When does a dSLR matter....

We recently became 'soccer parents' and started taking more sports photos. What we discovered was that a modern point-and-shoot 'superzoom' camera can't take pictures quickly enough shot-to-shot to capture sports, especially fully zoomed out. At best you get roughly one shot per second. Even when the image got captured at the right time, the level of image noise when used at short exposures at a 35mm equivalent of 300mm zoom just doesn't cut it.

Two soccer images, taken from both the Panasonic ZS3 and the Pentax K-x, illustrate this. They are both shot at ISO 800, fast exposure time, and at relatively long zoom. The ZS3 image has this 1:1 crop at ISO-800 showing the noise becoming intrusive in this picture, taken at 210mm equiv focal length.



The Pentax K-x we're using now can take clean images at ISO 1600, and captures photos in bursts at over 4 frames per second. The 55-300mm lens (85-450mm equivalent in 35mm) isn't super-fast at F4-5.8, but the sensor size and sensitivity makes up the difference and provides a very attractive tool for the price. The 1:1 crop at ISO-800 shows minor noise and some color fringing, but successfully captures the moment at 450mm equiv focal length. It does have some other issues to work through - the blown highlights in the ball and shallow depth of field. Closing down the lens a stop or two would have helped. Learning a new camera is like that.