Help me find a good low-light camera that's not an SLR

Since my wife and I travel frequently and take lots of pictures, we've been intrigued for a while by the idea of finding a digital point and shoot with GPS built-in. It's strange to come back from vacation and take the photos we have off of our iPhones and our point-and-shot only to remember that randomly half the photos are not going to be geotagged. We use this function quite a bit in various photo apps and websites. So it's become a much appreciated piece of functionality that works anywhere in the world on our iPhones and nowhere in the world with our Canon SD1100. So today I set out to find a decent GPS-enabled camera. I was excited to read about the RX100 by Sony (not GPS-enabled, but super high quality) and thought maybe some major innovation was entering the point-and-shoot arena. I feel like digital cameras have stagnated a bit, possibly cannibalized by smart phones. We don't want to carry a giant SLR, so we're a bit stuck in a "1st world problem" sorta way.

The search didn't go well. I picked up a Canon S100 today, recommended frequently as an alternative to the RX100 in terms of picture quality. The pictures were better than our SD1100, but not markedly so. And the GPS didn't work for us. So I'm wondering if anyone has found something that fits what I'm describing. I'm asking the GWJ crowd in case someone happens to have one they like and where the GPS functionality works well. There are hundreds of descriptions online of cameras that support GPS, but I have no sense of which cameras actually work. When I scratch beneath the surface I find descriptions of cameras where it takes 1 to 2 minutes for the camera to pick up a satellite. Obviously not ideal. Would appreciate any advice.

We have a Canon SX230 and the GPS works well enough, but because of the time and battery drain required to get a fix via satellite, I generally keep that feature turned off. I think you'll see the same issue with any GPS-enabled camera though. Cellphones are faster because they use celltower and WiFi signals to locate when available, and I don't think a camera exists that can do that yet.

http://www.eye.fi/ gives you at least semi-gps on any device with a SD card slot. If not, there are cameras with GPS addons.

Another option is to have a GPS logger running on your iPhone and in post, use a program to sync the time stamps on the logs with the photos and have the program add the GPS metadata to the photos. It's what I've been doing since the early days of smart phones.

iPhone 4S.

No really.

Unless you really need a telephoto lens (in which case a point and shoot is not really gonna do it anyway) the phone will almost always get you there if you can learn to work within its limitations.

But, if your question is about "real" cameras, then the answer is no. Camera companies are no good at packaging features like this because they do not fit into the mold of what cameras "do", or rather what they did in the 1960s.

Edwin wrote:

http://www.eye.fi/ gives you at least semi-gps on any device with a SD card slot. If not, there are cameras with GPS addons.

Another option is to have a GPS logger running on your iPhone and in post, use a program to sync the time stamps on the logs with the photos and have the program add the GPS metadata to the photos. It's what I've been doing since the early days of smart phones.

GPS loggers tends to eat into battery too.

And Eye-Fi's geotagging a paid feature -- you have to have an annual subscription.

Changed the subject as I'm now retreating to the feature we thought we'd get automatically by getting a new camera.

So let me ask another camera question. If GPS is not really something modern cameras handle well, let me ask this. The main reason I want to upgrade our camera is for better low-light pictures. Particularly pictures of monuments / buildings in the distance in low light. I know that sounds like the domain of an SLR, but I'm curious if there is any camera a step below that that could handle that kind of picture. Here's an example of a missed opportunity. My wife took this photo at Tikal when we were there. We may never go back there and there are some unfortunate low-light photos that I feel like we should have been able to take with a better camera.

Any ideas? The main thing we want is to avoid carrying around a giant SLR with a giant lens. We're curious about trying to split the difference and get a high quality camera that's point and shoot size.

An example of a missed opportunity.

IMAGE(http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5007/5228010217_d43821242c_z.jpg)

I'm looking at the RX100 for myself, or something similar in the next year or so.

DSGamer wrote:

Any ideas? The main thing we want is to avoid carrying around a giant SLR with a giant lens. We're curious about trying to split the difference and get a high quality camera that's point and shoot size.

http://joby.com/gorillapod/

Cheap and will stabilise those photos so they're not blurry. Even expensive cameras will have blur in low-light conditions. The only "fix" is to get a tripod.

[edit]

Oh, and remember to use "night" settings in low light. It really makes a difference.

If you want compact and low-light, you probably want a Micro Four-Thirds camera with a nice fast lens. There are two main factors that determine low-light performance: the size of the sensor, and the speed (ie: the f-stop) of the lens, and while you might be able to find a good combination of the two in a point-and-shoot, going with a compact interchangeable-lens camera like a Micro Four-Thirds is probably going to work out better.

Canon's new EOS M might be worth a look, too, since it has the same sized sensor (APS-C) as Canon's consumer DSLRs.

Sony Rx100. Big sensor, small size. This is why it's a hard to swallow $650.

The s90 family is good, but low light image quality is limited by the small sensor. Alternately, you could pick up a micro 4/3rds with a prime 20-25 mm 1.4 or 1.8 lens.
.

What were the settings on that missed shot you posted? Can you post the exif data?

Posted a similar query on Facebook today and got some good advice from friends who are photographers. Ultimately my decision was to keep the S100 and just learn how to use it properly. It seems like a good camera on which to learn how to take better pictures in a wide range. Emphasis on learn. My wife will pack around our older camera (Canon SD1100 is) for everyday pics and I'll be budding hobbyist need with the s100. The outlay is half of the RX100 (I got it for $360) and probably complex enough for me for now.

The S100 is fine. I had its predecessor, the S95, and it was close enough to an SLR in quality when I took pictures in bright light and the ISO was low. Where I ran into trouble was taking pictures in low-light. It was a good travel camera as long as I didn't try to take pictures in restaurants or other low-light situations. Only ~7 ounces and it could fit in my pocket. Which is awesome for me because I dislike carrying a camera bag.

I don't see it as an issue of complexity so much as what you're looking for in terms of image quality. My DLSR has a fully automatic setting that makes it no more complex to use than a P&S. It just weighs more and has a sensor that's got more than 10 times the area of a P&S. It focuses much faster and turns on in a tiny fraction of a second. But weight counts for a lot while traveling.

That's basically it. I want the ability to easily change the ISO setting, I want the range and I want to learn how that stuff works. But I want to do so on a camera that's point and shoot when I need it to be and can fit in my pocket.