But see... you don't have to do that with an SLR, either. Do you take every pair of shoes you own with you, plus extra shoelaces and a shoe polishing kit, every time you go for a walk?

By "lack of portability", I think Bitt means "shove it in a pocket." You're still carrying around a bulky camera, even if it is 20% smaller than a typical DSLR.


And that's all that really matters. If you're happy with the camera, the image quality is good enough for you, and it has the features you need (and it does have a pretty impressive feature list for a non-SLR), then you have the right camera for you.


Maybe not useful to you, but useful to others is the ability to change the lens. Like I said in another post, I do most of my shooting with a single zoom lens, so I rarely change the lens. However, in the last couple of years, I've started shooting publicity and dress rehearsal photos for my wife's theatre -- a use that wasn't anticipated when we bought the camera. The lens I have is too slow (in the light gathering sense, though the autofocus is a bit slow, too). Since I can't use flash without altering the stage lighting (a big no-no), I'm forced, to get the shutter speeds I need, to shoot up in the 800-1600ISO range, leading to noisier photos that don't print well at poster sizes. If I had your camera, I'd have to buy an entirely new camera. Instead, I can just buy a new lens.

But remember, just because I have more than one lens, doesn't mean I have to cart them all around with me.


The histogram gives you a sense of whether your picture is under- or over-exposed, by whether or not the graph is crowded to one side. In general, you want your histogram to cover a range in the middle of the graph. Just looking at the picture on the LCD can't always give you a sense of whether or not your exposure is correct, particularly if you're fighting glare from the sun. See http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_histogram.html for more.