[NetGuru()]

Hi. Im very new at digital camera handling. Bought one two days ago (benq dc c510), a cheap one with web cam function and 5 mega pixels.

My question:
Is a fixed lens of f=6,95mm (equivalent to 42mm) with a aperture of f3,3 aceptable or is it not so good?

What is the difference of a fixed lens and a non fixed lens?

What should good lens specifications be?

[stepheno]

This Benq is a very basic camera.

Q1 - Not so good. If you want to do anything other than take a snap-shot then you need to buy another camera.

Q2 - A fixed-focus lens is really only suitable for landscapes and it does not allow the user to focus. Everything from about 4 feet to infinity will be in focus so it's not good for portraits and close-up.

Q3 - Impossible to answer but any 5-6mp, 3x zoom from the likes of Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus etc will have an excellent lens. But you will pay more money.

With the Benq, I'm sorry to say, you got what you paid for.

regards

[NetGuru()]

There goes my hope. Still the camera has a lot of tweeks that allow me to choose diferent configurations, like iso, EV, rapid movement, night photo, white balancing, 1 meters focusing (close range), portrait photographing, and a few others.

Well, i guess all these tweeks would work much beter (or should i say they should really work) with a non fixed lens...

Silly me, thinking i had made a good choice for little expence

Regards

[erick295]

Originally Posted by NetGuru()

What is the difference of a fixed lens and a non fixed lens?

I just want to clarify something here -- what stepheno said is correct, and your camera does have a fixed-focus lens... but saying that it is a fixed lens means something entirely different. A fixed lens is one that cannot be removed from the camera. SLR's, for example, have non-fixed lenses, because they can be switched. In your case, you have a fixed, fixed-focus lens... and I'm sorry to say that it is probably not a very good one

[NetGuru()]

Yes, its very true - my camera is equiped with a fixed focus lens wich is a fixed lens to.

The camera cost me exactly the same amount i was willing to pay for a webcam. I even had already bought the webcam, but managed to swap it for the digital camera afterwards. I think it is very much better to have the mobile camera than the static webcam (the camera also suits the webcams roll very well but the web camera would not suit the cameras roll)

Question:
Even if the camera has a fixed focus lens, the tweeks i mencioned are, or are they not efective? Can i use them to efectively improve the image on my photos or are they totaly useless? There are a lot of tweeks in it...

[erick295]

Originally Posted by NetGuru()

Question:
Even if the camera has a fixed focus lens, the tweeks i mencioned are, or are they not efective? Can i use them to efectively improve the image on my photos or are they totaly useless? There are a lot of tweeks in it...

Those are just color and exposure settings. They won't affect how the lens performs.

[NetGuru()]

So, that means that with my fixed focus lens i can not manualy choose the distance of the objects i want to photograph, and that is the primary purpose of a non fixed focus lens?

On the other end, that capability of choosing distances makes the diference of a good photo or a bad photo most of the time ?

[erick295]

Originally Posted by NetGuru()

So, that means that with my fixed focus lens i can not manualy choose the distance of the objects i want to photograph, and that is the primary purpose of a non fixed focus lens?

On the other end, that capability of choosing distances makes the diference of a good photo or a bad photo most of the time ?

Lenses with an adjustable focus give you more control over your composition and they usually have a wider range. With a fixed-focus lens, all objects (unless they are too close) will be in focus all the time. You can't control what's in focus and what's not, you have no optical zoom, and you can't shoot objects that are close.

Sometimes people refer to lenses that have no zoom as fixed-focus, but those are fixed-length. Length and focal range are two completely different things. Having a fixed-length lens on an SLR is an advantage because they usually have better optics -- on a cheaper fixed-lens camera, though, it just limits you that much further