Little and Large - TVS and N1 Compared Yes,
these two are the same format! The front element of the N1's Vario-Sonnar
24-85mm f 3.5-4.5 dwarfs that of the TVS's tiny, 28-56mm f3.5-f6.3 zoom.A good big 'un beats a good little 'un, even from the same stable. The TVS wins in portability, quietness and the convenience of a built-in flash, but (although not perfect either) the mighty N1 wins in all every other way. The SLR is far more versatile, has better ergonomics, superior optics (bigger is better), a wider zoom range, foolproof evaluative exposure metering and multi-point focussing, no parallax, and for moving subjects, a much faster autofocus - expose - film advance cycle. In the 1970's, small SLRs and lenses were much in vogue, influenced by Olympus' advertising of the OM1, which ridiculed its larger, heaver competitors. Now big cameras are back. No SLR with a zoom lens will fit in a pocket, so why not have one that fits the hands instead? A major difference is in the viewfinder coverage - this applies to most reflex and non-reflex cameras. The direct TVS viewfinder omits 30% of the lens' field of view, equal to the image area cropped by photo labs, but this truncation makes slides difficult to compose. Conversely, the N1's viewfinder shows 95%, allowing precise composition for slides and scanned film, but for films destined for mechanised printing, a generous amount of space must be left round the subject to allow for cropping; how much to leave is pure guesswork. (Why, oh why, can't direct viewfinders show the whole image area? It's wasteful and complicates composition. Why must printing machines crop negatives? Is it to compensate for slapdash film alignment, or to improve the typical photo lab picture - of a person or group positioned somewhere within the frame, surrounded by an acre of ground or blank wall and ceiling?) The term "point and shoot camera" is a conundrum, because full automation is easily fooled. The TVS has two Achilles' heels - the autofocus sensor may miss the real subject, and if the metering "hot spot" happens to fall on a patch of sky or a light wall, underexposure results. Both settings can be locked or overridden; to avoid occasional failures the TVS must be used as a "point, THINK and shoot" camera. |