"Ooo, there's the REAL photographer!"

That is not false humility. It seems with every passing “serious job” I do, I realize how far I have to go. Sure, I took some pretty shots, but there were so many shots that I looked at and thought, “Hmph, that one was almost good.”

Funny, I knew so much when I did my first wedding. Maybe the good ones were lost or something, because when I looked back, all those killer shots just were not there. Strange. I certainly knew more when I started…or as some friends quoted to me recently from Bob Dylan, “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

I think to sum up my thoughts about what is limiting me — yes, I am going to blame it on gear…well, and that blasted spotlight at the banquet — I would say a full frame camera would sure be nice for an extra stop of light or two. That really does make sense; I will explain. I want to go a little wider, but I lose a stop or two getting a wider lens so it ends up where I want it on my crop sensor camera.

Example: I am shooting a 35mm f/2, which is acting like a f/2 50mm. I just lost a stop of light from the 50mm f/1.4 basically because of my cropped sensor. You have to blame something. Then, if I wanted to shoot at 35mm, which I do, I would have to go for a 24mm f/2.8, and I have just lost another stop of light.

Maybe on Nikon’s (and now other companies) new high ISO, low noise cameras, this would not be an issue, but I will tell you what, on my decrepitly aged D100, you notice plenty of grain just moving from 200 to 400.

I think to really say it more clearly, I would not say it is just that I need new gear to fix all my problems. It would be more accurate to say this: I feel like my eye is seeing a full frame view, but that blasted sensor keeps cropping my vision…but a little less grain would be nice for an alternative solution. Seriously, any full frame camera with the Ai-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.4…that would be great.

I give the biggest kudos possible to Nikon for “writing the peace treaty” in the megapixel wars by coming out with the 12MP D300, D700, and D3. As is seen by the number of pros using these cameras, many people are more concerned with other features like shooting speed and high ISO noise. Now, I can add Canon to the list of enlightened camera makers by making their new top of the line compact camera less megapixels than the last generation of the same camera! Sweet.

Now, I am not trying to say more megapixels is bad. It all depends on your needs. To some, more megapixels does not slow down their workflow at all, they have plenty of space to back up the larger files, and some just flat need the extra megapixels. For many, there is not a need for more megapixels, and fewer means they can gain speed in processing (shooting speed and editing on the computer) and lose noise at high ISOs. It all depends.

For the average Joe or amateur photographer, though, there is rarely a need for ultra high megapixels. They already haev all they need. My Mom has a 10 or 12MP camera, and I set it to a smaller setting for her, because it eats up space so fast. Regardless, I like the trend, which seems to be saying, “we camera makers are willing to work on other issues besides jump forcing more megapixels into the camera.” Bravo!

Maybe you have the same problem I do. You do not have the Nikon D3 or the Canon 5D or some other full-frame, no-noise wonder, and moving your ISO up just a little turns your image into static. Do you want to keep image quality at its best (or pretty close) and stop sacrificing your pictures to the ISO noise gods? Here is what I do.

Before I give the tip, here is a good starter: buy fast glass. If you are on a budget, there are budget prime lenses out there that have pretty open apertures and can gain you a few stops of light over the cheap zooms.

So, you need to move that ISO 800 shot with its annoying noise back to an ISO 200, no noise shot? If your aperture is at its limit and you just cannot sacrifice the speed any more, just shoot the shot too dark. Exposure compensation is the answer (find it in your camera manual and figure out how to set it).

I know, it sounds backwards: “the shot it too dark so I am going to make it darker”, but it actually makes loads of sense. If you tell your camera it needs to meter minus two stops, then your speed can be two stops faster. Then, in post-production, you just bring the exposure back up. Sure, you get a little noise that way, but at least in my case, way less than if I had bumped up the ISO.

Disclaimer: if you shoot JPG, this trick is not really very helpful. Do yourself a favor; shoot raw. With raw, you easily have a couple stops to play with. I find (with my camera, anyway) that bringing a photo up three stops is just too much. That is when I would start to shoot 400, then compensate -2 on exposure, gaining three stops of light, total.

So, back to the nameless seasoned pro. He said they did not use light meters (they were not built in to the cameras, and no photojournalist had the time to be taking light readings for every shot). So, they would shoot 400 film, shoot it too dark, just guessing on the exposure. Then, when they developed the film (not making prints, just developing the film itself), they would leave it in the chemicals till it looked right. What I realized is that I am effectively doing a digital version of the same trick.

