Am I living in fantasy land

[MikeyMike]

I've just got myself a Panasonic digital camrea DMC LS60
Please dont laugh but the specs are 6.0 megapixles & 3 x optical zoom
I guess its a pritty basic camera cost about £70
Am I living in a dream world expecting to take good photos with it
If I am in a dream world,
What would I need to be looking at camera wise to get a decent photo

My camera :|
http://i28.tinypic.com/2s6o7dz.jpg

[fletch5]

it should work fine and should be able to take decent pics

[grim8634]

Depends what you mean by decent. I've seen some shots I consider to be absolutely amazing taken on a camera phone! However you won't be able to achieve some of the effects you see, but you'll still be able to have plenty of fun!

[dazzajl]

Am I living in a dream world expecting to take good photos with it

Nope, not a bit. I love my little lumix camera and it takes some great images. You do need to nail it to 100 ISO to get good image quality but that's the trade off for it being small and easy to live with. :)

[Canon Bob]

Am I living in a dream world expecting to take good photos with it


It would be wrong to pretend that it doesn't have limitations....even the most expensive and sophisticated cameras do.
By far the biggest one is usually the person looking through the viewfinder though.

Bob

[reddeathdrinker]

You can take good pics with anything - it's the photographer, not the camera that matters...

Look at Lomography, pinhole cameras, other simple things like those (Canon, anyone;))

[MarkEvan]

I second the above, great images are seen and captured by the person behind the camera. Any camera is capable of taking fantastic photo`s.



Enjoy taking pictures........... and learn

[Yv]

One of our members has a signature that reads...

"Any camera will record what you see, but first you have to SEE"


Which sort of sums it up really. Yes, the image quality wont be as good as more expensive machinery, you won't be able to be as creative with the control of the settings on the camera, but that doesn't mean you wont be able to take good pics. Truth is, as much as some of us may hate to admit it, if you can get a good pic with a cheap camera, you can get a good pic with any camera. Practice with it and see if you enjoy taking pics and then look at moving upwards if you want to ;)

[who?]

I'd agree with all that.

On the whole, what you get by stepping up to a dSLR is easier control of all the parameters. Which makes it easier for you to play and get to understand what you are doing. I can take much better shots with my p&s camera since I bought a dslr. Mainly because before that I'd virtually never taken the p&s out of auto mode. Now that I have more understanding of exposure etc I use it in manual and get better results.

Of course, what I should have done is get the understanding of things before spending £400 on a dslr. but hey ho!

The p&s cameras let you get on with looking at what you want to take pics of without worrying about all the other stuff like white balance, exposure, histograms etc etc.

I would say that you'll do fine with what you have - get used to it and then see what (if any) limitations it has for what you want to do. Then if/when you want to buy a dslr then you'll have a much better understanding of which features are most important for you and which lenses will be most useful to you.