Does anyone else use a P&S camera?

[Spades]

Am I the only hobbyist who regularly wears a point-and-shoot camera on his belt, the way insurance adjusters used to? I have a DSLR, and though I take it when I have reason to think I’ll use it, I don’t find a camera bag (unlike a P&S pouch) convenient to have with me everywhere. My experience has been that interesting photo opportunities can’t always be anticipated, so it probably isn’t surprising that many of my favorites among the photos I’ve taken are those I’ve gotten with a P&S.

[NJRoadfan]

People do, more than ever actually. They are called "smartphones".

[sanlyn]

For years I had a motorized Nikon FE2 with a rubber-springed camera strap around my neck. I wouldn't be seen in daylight with a P&S, so I didn't own one. Then film stock disappeared and PQ took 5 steps backward with digital. I keep the FE2 around for nostalgia, but occasionally carry a $180 P&S in my shirt pocket if my wife really thinks we should take some of those so-so quality digital photos of people I see too much of anyway.

Digital is bad enough, but smart phones are for emergencies only, like last-ditch documentation of a tornado destroying your home.

[kpmedia]

In the 90s, I often carried a P&S film camera in my bag, as a backup to my main AF body on the assignment. I had a small (to me, still large to most!) camera bag, with only 1 body, 1 cheap zoom lens (Sigma 28-80), and 1 pro lens (Nikkor 80-200). In essence, it was my backup body.

In a few instances, where cameras were "not allowed", I'd sneak an all-plastic P&S into a venue, and take images there. I have many neat shots from concerts, political rallies, etc. At worst, due to the slow-ish shutter, I'd really have to find something to stabilize against (chair, wall post, arm rail, etc).

Now, this is why that ONLY worked in the film days:

P&S film cameras often had the same quality as SLRs. But digital P&S are not anywhere close to DSLRs!

When I put ISO 400 Fuji in my camera, be it an F4/F5 SLR or a $100 Olympus P&S, image quality was relatively the same. Yes, the lenses on a P&S were not great, but many could be comparable to cheap $250-500 'soccer mom' Canon Rebel cameras. Everything else was still equal -- ie the film, and often the shutter lag. In the digital age, a P&S digital cam is a huge piece of crap compared even a cheap DSLR. By the time you get to a pro DSLR, a P&S is a toy fit for toddlers.

Cell phones have mostly replaced P&S, but the same quality issues persist.

SLR / DSLR camera = photograph
phone/ digital P&S = picture

Film P&S could go either way. It really depended on who was operating it. (And that's mostly true of even SLR/DSLR as well. A non-photog is still going to be a non-photog. A "pitcher taker" taking pictures.)

My cell camera phone is unusably terrible. Indeed, emergencies only. My P&S camera is for pictures, not photos. That's when I document something, and on the off chance I print anything, it'd be a small family photo in a small frame.

I often find modern P&S cameras to be on par with Polaroid images from the 1970s!

This is why I keep a Canon 5D in my trunk. I'd rather have a decade-old full-frame DSLR than a P&S any day. Even with a three sub-$100 lenses (19-35, 50, 28-300), I can shoot an incredible range of quality images that would be impossible to do with even a new 2016 P&S. And should I keep any, I can likely print and frame those up to 20x30 with zero quality issues. So no disappointments in editing, after shooting.

This all said, some P&S and P&S/DSLR-ish cameras can do quite admirably. But those are few and expensive.