Apaature and shutter speeds

"parkerne" <u38569@uwe> wrote in message news:7a3b9644bde06@uwe...
> Smaller F number better for portrait pictures, to make the background
> slightly softer and the person more in focus, also reducing the depth of
> field... correct?

Correct with larger cameras, but very small cameras have so much depth of
field you usually won't be able to reduce it much.

>
> And getting a camera with a fast shutter speed will be better so my
> pictures
> won't be as much as a blur when my kids are moving around? That and one
> with
> IS. 1/2000s decent or are the better in a P&S?

Image stabilization is always good to have. I wouldn't worry too much about
shutter speed in a small camera. You would seldom if ever need 1/2000 in
such a camera and might not be able to use it anyway unless the light was
very bright. Higher shutter speeds = less light passing through the lens,
and you need a certain amount of light to get a good picture.

>
> What can you or anyone else tell me about the Nikon S510, P50, P5000 or
> the
> Canon A720 IS... those are what I have been looking into, but can't seem
> to
> figure out which one will be the best for me.

The S510 is very flat and pocketable, if that's important to you. It has a
nice large LCD monitor but no optical viewfinder, which may or may not be
important to you. Personally I find *all* LCD screens hard to read in bright
sunlight and for that reason prefer a camera which also has an optical
viewfinder. But apparently some people don't mind the absence of a
viewfinder.

The P50, P5000 and P5100 have optical viewfinders as well as a large LCD
monitor. I like them better for that reason, and also the fact that they
have more user controls and should be more capable cameras generally. The
P50 also has better wide angle capability than the others mentioned, and
should be attractively priced. But it doesn't have real optical image
stabilization -- it has *electronic* stabilization which is not as
effective.

The P5000/P5100 are the most advanced Coolpix models available today and
priced accordingly. They both have real optical stabilization which is good.
If you're a beginner they probably have more features than you need -- you
may or may not "grow into" such a camera.

>
> Pictures of:
> Kids, kids playing sports, every day activities.
> I do want at least an 8 MP, I do on occasion make my pictures bigger than
> the
> regular 8x10.
> Movie mode - I love using it now.
>
> They have one that is a S51, but it's a f3.3 which someone told me wasn't
> good, and that I wanted one that was at least as low as a f2.8

Not necessarily. In ordinary use you probably would not notice the
difference between a camera with f/3.3 and one with f/2.8, and also keep in
mind that these f-numbers only apply to the lens at the *short* end of the
zoom range -- at the long end, the f-number is invariably higher ( = smaller
relative aperture) in this type of camera, and the long end is where you'd
really prefer to have a larger aperture. Many compact/ultracompact cameras
are f/5 or so at the long end.


> - which is why
> I asked. But I like that the others have better optical zoom, not much,
> but
> still, more, and I know the Canon has a lot more, but just not sure about
> it.

A longer zoom is nice dependng on circumstances, but may not be very useful
if the aperture at the long end is very small, since the longer the zoom the
more it magnifies camera shake -- so to avoid blurring the picture you will
need a higher shutter speed, and if the aperture is small there may not be
enough light for the camera to set a higher shutter speed. Generally
speaking, if you need a pocketable camera I would advise not being too
ambitious about zoom ratio. If you really want a camera with a long zoom
range I'd suggest looking into one of the several "superzoom" models on the
market -- but none of them are really pocketable. So that's the trade-off.

Neil
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