I knew I was not crazy.

So, that is the first question. What is essential in a compact camera? Honestly, all we wanted was something small to do videos of our children since I am already carrying around my camera for the photographs. I think we can safely put the video issue aside, though, because almost all compact cameras take the same quality of video. What is the most important part of any camera? Image quality.

My search was to find the best compact camera possible, but not to pay a huge price for it. My research labors where not in vain.

Now, I do not know all the science of it all, but I know the size of the camera’s sensor has a huge part to play. That is fairly easy to understand. I also know that some companies can use a big sensor but still totally mess up the image quality with other factors in the chain, and some companies do pretty well at the impossible task of keeping decent quality from small sensors. Basically, though, the bigger that sensor, the better quality photos you will have. So, my first step was to research compact camera sensor sizes.

I know, this sounds ridiculous, but it is simply something the manufacturers do not want you to know. More megapixels from the same physical sized sensor is not going to give you much better results…if any better. So, I went to the trusty DPReview website, my first stop for research and reviews on cameras. I used their side-by-side comparison to go through (literally) every single compact camera they had in their lists. I found out pretty quickly that there are two basic physical sizes of compact camera sensors on the market: 1/2.5″ and 1/1.6″. I am assuming that is a diagonal measurement, like TV screens and computer monitors. So, even the bigger size is only just over a half inch…diagonally. It is a wonder they can take any decent photos!

So, I made a list of every single larger-sized sensor compact camera. The list itself was interesting. Now, don’t quote me on any of this; I am doing it from memory (I should have kept that list, huh?). Canon had some, but only among their expensive compacts (G9, G10). Of course, Leica had a couple, but you will pay for those too. Several companies were completely devoid of any larger sized sensor…Sony being the one I remember most. Samsung had a few, but very scattered here and there in their camera lines…therefore, it would be pretty hard to actually find one. FujiFilm was the real champion here. Their entire F-series line had the bigger sensor, and that line also has some very competitively priced cameras.

So, for the completely subjective part of this whole thing, my wife had recently shot on a friend’s Samsung compact camera. Since, I have seen photos from the same camera. She did not like the display, and when I saw the photos, I was absolutely appalled at the image quality. We know it was new. There just is not any excuse, regardless of how much it cost, for images that horrible. I am not kidding.

And for the other subjective input, my wife had also recently shot a FujiFilm compact that she kept saying how much she loved. I did not want her to influence me too much while figuring out which cameras were options, but then when the FujiFilm F-series showed so many larger sensor cameras in my list, we started looking that direction.

Again on DPReview, just offhand to try a different approach to find for high-quality compact cameras, I looked at their most highly rated cameras. What do you know, in the list of the most highly recommended cameras on their site, two FujiFilm F-series cameras were listed: the F31fd and F50fd. If you actually read through either of those reviews, you will see how little the extra megapixels help us. The F31fd review not only put it among the best compact cameras of its time, but the F50fd review, which was good in and of itself, still struggled to compare to the F31fd in image quality, especially noise at high ISO (film speed).

So, though I tried my best to search for a F31fd (because image quality better than most new cameras at an old camera price was fine by me) among the shops, I found some as old, but there were no 31s to be found. Actually, since I was actually looking in Singapore, I found that there were many F-series cameras not on my list…I guess they have some Asian versions that DPReview would know by different numbers. Anyway, we ended up buying the FujiFilm F50fd and are already impressed by the image quality.

As for all the other features they are trying to pack in new cameras and the extra megapixels, I would say image quality is the most important factor to most people. Woops. I do know of one feature the FujiFilm cameras have, which most do not, which really is a great feature I could talk about more some time. It has a setting on the dial where it will take two photos, back to back, one with flash and one without. Wonderful. If only more people could see how much better their photos were with the flash off!

So, I will give a respectful nod to the bigger sensor compact cameras from Canon, Leica, Panasonic, and (grudgingly) Samsung, but FujiFilm gives quite a variety of price and function in their F-series, all of which (as far as I can tell) have the (comparatively) larger sized sensor. FujiFilm F-series wins. Rarely would I specifically give brand names like this, but in this case, it really did seem to come out quite clearly.