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by semi-extrinsic 3408 days ago
The biggest question to my mind, when it comes to camera shootouts, is how close could you get to this kind of quality with a superzoom?

Take a Canon SX60, having a lens that's 21-1365mm (sic) 35 mm equivalent. Admittedly the sensor is much worse, etc., but this covers most of that 6 lens range (apart from wide apertures at high tele).
2 comments
chris_overseas 3408 days ago
Somewhat anecdotal evidence, but I was on safari with a guy who had a superzoom camera (can't remember which sorry but it went to 1200mm or so). He was mocking the size of my full frame DSLR + 800mm Canon prime, saying he had far more reach with his almost pocketable camera - which was of course true. I was curious to see what the difference was in practice so we both took photos of a waterbuck in the distance (him at both 800mm and 1200mm). Comparing them later on a laptop PC the difference was truly night and day, MUCH more significant than I was expecting. Every single hair was razor sharp in my photo while his just showed a mottled "mush" with very little detail at all due to poor optical resolution combined with overly strong noise reduction (the latter of which could at least be partly addressed by shooting RAW).
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semi-extrinsic 3408 days ago
I have a superzoom myself, and I'm not surprised at this. I guess you saw not just the difference in optical resolution, but particularly in hazy conditions, that the much larger front aperture on your 800mm prime means is "averaging out" blur from haze and air motion to a much greater extent, giving in total a much higher clarity.

In the middle of a hot summer day, the 800mm end on my superzoom is near-useless, but at or after sunset it's much better. Still very noticeable difference from your 800mm prime, I guess, but less so than at midday.

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alistairSH 3408 days ago
Pixel peepers will find differences. But, for sharing photos on the web, a good superzoom will do well enough for most people.

The biggest differences are going to be low light conditions and controlling depth of field (portraits, etc). Also, motion (sports, wildlife), where the ability to easily focus manually ahead of time can make a huge difference.

Most of my photo-hobbyist friends (myself included) have moved away from DSLR to one of the mirrorless systems. I use MFT, and quite a few use Fuji X.

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