Digital cameras forum: Best small camera for night/action photos

Especially when it comes to concerts, bars, and anywhere with uneven lighting, it is almost always better to go with a camera that shoots RAW so that the color balance can be fixed later.

There are a couple availble now (and a couple on the way) that will give you better (not good, you need a dSLR for that), but decent low light shooting and the ability to shoot RAW. All of them however are slight larger than you Fuji.

The most popular (and arguably the best) is the Canon G9 which runs in the area of $450 - $500 (depending on where you buy it).

Panasonic has the LX2 (and coming soon the LX3). The LX2 comes in a tad under $400, mostly because it will be replaced with the LX3 soon. The new LX3 is estimated at $499 when it arrives.

Nikon is set to release the P9000 soon as well, but that one is completely untested and has a quirky feature set. It is also estimated to be around $500 when it is released.

That Point-n-shoots are not ideal for this, but based on the price cap that was given, it seemed the only choice was a "serious" point-n-shoot (as the "cheap" dSLRs are no better in low light anyway)

Just because the Fuji can do ISO 6400 does not mean that you should do ISO 6400(just look at the horrible images made with the S6000 in the link below). It would be completely unusable. My F20 is better in low light than that camera. The photos with ISO 800 or higher are unusable. Look at the photos at the different ISO settings. Also, it's very large and he's looking for something to carry in his pocket. Here's the review to corroborate what I'm saying.

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/fuji/finepix_s6000fd-review/

Also, the "Sureshot" is a Sony camera...not a Canon.

Nice to read something nice about this small, versatile and powerful camera. I've been using a Nikon S970 for years now, but I go back to my Samsung L200 when I travel.

You just will not get good available light with a small P&S camera. If you want those kinds of shots, you need to move to a Digital SLR and a fast prime lens. For just under $500 you can pick up a Sony A200 with the 18-70 kit lens but that will not do great in low light. For an extra $80-100 you can pick up a used Minolta 50mm f/1.7 prime lens(all Minolta auto lenses work on it). That lens is ultra sharp and you can shoot in very dim light with it. The camera has in-body image stabilization so you can shoot at slow shutter speeds without blur. Your total cost would be just over $600 with a fast memory card. Sorry about the size.