Great Companion for Professional Photographer

I am a professional photographer of more than 27 years, and this camera is one of the best point-and-shoots I have ever seen or owned. It does not rate an excellent, as I do have some issues I will discuss later.

This camera is loaded with professional features not found on point-and-shoots. For example, I have used my White Lightning studio lights with this camera. It plugs directly into the PC socket.

Custom white balance setting is not found in most point-and-shoot cameras.

And I can go completely manual with all the settings.

Since I have extensive experience shooting in all manual mode, I did not find the following problems for me, but I can see where it may be an issue for newer photographers:

1) External flash must be worked manually. I still have my light meter and since I spent many years shooting manual, I can get my exposures close the first time.

2) Not good at high ISO ratings. This has always been an issue, even with film. I am checking products like Noise Ninja to see if it helps.

3) Limited aperture setting. It only goes to f/8. One day someone will catch on and we'll get a camera that goes to f22 or f32.

4) Slow auto-focus/shutter lag. You need to anticipate your shots better. When working in manual focus, shutter lag is almost eliminated.

What I like about the camera.
1) 24-300mm zoom. Great range for a small camera.

2) Nine megapixels with RAW files.

3) Takes Compact cards and xD cards. I do not have to buy new card types to use camera.

4) Custom white balance. Allows the use of filters without the camera trying to compensate for it.

5) Operates studio lights. Must use spot meter, but you need to do that anyway.

6) Can fire with standard cable release.

All photos I have taken which my paper publishes all look great. Color is better than I get on my Canon 1D, but if I need to shoot at an aperture of f/11 or more, I get color problems.

Once you learn what the limitations of the camera are, you can produce great images with it.