Navyasw02, this shot looks great on my new 300ppi Google 10 inch tablet!
Any more f2 portraits?
Hope you do not mind me linking your shot here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/90140687@N04/8214857955/sizes/h/

millsart wrote:
More so, does it really matter ?

If I owned a RX1, would I want to fight someone if they dared call my new $2800 camera a P&S ?
dunno
it depends on the individual.
as long as you dont turn green when you've just coughed up 3 grand for a camera and then you see b&h (for example) classing it as a point and shoot.

I forgot this baby is already available

haha well it would be interesting to see how leica guys react to the fact that X2 is also categorized as a P&S. In reality camera stores have no clue how to categorize all the new cameras types coming up. There was a time when everything other than DSLRs was considered P&S. Then came mirrorless cameras and stores didn't know where to put them. Some initially put them in P&S, others put them in DSLRs, until they solved the issue by making a new category and called it compact system cameras. Its interesting that Pentax Q is a compact system camera whereas Leica X2 is a P&S Eventually they might come up with a new name for the fixed-lens large-sensor cameras as well.

The crux of this is not whether you think it's a p & s but whether the people you're pointing it at do. You can split hairs but that's the guts of it for me.

I dont know, maybe it's the shops affecting users' perceptions of cameras...
but in my experience this categorisation mirrors exactly the popular belief that I've seen everywhere on the internet: if a camera doesnt change lenses it's a p&s, period.

I also remember a discussion in RFF I think, where Stephen Gandy was explaining why the Contax G2 is also a p&s. I dont remember why though.

Spyro P. wrote:
if a camera doesnt change lenses it's a p&s, period.

Yep, makes sense:

David R. wrote:
The crux of this is not whether you think it's a p & s but whether the people you're pointing it at do. You can split hairs but that's the guts of it for me.

Funny, so next time I take the picture of a landscape I should first ask it whether it thinks of my camera as a P&S or not

If people think of my camera as a P&S then that's a plus. Better chances of getting natural shots! Other than that I fail to understand why it matters what other people think about my camera. The only thing that matters to me is what results I get out of the camera.

carstenw wrote:
Spyro P. wrote:
if a camera doesnt change lenses it's a p&s, period.

Yep, makes sense:

Spyro P. wrote:
I dont know, maybe it's the shops affecting users' perceptions of cameras...

The big DSLR producers have a vested interest in downplaying the rise of more capable mirrorless cameras. There may be something to that.

Just this morning I caught an advertisement from Canon which belittled compact cameras. It displayed folks lugging Canon DSLRs, usually with a big honking white lens attached, climbing up high to get a shot or hanging from a crane or whatever. The message couldn't be more clear: "Why would you use this...." - cutting to a crowd on the ground shooting a bunch of compacts and P&S - "when you could use this" - cutting back to Canon and the rugged iconoclasts who use such gear, floating above all. This commercial got a big belly laugh from me and my first reaction whether accurate or not is that they must really be hurting.

As far as on-line categorization systems, it could be that Amazon and B&H and other on-line retailers simply haven't taken the time to break down their faceted categorization systems to create an appropriate new set of categories, or it may be that they've looked at this can't see the upside in confusing on-line consumers. Eventually they'll sort these things out.

but in my experience this categorisation mirrors exactly the popular belief that I've seen everywhere on the internet: if a camera doesnt change lenses it's a p&s, period.

I disagree. It isn't interchangeable lenses but how the camera is aimed at subjects which causes most to feel the shooter is using something superior to what they may have experience with. It is how the camera is used to compose. Arms extended = point and shoot / implied lesser quality. Anything else, subject to interpretation by the observer.

Case in point: I was at a skate park yesterday trying to capture the motion and colour there on what is for November here an unusually brilliant day. I overheard one of the kids asking another if I was a "photographer" which in that context means somehow good or professional.

From his distance, or any distance, there's no way he'd be able to tell if the camera I was using was an interchangeable lens camera. I wasn't using a CaNikon DSLR or a DSLR of any sort. No white lenses or red lines, no visual cue to make the observer believe I was using a serious photographic tool and a camera he'd never before had seen.

