Hello,
I'm looking for a great small camera.
I've been looking at:
Canon PowerShot S110
Panasonic DMC-LX7
Sony Cyber-shot RX100, which is a little steep on price.
I basically want a point and shoot to have with me every day. Something to shoot street, meetings, and whatever else that steps in my way. Which one would You choose? or any new recommendation?
Best,
Jin
I was searching for the same thing, and bought/returned/sold few cameras and these are my experiences:
G15 - as one of the posters said, too slow. Returned
LX7 - very good lens, fast autofocus, worse sensor than any other here, hence bad,bad,bad high ISO. Sold it in the first week of ownership, would be great if you take pics mostly outside in good light, doesn't work well inside.
Nikon J1 with 10mm and 10-30 - Not too bad, but sorta straddling two worlds, compacts and mirrorless. Compact with 10mm pancake (27 mm eq) and pics are good, but with kit lens, ISO is not great. Better than other compacts, comparable to RX100, at equivalent ISO, but lens is slower, so you're higher up the ISO most of the time. Sold it, but in retrospect, not remotely as bad as G15 and LX7.
RX100 - returned it, I didn't think colors/IQ were as good. Now, looking back at the pictures, not quite sure if I was right. At worse, it's the same IQ like other compacts, i.e. lesser dynamic range, washed out colors at higher ISO. But, there are number of pictures that are great, sort of stuff that I would get at APS-C, rich colors, clean and smooth. Perhaps I judged little Sony harsher than anything else because of the price ($700 +13% tax in Canada), I am price sensitive.
What I ended up is Sony NEX 3N with little power zoom 16-50. A touch slow focus, but at beast it compares with my SLR (6D). At worst, well, you throw a lot of pics because they're not in focus. Surprisingly compact, but it's not true compact, more of a jacket pocket, or small belt bag type of camera.
Just couple of days ago I also got Fuji X10 used for $300 including leather case. Now, I actually had new and returned it, it wasn't worth to me $600+tax. But, it kept gnawing at me, as some of the pictures have just a magical colors, and EXR mode and some of the advanced modes make IQ very, very good, like Sony rx100 at its best. Now this is in 6MP mode most of the time. Focus is quite fast, and build is superb, it's very satisfying camera to operate. High ISO is the best in the compact world, short of Sony RX100, and it may be equal or better than Sony in 6MP EXR mode (but you have only 6MP vs 20MP in that mode!). I have no justification for this camera, but I couldn't resist, it's that interesting. Not really pocket camera either.
Hope this helps.
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