On Wed, 19 Nov 2003, Steve Desjardins wrote: > IF DSLR prices don't come down much more than $800 or so, then the > low-end SLR market could be taken over by the ZLR style camera. > HOWEVER, DSLR's could come down if the makers decide to make money on > the lenses and not the bodies. If good ZLR's are available, that's the > only real difference with the DSLR's
The big benefit of Digital ZLR's over film based ones is that they can use smaller lenses that are faster and have a wider zoom range. This is because the sensors are so small. For instance the Sony DSC-F717 and Minotla D-Image 7 series cameras use a sensor that is 8.8x6.6mm, tiny in comparison to 35mm film. This makes building a 28-200mm/2.8 or 38-190/2-2.4 equivelent lens fairly inexpensive. Their downside is also the small sensor. The small sensors have much higher noise. The lenses are often limited to f8 because of CA artifacts above F8 from the tiny photosites. A lot of people on dpreview are upgrading from this level of camera to digital SLRs (often the Canon Rebel D) just to get lower noise. The fast lenses on the ZLRs are nice, but when you consider that an iso 800 shot from a Digital SLR has less noise than an iso 100 shot from a Digital ZLR then using an f4 SLR lens doesn't seem like such a big deal (3 stop ISO benefit vs 2 stop slower lens). alex
