Hamish Gill
Tech Support (and Marketing)
There are lots of different types of "Compact Camera" but they all share a one main attribute, you have no optical view through the lens!
What I mean by this, is that despite modern digital cameras having a screen on the back that shows a digital view of what it happening through the lens there is no viewfinder like you have on an SLR.
In it's simplest form this is what a compact camera looks like
... pretty simple ...
The light travels through the lens and when the shutter opens hits the film behind.
The advantage of this type of camera over an SLR are obvious; size and weight.
The disadvantages are less obvious, but equally as great.
First we shall look at film cameras.
Compact film cameras, sometimes called "viewfinder" cameras have to have a viewfinder, or a little window to frame the shot through.
This is a rather wonderful little compact from the 1980's, you can see the window above and to the right of the lens (above "pentax")
The main disadvantage of not seeing through the lens is fairly obvious, you aren't going to be taking a photo of exactly what you see. For the most part this isn't that much of an issue, the lens is close to the viewfinder so the difference will be minimal.
But there is a difference, and this difference is most apparent when shooting things that are close by.
This problem is called "Parallax error"
To combat this issue cameras like this have frame lines inside the viewfinder.
Here you can see the outer lines further away, and the inner "Parallax corrected" lines for shooting thing close by.
Or in the case of this pentax they call it "short distance compensation indicator".
Looking at the instructions for this camera you can see (on page 7) it tells you to use these lines when focusing on certain subjects http://www.cameramanuals.org/pentax_p&s/pentax_p&s_pc35_af.pdf
Of course the Pentax has autofocus, but compact cameras have been around since a long time before autofocus was dreamed up!
A favourite compact camera of mine from the days before AF is the Voigtlander Vito b
http://www.realphotographersforum.com/content/264-voigtlander-vito-b.html
Some would call the vito be a "zone focus" or "scale focus" camera ... you can read more about this method of focusing here http://www.realphotographersforum.com/content/281-how-zone-scale-focus.html
Of course camera manufacturers came up with another way to focus though the viewfinder with a thing called a rangefinder ... but that is for another day!
When it comes to digital the basic premise is the same, but at least with digital we have the advantage of being able to see through the lens with the screen.
Some digital compact cameras have viewfinders like the one on my pentax, and some have digital viewfinders as well as screens... and some (like the fuji x100) have fancy viewfinders that can flick between digital and just a window at the flick of a switch.
Unfortunately at the moment (july 2012) there is no digital viewfinder that can quite match the experience of seeing through the lens as in an SLR. Digital viewfinders just aren't as sharp or, well "real" as looking through a lens, and as we have seen, non digital ones don't look through the lens at all...
So what is a CSC?
In the days of film it was difficult to have a compact camera that would allow you to change the lens. (Some) Rangefinder cameras are an exception to this, but as I said more on those another time.
It was difficult because the viewfinder part of the camera was matched to the lens, so changing the lens would somehow mean changing the viewfinder.
This is of course not the case with a digital camera! Because the screen will show what ever is seen through the lens...
A CSC is the upshot of this fact...
CSC stands for Compact System Camera, or simply, a compact camera with an interchangeable lens ...
The Olympus pen EP1 was the first, shortly followed by the Panasonic G series of cameras, now there are CSC's from almost all big brands!
There are of course hundreds of different types of compact camera, but hopefully the above will give you a rough idea of what the term means.
In brief, compact cameras are, as the name suggests, compact... but often dont have all the features of bigger cameras like SLR's
What I mean by this, is that despite modern digital cameras having a screen on the back that shows a digital view of what it happening through the lens there is no viewfinder like you have on an SLR.
In it's simplest form this is what a compact camera looks like
... pretty simple ...
The light travels through the lens and when the shutter opens hits the film behind.
The advantage of this type of camera over an SLR are obvious; size and weight.
The disadvantages are less obvious, but equally as great.
First we shall look at film cameras.
Compact film cameras, sometimes called "viewfinder" cameras have to have a viewfinder, or a little window to frame the shot through.
This is a rather wonderful little compact from the 1980's, you can see the window above and to the right of the lens (above "pentax")
The main disadvantage of not seeing through the lens is fairly obvious, you aren't going to be taking a photo of exactly what you see. For the most part this isn't that much of an issue, the lens is close to the viewfinder so the difference will be minimal.
But there is a difference, and this difference is most apparent when shooting things that are close by.
This problem is called "Parallax error"
To combat this issue cameras like this have frame lines inside the viewfinder.
Here you can see the outer lines further away, and the inner "Parallax corrected" lines for shooting thing close by.
Or in the case of this pentax they call it "short distance compensation indicator".
Looking at the instructions for this camera you can see (on page 7) it tells you to use these lines when focusing on certain subjects http://www.cameramanuals.org/pentax_p&s/pentax_p&s_pc35_af.pdf
Of course the Pentax has autofocus, but compact cameras have been around since a long time before autofocus was dreamed up!
A favourite compact camera of mine from the days before AF is the Voigtlander Vito b
http://www.realphotographersforum.com/content/264-voigtlander-vito-b.html
Some would call the vito be a "zone focus" or "scale focus" camera ... you can read more about this method of focusing here http://www.realphotographersforum.com/content/281-how-zone-scale-focus.html
Of course camera manufacturers came up with another way to focus though the viewfinder with a thing called a rangefinder ... but that is for another day!
When it comes to digital the basic premise is the same, but at least with digital we have the advantage of being able to see through the lens with the screen.
Some digital compact cameras have viewfinders like the one on my pentax, and some have digital viewfinders as well as screens... and some (like the fuji x100) have fancy viewfinders that can flick between digital and just a window at the flick of a switch.
Unfortunately at the moment (july 2012) there is no digital viewfinder that can quite match the experience of seeing through the lens as in an SLR. Digital viewfinders just aren't as sharp or, well "real" as looking through a lens, and as we have seen, non digital ones don't look through the lens at all...
So what is a CSC?
In the days of film it was difficult to have a compact camera that would allow you to change the lens. (Some) Rangefinder cameras are an exception to this, but as I said more on those another time.
It was difficult because the viewfinder part of the camera was matched to the lens, so changing the lens would somehow mean changing the viewfinder.
This is of course not the case with a digital camera! Because the screen will show what ever is seen through the lens...
A CSC is the upshot of this fact...
CSC stands for Compact System Camera, or simply, a compact camera with an interchangeable lens ...
The Olympus pen EP1 was the first, shortly followed by the Panasonic G series of cameras, now there are CSC's from almost all big brands!
There are of course hundreds of different types of compact camera, but hopefully the above will give you a rough idea of what the term means.
In brief, compact cameras are, as the name suggests, compact... but often dont have all the features of bigger cameras like SLR's
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