I’m confused about this. DSLR cameras are generally always more expensive than Point and shoot cameras. But why is it that DSLR cameras have a lower zoom range than P&S? For example, if a DSLR came with a 17-45mm lens (I’ve been told to divide 45/17 = 2.6x zoom) but some cheap P&S cameras have 5x zoom.
So does that mean P&S cameras can zoom further than DSLR?
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That’s just a lens to start you out. With a P&S, you’re forever stuck with the same zoom lens. But with a DSLR, you can buy more lenses to cover just about any range you can think of. You can also get specialty lenses, like lenses for low light, macro, tilt-shift, fish-eye, super telephoto and many more! (I sound like a commercial!) Right now, any zoom camera can zoom farther than the lens currently on my D90 (35mm f/1.8), but it’s a darn fine low light prime lens, and you can’t beat that with a stick!
You are correct. There are, however, lenses for DSLRs that have a much wider range, such as 18-200, which is a bit more than 11-1.
The big difference with DLSRs is the interchangeable lenses, so one lens doesn’t have to do everything. Lenses for DSLRs also are optically faster than the fixed lenses on P&S cameras, so they are effective in much lower light.
DSLRs are much more useful in poor light, have a bright, clear view through the lens that takes the picture, a greater range of shutter and aperture choices and vast flexibility because of interchangeable lenses, flash accessories and much more.
P&S cameras are great within their limits — I use my little Nikon all the time — but they are no match for a good DSLR.
With a DSLR you have different lenses to give you the view you want. A wide angle lens is great for landscapes, for example the standard kit lens of 18-55mm. Then you have a range that is nice for portraits – say between 50 and 85mm. People who are into bird watching or other wild life need a longer zoom lens, they might use 70-200 mm lens, or perhaps a prime 300mmm (and yes, they do come longer than that, still).
It is very much up to each photographer and his/her needs. There is more gear to drag around, but the quality and the options are vastly superior.
Yes, P&S cameras can zoom farther than dSLRs. You are correct but zoom is nothing. It is only a ratio of how far the focal length of a lens can change from minimum to maximum. It does not equate directly to magnification. Ask any dSLR user and they can point to you a lens that can almost fill up the viewfinder with the moon but have no zoom at all.
DSLRs have sensor sizes of around 370sqmm. P&S have sensor sizes of around 25sqmm. Everything must be compared to the standard, 35mm which uses film with an area of 864sqmm. Lenses aren’t measured by Xs. They are referred to by their focal lengths in mm. Focal lengths are like angles of view. To get the same angle of view of a 35mm camera, the smaller P&S sensor would require a smaller lens compared to the larger dSLR. Since it uses a smaller piece of glass, the P&S is cheaper.
This also makes it possible to make the lens go farther by making the zoom longer. It will still be much cheaper than making a zoom lens for the larger dSLR which would require much larger pieces of accurately tuned glass pieces. So, going upwards, it would even take much more effort and cash to produce accurate lenses for 35mm or full frame cameras. It doesn’t stop there. There are medium format cameras that are much larger than 35mm and their lenses are worth a fortune by themselves.
It is even crazier to note, that in the dSLR world, zoom lenses are the worst kind of lenses there is. The best lenses, and definitely the most expensive ones, are all prime lenses, those that do not zoom, 1X. Glass optics have very precise behavior and forcing them to vary focal lengths in zoom lenses degrades picture quality.
The picture quality that is possible with the larger sensors and better glass materials far outweigh any misleading advantages of long zoom ratios.
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The lens I use with my DSLR is 18-200mm. Somewhere down the road If I need more than 200mm I’ll have to buy an additional lens. In a sense you’re right, I know of no one DSLR lens that’s equal in zoom range to a 12X optical zoom.
because they DSLRS have different lenses than point and shoot. when you zoom all the way with an SLR lense, you don’t see the little megapixels in the picture and are much more finer than the point and shoot.
zoom or terms like 3x optical zoom do not apply to dSLRs.
For example you gave a lens, divided the small number into the larger one and the number is correct but it’s apples to oranges when you compare to a compact. With compacts, you can compare things like optical zoom because they are all nearly the same on the wide end, usually around 25-28mm.
So I can compare a 3x optical zoom Sony, Canon or Nikon without looking at anything else and the reach will be roughly the same.
dSLRs don’t have a fixed lens so everything goes out the window. Example, my 80-200mm f/2.8 would be a 2.5x zoom according to your logic. However, it will reach out much further than a compact with a 3x zoom. So what happened? It’s the wide end not being around 25mm like most compacts that throws everything off, so in the dSLR world you don’t use the same terms.
Next issue, image sensor size. If you took my huge 80-200mm zoom and somehow attached it to a compact the reach would be massive, but on my dSLR not so much. The reason is that the smaller the sensor the greater the reach. A dSLR has to increase the size of the lens to do the same thing that a compact can do because the sensor of a dSLR can have 10 or 20 times the surface area of a compact sensor, it depends on the dSLR.
To get the reach of a mega zoom that claims 20x zoom, you’d have a lens so big on a dSLR most people could either not afford it or wouldn’t want to carry such a massive thing around. Bottom line, saying that a compact can ‘zoom’ more than a dSLR is comparing apples to oranges.