Best compact for gigs

[ianpinion]

Another possible option is the Panasonic TZ10. It has full manual control and a 12x optical zoom lens provided by Leica. It's f/3.3 - f/5.9 which does mean it won't let as much light pass through the lens as the Canon S90, but it will get you much closer to the action if you're standing further back in the audience.

[zulhilmizulfadli]

how about the fijifilm hs 10....is this worth looking into as well??

[chris-p]

Originally Posted by zulhilmizulfadli

how about the fijifilm hs 10....is this worth looking into as well??

If you can get it into a gig, you'd get pretty good results. Good low noise as well if you're prepared to run at a lower resolution.

[pixelmantis]

from my experience you can't get by with cameras on that budget. Since gigs often have actively moving subjects (on top of being relatively dimly lit), you need fast shutter speeds to avoid unintentional motion blur. Since aperture gets higher as you zoom in, you will have to resort to bump up ISO.

with these bridge/compacts, you'll need to get up to 1/30 sec shutter (even that is on the margin for getting sharp captures, safer would be 1/60), and assuming your aperture reaches about F4.0 when zoomed in, you have to bump ISO to about 1600 or 3200 (if available depending on model).

If you're gona use the photos for web or screen viewing, you can probably apply Noise Ninja and resize them down enough until the noise becomes least noticeable.