What makes a Compact Camera !!!

Mal

Veteran
Location
Liverpool / UK
It may be a daft thing to ask on our Serious Compact site... but let me tell you how I came around to the question....

I was out at the weekend, doing a bit of street photography, when 2 'photographers' (man & wife) walked past with HUGE Dslr's on HUGE Manfrotto tripods with HUGE accessory bags over their shoulders... I thought the lady was going to collapse, and the guy didn't look too clever either....

And there was me with my little LX5 !!! I was too amazed to even take the photo...

Anyway... my memory went back to my film days... I once thought of getting a Pentax 6x7 medium format, but having borrowed one for a trial.... thought better of it, as although I'm a BIG guy, it seemed HUGE to handle anywhere other than a studio.


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I think you'll agree HUGE is a good description...


But a lot of Dslr's are as HUGE now......

My carry around camera was a 35mm Pentax LX (Aww loved that camera)... but no one would ever have described it as a compact camera in the early 1980's, when I bought it from new... however, after researching and comparing the dimensions of the LX to that of the Lumix LX5, the Pentax LX would definitely fit into the 'compact' category.


View attachment 30567


So you see my dilemma... is it 'compact' in comparison to the big boys so to speak...:eek:
 
Yes, on this site we've always used the term loosely to mean compact in comparison to the mid-sized DSLRs. As you said, a lot of DSLRs are huge now.

We're not the only one to use the term "compact" this way. A recent cover of Pop Photo:

Compact.jpg
 
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