It wasn't the interchangeability of lenses which triggered his belief but the fact that I raised the camera to my eye - my GXR was equipped then with its external viewfinder.

Granted it may have also been the way that I carried myself, finding interesting viewpoints, getting low and high and scouting the area for locations rather than just sitting at the edge, taking a few snaps, and walking away.

But... I do believe there is something to the raising of a camera to ones eye - to look through a viewfinder - which causes the general public's radar to ring "photographer" (in their minds meaning serious or paid).

Recently I'd been shooting what could be a sensitive subject on the street involving fire and police and very deliberately chose to shoot using the rear LCD of the fairly diminutive GXR to frame the subject. No one took notice of me. I swear the second I put the viewfinder on and raised the camera to my eye, a passer-by started to glare and scowl at me, and one authority very deliberately headed my way and asked me who I worked for.

I've long experienced this same type of reaction - relative anonymity when framing and exposing using the rear LCD - *like the masses do with their phones and p&s cameras* - changing to subjects being more alert and wary the second I raise a finder-equipped camera to my eye.

Fixed lens makes a camera a point and shoot? Can't go along with that. Doubt any TLR user would either. Or the lovely SWC... maybe this very specialized version was Hassy's fixed lens point and shoot for outer space:


I'll take one!

DCWatch published a review of the RX1.

http://dc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/review/newproduct/20121126_574848.html | (Google) Translated to English

edit: There are three full resolution camera comparison images - RX1, Leica M9 Summicron 35/2, Olympus OM-D 17/1.8. Yawn.

"If people think of my camera as a P&S then that's a plus. Better chances of getting natural shots!" which was my point curious80

Of course it's a point & shoot... Sony themselves have classified it as such by putting it in the Cybershot family. But who cares?! There have been plenty of terrific 'P&S' cameras in the past, such as the Olympus XA, Stylus, Pentax Espio Mini, Nikon 35Ti/28Ti, the various Contax cameras.... I'm sure there are more.

M9 is in the mirrorless section in B&H btw, not that there's anything wrong with that...

rscheffler wrote:
Of course it's a point & shoot... Sony themselves have classified it as such by putting it in the Cybershot family. But who cares?! There have been plenty of terrific 'P&S' cameras in the past, such as the Olympus XA, Stylus, Pentax Espio Mini, Nikon 35Ti/28Ti, the various Contax cameras.... I'm sure there are more.

Lots of people care. Half the reason people in this thread are poo-pooing the camera sight unseen because it says Sony on it. If it said Canon or Nikon, half of the naysayers would be raving about how great a value is at $2800 and making outlandish claims that it inverses the rule of thirds to the rule of 3. The other half are poo pooing it because it's in the P&S category. Sony should have marketed it as an Alpha since they're already disadvantaged by brand name alone.

PS - I've gone back several times to play with the A99, it runs circles around the Canon/Nikon offerings in the same class. If I wasn't so heavily invested in Canon glass and was in the market for a camera, this is what I'd get. Sony has their stuff straight, Canon and Nikon are selling revised iterations of the same old thing instead of being innovative.

navyasw02 wrote:
Lots of people care. Half the reason people in this thread are poo-pooing the camera sight unseen because it says Sony on it.

Can you substantiate that aggressive claim? Just to be clear, I am not one.

PS - I've gone back several times to play with the A99, it runs circles around the Canon/Nikon offerings in the same class.

There aren't any Canons or Nikons in the same class.

This has got to be the lowest signal-to-noise ratio thread at FM!

cputeq wrote:
This has got to be the lowest signal-to-noise ratio thread at FM!





Ha-ha! Great summary!

+1

cputeq wrote:
This has got to be the lowest signal-to-noise ratio thread at FM!





that's always the way threads about cameras that aren't released yet go.

now that at least one member has the camera things will slowly start to shift towards useful info rather than whether people love/hate the concept, sony, leica, fixed lens cameras, watches, capitalism, or apple.