lenses for the price of the V. One of the main things that has (thankfully, because the whole point of buying this camera for me was to keep me from hankering after new gear) stopped me from upgrading within the X100 line has been the changes they've made to the rear controls on the F (joy stick, not buttons) and V (touchscreen). I think if I were to upgrade it would still be to the F, because the film simulation "recipes" would let me do far less post-processing I think, and the autofocus is supposed to be a marked improvement versus the T. None of the additional features of the V make sense for my way of shooting, though I can see why the flippy screen and weatherproofing appeal to some.

Oh, and sorry if it was my post that pushed you into considering £1,000 when £400 was an earlier tipping point!

Oh part II (S)!

Try before you buy. I didn't love the first X100 when I tried it, and it took the hardware and firmware changes that had come along by the T to convince me that it would match how I like to shoot. The menus, button and viewfinder layouts will differ from what you're used to, and might not feel good in your hands at all.

Thanks for all this, will do.