I had been running through this exercise myself when AG sent his epistle
on bridge cameras. I ended up in pretty much the same place as he did
and his comments set me much more solidly in the Minolta A1 camp.
If an IS-3 is a bridge camera then it's difficult not to think
immediately of an E-10/20 on the digital side. I started out thinking
seriously about an E-20 but an E-20 is still pretty expensive. It also
has a minimum effective focal length of 35mm (without adapter) and has
been kicked in dpreview for poor autofocus performance in normal room
light. I wanted an equivalent focal length of 28mm and a 2/3 sensor to
minimize noise. Setting those two parameters will get you down to a
small subset of digicams which includes the Minolta A1. Dpreview rated
the A1 pretty highly on everything except image quality. However, when
I print the test images they took using both the A1 and the E-20 I can't
see much difference even at 16x20. Tha A1's normal saturation level is
a bit garish but it has more adjustment levels to fix that than most
other cameras.
The electronic view finder is not a very good substitute for the E-20's
SLR viewfinder but it's a lot better than the peephole window viewfinder
of the typical compact DC.
If you read the Dpreview of the A1 you'll see that this camera has an
awful lot of features going for it. To top it off there is now a $100
"instant rebate" from your dealer which has brought the camera's price
down to as low as $639 from reputable dealers. AG's friends reported
that it also does excellent skin tones. I'm getting closer.
Chuck Norcutt
Robert Lewis wrote:
> I thought AG tried to start an interesting thread earlier about digital
> bridge cameras. I think he was making an analogy to the IS-3(000),
> which is the top-end Olympus film-based bridge camera, and seeking
> a digital camera that might serve a similar role for those of us
> who are sitting on the digital sidelines waiting for prices to drop
> and/or technology to improve. So, as a frequent user of an IS-3(000),
> I can understand the value of such a camera. However, I must admit
> that I am having trouble determining what digital cameras fit into
> that category or even what features categorize a digital bridge camera.
> Has anybody already gone down this path (in addition to AG), and
> if so, would they share their findings?
>
> Robert Lewis
>
>
>
>
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