Compact / bridge camera recommendations? £300-400 range

FishyFish

FishyFish

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Hi fellow TP members,

My neice's partner has asked my advice about buying a camera in the £300-400 price range. He wants to buy new.

He's said it's for general picture taking rather than driven by an interest in photography as a pursuit in itself, and has given "wildlife" and "old buildings" as examples of the sorts of things he likes to photograph.

Until he mentioned wildlife, I was thinking of a compact - maybe an older model RX100 or something, but wildlife would likely require a bigger telephoto reach than most compacts have (that I'm aware of), so maybe a bridge camera would be a better choice?

I don't think he wants an interchangeable lens system.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good cameras in that price range please?

Thanks.
 
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I had a student on my course who had a Sony HX400 mainly bought as a nature camera for a beginner. Doesn't shoot raw, but has a stupidly huge zoom on it and 24mm at the wide end means it will be relatively acceptable for "old buildings".

I don't think the low light performance is amazing, and neither do I know if it has any image stabilisation. It's also "very small DSLR" sized as opposed to "compact". The images it produced though were great and as a "do it all" thing with just one lens, I, for one, was impressed.

Oh, and another downside was that operability was pretty poor. He was constantly coming to me asking how to change things and we had to Google it every time. I think that's a Sony menu thing though.
 
FishyFish said:
Hi fellow TP members,

My neice's partner has asked my advice about buying a camera in the £300-400 price range. He wants to buy new.

He's said it's for general picture taking rather than driven by an interest in photography as a pursuit in itself, and has given "wildlife" and "old buildings" as examples of the sorts of things he likes to photograph.

Until he mentioned wildlife, I was thinking of a compact - maybe an older model RX100 or something, but wildlife would likely require a bigger telephoto reach than most compacts have (that I'm aware of), so maybe a bridge camera would be a better choice?

I don't think he wants an interchangeable lens system.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good cameras in that price range please?

Thanks.
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What about the rx10? Not as compact as the rx100 but has the better zoom range and premium quality. Otherwise Fujifilm HS30 which can be had for under £100 as a real bonus
 
If he doesn't need the zoom, I'd suggest the Sony RX10 mark 2. Not as user friendly as the Panasonic versions, but damn nice. Id' say its a touch choice between the RX10 mark 2 or the Panasonic FZ1000. Both these offer phemonemal bang for your buck
 
FishyFish said:
Thanks for the suggestions so far everyone. Unless I’m missing something though, the RX10 and FZ1000 look to be well out of his £300-400 budget (especially given he doesn’t want to go the pre-owned route).
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Both can be around about that price, for a good used example.
 
Panasonic TZ80 has a 30x optical zoom (24-720 equivalent) and costs £229 on Amazon. I’ve got an older version of the TZ and it’s fine. The image quality is as you’d expect from a compact camera which is fine for the 99.999% of the population who aren’t pixel peeping camera enthusiasts.
 
As above could be a good buy for some one that just wants sharp images of varied subjects
 
I own an Fz82 which is fun but not much more; I think of it as an iPhone telephoto lens, great for kayaking/casual stuff but picture quality suffers. The FZ1000 is much much more, a truly excellent alternative to a full camera/lens ecosystem, and it’s worth saving a little longer and harder for the FZ1000.
 
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danbroad said:
I own an Fz82 which is fun but not much more; I think of it as an iPhone telephoto lens, great for kayaking/casual stuff but picture quality suffers. The FZ1000 is much much more, a truly excellent alternative to a full camera/lens ecosystem, and it’s worth saving a little longer and harder for the FZ1000.
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I second that re the FZ1000!
 
TP Username said:
I've always been tempted by the Panasonic FZ330 which is a fraction over £400.
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Its a nice model - but the FZ1000 is worth the slight extra. Even thought it is 200mm less and lacks a touch screen, you'll get far superior images with it in less than perfect conditions!
 
It's almost twice the price!

I'm not disagreeing ref image quality or anything but it is a big jump in price comparatively.
 
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