Compact cameras have long been a great source of both fascination and frustration for me. Whenever there’s a new (significant) innovation like low noise / high ISO, wide angle lenses, RAW, etc – it always gets my hopes up that this will be the perfect all-day carry around alternative to my DSLR.

However, to date, despite massive efforts by camera manufacturers and new entrants seemingly every month, compact cameras usually tend to leave me somewhat disappointed. With great excitement, I hit that little button, hear a familiar beep as the LCD lights up, wait a couple of seconds for the zoom to focus and by that time I’ve missed the shot. Or lets say I make the shot, but light was a little low and I had to up the ISO (and had time to do it) – but the resulting image is chock full of noise and is something I can barely use at 600×400 on the web, let alone print large size. Or lets say the light was good, but I can’t quite get wide enough as almost all compact cameras start at 36mm focal length (35mm equivalent).

That’s not to say there aren’t notable mentions. Compact cameras that I’ve either used or read excellent reports about do exist.

A notable mention is the Panasonic LX2. Easily the most fully featured in my opinion. It has good quality glass, a wide angle lens that starts at 28mm, shoots RAW, has a cool 16:9 widescreen format (and an LCD to match). Sounds almost perfect. Except the high ISO is bad. Anything over 200 produces heavy amounts of noise or heavy amounts of noise reduction (reducing detail). Great for outdoors / landscapes / travel I guess but you can’t even take a picture of fido indoors.

Like the LX2, some of the Canons are getting interesting now also due to their features. The SD800 looks great, also has that rare 28mm lens and a few other nice features. But again, suffers from totally unusable high ISO images.

And before I go on, why is high noise ISO such a big deal? Well, it’s got little to do with night shots which is the natural assumption – it’s just that the lenses on these compact cameras aren’t that fast, so when you’re not in direct sunlight (e.g. indoors), your only choice to stop any kind of motion is to up the ISO. Image Stabilisation is something which the cameras above include and helps massively with reducing image blur – but obviously that only helps when the subject is not moving.

And remember, my search is to find a camera that can be used in almost all situations. But unrealistically high hopes is the mother of invention so I’ll keep going, as this does actually lead somewhere.

OK so continuing through the ranks, we get to Olympus. The Mju 725SW looks interesting. It’s super rugged body can allow it to be dropped from a few metres height and it can go underwater as is up to a depth of 5 metres. See now that’s something that’s really interesting – a feature that no DSLR has today. Would enable a whole new area of occasional photography and that for me, makes it cool. Problem is that its image quality gets railed in the reviews. So we’re not there yet.

The closest I’ve seen to perfection in image quality has got to be the
Fuji F series (F10, F11, F20, F30, F31, etc). This line contains, without any question whatsoever, the lowest noise sensors of any compact camera on the market. They’re in their sixth generation of their “Super CCD” sensors (I have an F10 which was 5th generation) and the Canon / Nikon / etc pack are trailing a long way  behind Fuji in this regard. I’d go so far as to say they’re the only compact cameras that take decent ISO 800+ pictures, putting them in a class all by themselves. The low ISO pictures are great too. Of course, remember I said everything was not perfect? Well, there’s no Image Stabilisation, no RAW, a lens that starts at 36mm+ and so on. But I’d call it the best all rounder so far tho.

My conclusion so far would be that if we could somehow get that Fuji Sensor with a Panasonic LX2 set of features, I’d almost be happy. Almost.

But even beyond the features and image quality, perhaps my real biggest issue with compact cameras too is that because of their tiny sensor size, there’s a really high great depth of field in the images. And shallow depth of field is important in so many types of photography to isolate subjects from their backgrounds – leaving beauty creamy images that leave the eye celebrating in retinal ecstasy. So although an aperture might be 5 point something on a compact camera, you get almost no isolation that you would have gotten with a DSLR. This issue is fine for landscapes but portraits, and other creative aspects of photography it’s a real problem.

So is that it? There’s no answer to this fruitless quest? Fear not – there is a solution. And if it’s not dripping in irony I do not know what is. – but the answer is Film. I can almost hear the pins dropping. Yes, I’m talking about film cameras and here’s why they make the perfect compact cameras:

• Every compact or SLR film camera has the same sensor and its’ one of the best sensors in the world – the 35mm negative (or APS in some cases but you get my point). It’s huge. And with huge comes shallow depth of field. F/2.8 really is F/2.8
• They’ve reached their technological peak. So no buyer’s remorse / lust (delete as appropriate) to drop another 500 bucks in six months time when Photokina or  PMA rolls around.
• Film looks cool. It has a totally original look to it that digital has yet to emulate – that’s partially to do with the shallow depth of field but it’s also due to the wide range of choices of film that are available
• The bodies look cool. Especially on the old SLR’s
• If you get an old SLR you can stick fast 50mm f/1.4 lenses on it for super sharp, fast and shallow depth of field images removing the need for ISO 1600 anyway.
• It’ll make you a better photographer. Not having an LCD and having to think about your shots to try to get them right the first time can dramatically improve your photography (probably :)
• They’re inexpensive. Especially today.    

OK so there are drawbacks. But consider them first and their significance. I agree that it’s a downside that you can’t change ISO in the middle of a roll of film, but we’ve already established that unless you’re buying a Fuji, high ISO was out anyway. And OK so film is more expensive but lets say you can save $400 on the difference between a cheap film camera and a high end compact digital. And lets say that it costs about $10 to have your film developed and scanned to a CD (without prints). That means you can shoot 40 rolls of film before the cost starts to get up to around the same amount. So 40 rolls of film is nearly 1,500 shots and I don’t know about you but, unlike my DSLR, I don’t think I’ve ever taken that many shots in my life with a compact camera. And if I had done, I’d certainly be looking at getting a new one meaning the film counter would be reset.

FYI, the film camera I’m using for this purpose is 30 year old Olympus OM-1 (pictured below).

The Olympus OM-1. The digital compact camera replacement?

You see, that’s the thing – we carry around a digital compact camera for occasional photography. Except that the sacrifices that are made in getting the camera compact that small in the first place mean that unless the conditions are optimal, the photos that you take really aren’t that great. So what I’m saying is consider that this year, you won’t upgrade and buy your 5th, 6th or 7th new compact digital and as in years previous, end up being disappointed. Instead, go online, to some old second hand camera shop or to ebay and find a fixed focal length compact film camera, or an old small sized film SLR and immerse yourself with a world long forgotten as you surprise yourself with amazing, spontaneous photography.

Disclaimer – the author will be buying a new compact camera later this year