Best Bridge for £350?

[Garnett]

I'm looking at the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS or the Nikon P520. I don't think the budget will stretch to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX200. Is one better than the other, or is there another I should be considering?

A while back we bought the parents a tiny Casio point-and-shoot, as they coveted my sister's and wanted something small to replace "the bulky 30 year old Olympus SLR".

Now they are complaining about the lack of a optical view finder (and the bad digital view finder screen) as well as the quality of the Casio's pics.

Dad is threatening to go back to the film Olympus saying manual focus is much better than the modern cameras. He's not very technical but somehow gets some amazing pictures - he's got a very good eye.

Mum wants something with AF but with an optical viewfinder.

In 30 years they never felt the need to change the lens on the Olympus, and really want something smaller and lighter, so a modern DSLR is probably not an option.

Any help would be very gratefully appreciated.

 

[SteveF]

Have you looked at the micro 4/3 system? Something like a Panasonic G3 and a couple of nice lenses can be had for your budget....

Your parents will then have the best of both worlds (AF/MF) in a easily handle able package which is much better than a bridge camera in my opinion.

 

[Jaisus]

Canon power shot SX50 - I bought the P520 just because of the 1000mm zoom they kept bosting, and it just go's to show that size really doesn't count

I found the P520 to be **** poor, complete crap, which was a shame because I really wanted it to be good, at just over £300 for a 1000mm zoom it sounded worth a look just a shame the P520 was not up to it.


The canon powershot though is a superb camera, I had a fiddle with it and it had some very impressive results.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

Fish out some cheap 30D or Nikon D80 from ebay. That will be light years better than compacts

 

[Jaisus]

Would have to agree there, for price you will be paying for the canon bridge you can get an entry nikon cheaper "new" or like said above ebay for a bargain semi pro.

 

[PJ S]

Fuji X-S1

 

[Phall82]

Fuji X10 would be perfect. Old fashioned style with all the mod cons. Viewfinder is optical but not the best. The camera itself and the photo quality for this size is fantastic. Actually the best thing about it is how much fun it is to use.

 

[ernesto]

Ultimately your dad is right and manual focus was better on film cameras. Having dabbled with an OM10 I actually enjoyed manually focusing it whereas I find digital cameras frustrating to manually focus.