Beginner half-pressure button focus

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Hello forum,

I have 2 questions, I guess I will ask them in two posts? one's easy (and is basically the reason my camera broke), one is "what camera do you recommend".

long story short, on "budget" point and shoot camera's, what do you think of the shoot buttons which have halfway-pressure to focus, then full pressure to take the photo? are they considered delicate and will break, or are they standard practice?

the shoot button on my Fuji F70EXR stopped having the halfway-pressure point (I've taken about 2000 images in 5 years - basically light casual use). I'm guessing whatever pressure spring inside it under the button,, stopped acting as a spring. this meant that when I was taking still photos, it was permanently halfway down

the pressure failure also caused it to have a high failure rate in taking videos. maybe 40% of the time, it would stop taking the video 1 second after I started it
 
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Well all cameras point and shoot and dslr’s I have owned come as standard with 1/2 press focus. So I would say that is standard.
I change that on the dslr’s due to personal preference to back button focus.

I think if after advice on a new point and shoot what you really need to say is
A. budget
B. Price
 
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It's a very common feature (I don't think I've tried a digital camera without it), but I don't know if it's universal. You can generally download a PDF of the manual for any camera you are interested in from the maker's site, which will have this information. But the compact P&S sector has been in decline since you bought your Fuji - phones are now good enough to replace them for many users. Are you looking for a modern version of what you have, or perhaps something a bit more versatile?
 
Hello forum,

I have 2 questions, I guess I will ask them in two posts? one's easy (and is basically the reason my camera broke), one is "what camera do you recommend".

long story short, on "budget" point and shoot camera's, what do you think of the shoot buttons which have halfway-pressure to focus, then full pressure to take the photo? are they considered delicate and will break, or are they standard practice?

the shoot button on my Fuji F70EXR stopped having the halfway-pressure point (I've taken about 2000 images in 5 years - basically light casual use). I'm guessing whatever pressure spring inside it under the button,, stopped acting as a spring. this meant that when I was taking still photos, it was permanently halfway down

the pressure failure also caused it to have a high failure rate in taking videos. maybe 40% of the time, it would stop taking the video 1 second after I started it

It is standard practice but maybe with some cameras, it could be customised to suit your liking.

In the old days with manual focus cameras, you could easily just focus on the subject you want to be in focus, then you would reframe the photo and take the shoot. Some examples could be focus on the model's eyes, focus on either one of the couple, focus on a specific flower, and then adjust the framing. So that you could do a full body shoot, point camera between the couple, move the flower into the lower left hand corner.

With auto focus, the problem is that it could focus on the subject you want to be in focus, but once you reframe the subject, it just focus on something else. Full body shoot, your camera focus on the model's belt bracket. The couple are out of focus because your camera focused at the wall in the background. The flower is a blur because your camera focused at the grass.

That's why we have a half-way pressure to focus, and if you keep hold of the pressure when you move the camera, it will not re-focus. Hence it's a standard practice on many, if not all, the cameras.

Maybe your "budget" point and shoot camera is too cheap to have a good shutter release button, so it broken after 2000 images in 5 years, but many of the better well known brand cameras, including DSLRs, will have a button that would work for many years to come.
 
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