"Soapboxes" are compact cameras with a built-in lens, they are small in size and weight, and all shooting parameters are adjusted automatically or there is a minimal set of settings.
Buying a camera "soap box", you need to clearly understand that all the advertising slogans about the unsurpassed quality of the picture - it's a myth. No high quality without noise, with good sharpness and realistic colors of speech can not be here. Especially when shooting indoors.
And yet, sometimes a compact camera is enough. If your goal - just family pictures without a fanatical desire for deep color reproduction and the presence of bokeh, you can pick up a completely decent "soap box".
How to choose a camera "soap box"?
One of the main parameters of choice is the size of the sensor (matrix) of the camera. The more it is, the more quality picture can guarantee a "soapbox". The so-called artistic quality of the resulting image implies no noise, smooth transmission of hues, good quality when shooting without a flash.
"Soap" cameras with a good matrix of 1 inch or more provide acceptable image quality. Cameras with larger matrices can hardly be called compact.
Good representatives of the family of inch "soap" - cameras Canon, Sony Cybershot family RX, Panasonic. In these devices, a good matrix, a high-quality lens and a compact size are perfectly matched. Of course, you will have to pay a considerable amount for this, but this choice will be optimal if you need a good camera with no interchangeable optics that fits into the breast pocket of the jacket and does not threaten obsolescence.
In second place in importance - the optics of the camera, that is, its lens. The bigger it is in diameter, the better the camera will feel in low light. Cameras "soap box" with good optics assume the presence of a lens with a constant focal length and the mechanism of automatic or fixed focus.
No less important parameter of the camera is the lens speed of the lens. It reflects the ability of the lens to transmit light and is expressed in the ratio of the focal length of the lens to the diameter of its front lens.
By adjusting the degree of openness of the diaphragm, we adjust the amount of light entering the diaphragm. Depth of field depends directly on this. In the case of home photography, greater depth of field is beneficial, hiding errors in focusing and focusing.
Unfortunately, in "soap boxes" the user can not set the aperture values himself, and one can only rely on automatic settings and programs that select the appropriate shutter speed for this or that shooting mode.
Considerable importance in the selection of shooting equipment is the material of manufacturing the objective lens. In inexpensive compact cameras, optical plastics are used, while also making "whale" optics for cheap SLR cameras . The disadvantage of this material is the change in geometry under the influence of temperature, the instability of optical characteristics as a consequence of low strength.
In the frost or in the heat, the plastic expands, the geometry of the lenses changes, and over time their surface also becomes turbid. In addition, plastic optics has insufficiently good characteristics, in particular - resolution.
Glass for optics also has different qualities. Low-quality glass contains bubbles, cracks and other micro-beads. Of course, such phenomena are rare and only in little-known firms. In general, self-respecting brands supplement a good glass lens with anti-reflective coating, which simultaneously increases its resistance to mechanical damage.