Bridge Cameras

A bridge camera is essentially a bigger and heavier compact camera, and also has a permanently attached zoom lens. (Some bridge cameras are so big they rival some system cameras for size and weight.) You would be forgiven for wondering who would want such a thing. After all, you are giving up the convenience of a compact camera for… what? 

Bridge cameras are so named because they are a bridge between compact and system cameras. They offer the same range of controls – such as exposure options, for example – as a system camera, but in an all-in-one package. A bridge camera may well be the only camera you ever need, despite its permanently attached lens. (Some bridge cameras have superzoom lenses, that would be expensive and difficult to replicate with a system camera. These make excellent cameras for travelling, as they cover virtually any shooting situation you can imagine.)

The downside to bridge cameras is the relatively small sensor inside the camera. (Small sensor size is something that bridge cameras share with compact cameras and camera phones.) What effects sensor size has on an image is briefly covered at the end of this lesson, and in more detail in lessons two and six.