Interesting fact for those who feel that a PS camera should have NO controls...
PC World's "Top 10" Point-and-Shoot cameras (
Top 10 Compact Point-and-Shoot Cameras | PCWorld) show that 8 of the top 10 have
some control over aperture and shutter speed, whether by menu selection or other controls.
To me this indicates that
from the perspective of the Point-and-Shoot Competitions on this forum, restricting entries to fully automatic cameras, or fixed setting cameras with NO exposure controls, would just kill the competition stone dead.
As this forum's competitions work now, those images shot with DSLR's may be submitted to their competitions, and those who shoot with non-DSLR cameras may enter the Point and Shoot competitions. Consequently the Point and Shoot competition attracts entries taken with a very wide range of cameras, both digital and film. Maximum size for an entry is 1024 x 768 and the entries are judged "as submitted". The judging, going by past Point and Shoot competition results, is based firstly on how well the image fits the theme of the competition; secondly on the "interest/uniqueness" or maybe the "wow" factor of the image; thirdly on the composition of the image; fourthly on the judge's likes and dislikes (which may be pretty subjective) and way last in the queue comes the image quality (as long as its not totally awful).
- These are FRIENDLY, FUN competitions intended to get people out and photographing images that fit the theme.
- Simply do the best you can with the camera you have with you.
- There is no prize. The winner sets the theme for the next competition, so they can't enter - which is maybe a penalty for winning.
- The more entries submitted, the more fun and challenging the competition becomes.
With image quality not being a serious factor for these competitions, the choice of camera should not be a serious factor either.
So, for the Point and Shoot Competitions, only the following should be excluded:-
- SLR and TLR cameras with TTL metering/focusing, digital or film, irrespective of sensor/film size.
- Interchangeable lens cameras EXCEPT those taking 110 film or digital with 1/2 or smaller sensors.
- Digital Cameras fitted with micro4/3 sensors or larger EXCEPT those with a separate optical/electronic (non-TTL) viewfinder for focus and composition.
- Multi-purpose cameras such as phone cameras, pad cameras etc where the camera is an add-on to the main function of the device.
- Any film, tape or digital "movie" or video cameras where a single frames is cut or extracted from a movie or digital video.
This would allow all "compact" cameras, range-finder type cameras and "bridge" cameras, including "super-zooms", irrespective of whether they are "fixed-settings", "fully automatic", or manually settable.
It would also allow a wide range of older film cameras of the folding, box or whatever types using medium to large format film.
It would also allow the Finepix X100 (with fixed lens and OVF/EVF) even though it has an APS-C sensor
It would also allow the Pentax Q with inter-changeable lenses (because of its small sensor).
It would NOT allow the Pentax 110 (which is an interchangeable lens SLR with TTL focusing) but would allow the Rollei A110 and Minox 110S (which are rangefinder cameras).
Ultimately, all the allowed cameras are, to a varying extent, point and shoot cameras. Photographs taken with the allowed cameras all have a chance to win the point and shoot competitions
To me that would still result in a fair competition, once again bearing in mind that Image Quality is not the major factor in judging entries. The excellent "intelligence" of modern automatic cameras in terms of fast, precise auto-focus and accurate automatic exposure setting, together with the ability to set a wide range of "modes" for portraits, landscapes, sports, high-contrast scenes, parties, food, pets etc etc really means that having the ability to manually set shutter speed or lens aperture or focus is of marginal benefit and takes more time than the appropriate mode setting. The people at a real disadvantage here are those shooting with film cameras. They cannot immediately see their results and there is a cost associated with every shot they take. Further, they are locked to the ISO of the film loaded and its type - color or black and white. On the upside they (usually) have better definition of shadows and highlights.