A person taking pictures with a point and shoot camera.
Solid photos/Shutterstock.com

A point-and-shoot (or meaty) camera is a small, like shooting fish in a barrel-to-use camera with a congenital-in lens. They offer a step-up in quality from smartphone cameras while unremarkably being more affordable and less cumbersome than a DSLR or mirrorless camera.

Point-and-Shoot vs. Smartphone Cameras

Signal-and-shoot cameras make up a pretty broad category, which encompasses everything from the $150 Canon PowerShot ELPH 180 to the $1,300 Sony RX100. They were much more than popular before smartphones took over the world, only they still accept a place in many photographers' pockets.

At that place are ii major problems with smartphone cameras:

  • They're small, and thus accept to utilise minor image sensors. All else being equal, larger sensors mean better paradigm quality.
  • The thinness of the phone limits what focal length and discontinuity can be used for the lens.

It's not that smartphones can't take great photos in many situations, it'south that they're express by the fact that they besides have to make phone calls and browse Instagram.

Signal-and-shoot cameras don't have the same issues. Because they're dedicated devices, they can utilize larger sensors without making other compromises. This means that you tin can become amend image quality, especially in low light. Too, considering their born lenses aren't required to be every bit thin, they can have wider, variable apertures and longer focal lengths. This is why some point-and-shoot "superzooms" similar the Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 camera have crazy, 60x magnification while an iPhone struggles to become 2x.

The Pros and Cons of Point-and-Shoot Cameras

sony point and shoot camera
Sony

Point-and-shoot cameras have different pros and cons depending on what way yous look at them.

If you're a smartphone photographer, a point-and-shoot photographic camera tin can offer you higher-quality images, the ability to zoom much closer to your bailiwick, more than control over your photographic camera settings, and, depending on the model, professional-friendly features like being able to shoot RAW images.

The downside is that you have to deport effectually another device and transfer photos from your camera in order to edit or upload them to social media. You also might need to spend several hundred dollars to get photos that are noticeably better than what you take with your telephone in almost instances.

If you're a photographer who'due south used to using a DSLR or another large camera, modern point-and-shoot cameras can still offer a lot. The 1″ sensors in some high-stop models offering image quality equal to that of entry-level DSLRs, fifty-fifty though the sensor is physically smaller. Too, dissimilar about mirrorless cameras, plenty of point-and-shoot cameras genuinely fit in your pocket. If you honey shooting with a "real" photographic camera but don't want to lug one around, they're a slap-up pick, especially since their built-in lenses tend to exist versatile enough to supersede multiple different ones.

The biggest downside, of class, is that you have to buy some other photographic camera. There are also some situations where a point-and-shoot photographic camera, no affair how good, won't stack up to a DSLR or mirrorless photographic camera. For case, they'll never be every bit capable of creating blurry, bokeh-filled backgrounds.

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