Advanced Point & Shoot
Now you’re really starting to piqued my interest. Advanced point and shoot cameras don’t have interchangeable lenses, generally don’t have huge zooms and look very similar to point and shoot cameras but there are a few major advantages they have. Full access to settings is a great start, and advanced focus systems would be two of the main feature sets that get me excited about this category. Image quality on these cameras is pretty amazing these days and the lenses used generally allow for blurrier backgrounds than your standard tough or point & shoot camera (albeit no where near the blurry backgrounds of a bigger interchangeable lens camera). These cameras are a great compromise between a big bulky system and a camera that’s really no better than your phone. They delivery the quality but are easy to carry around and they generally allow for tons of accessories to build your camera kit too!
Pro's
- Great image quality
- Full access to settings
- Viewfinder and screen for composing/previewing images
- Usually have high quality glass in lenses for sharp shots
Con's
- Not an amazing zoom range on these cameras usually
- Image quality and dynamic range lag behind interchangeable lens cameras
- Limited ability to add filters on most models
- These are designed as walk-about cameras so the size can be very small with fiddly little buttons
Sensor Size
Advanced point & shoot cameras typically use a 1″ sensor however higher end models can use sensors closer to the micro4/3 size.
