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Sony seems to have realized that this is a problem... the Sony DSC-F828 digital camera includes both a Memory Stick slot and a Compact Flash/MicroDrive slot.

There's more info at http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydscf828/.

This gives you two things: (1) you can now consider the Sony if you already have CompactFlash and (2) if you don't own CompactFlash, you can buy this camera without worrying about locking yourself into Memory Stick technology.

One problem, though--I believe writing to the memory stick pro is much faster, so you need the memory stick pro to create the highest resolution movies that this camera produces. If you're buying the camera for stills, though, it shouldn't be an issue.

They must have realized that there are a lot of people like you out there who would rather use something more standard.

Joey

But there's a huge benefit to this tech-race. More digital cameras. People with them, use them a lot more than they did with film. No cost to take, no cost to view, low cost to print or mail. I wrote an open-source project to make building galleries free-and-easy (primarily for my family initially, see it at Picture Pager on SourceForge) and that too is a benefit of digitals... they gain from the open source world.

So the only downside of 8MP cameras is that they're the Ferraris or Porsches of consumer-land. They push the technology, in a few years us mere mortals will benefit, but serious drivers and photographers benefit, at least slightly, now while bearing the hefty early-adopter price.

The Canon EOS 1Ds has a full 35mm frame, 11 Megapixel sensor. The Kodak DSC 14n accepts Nikkor lenses (for Nikon mounts) and has a full 35mm frame, 14 megapixel sensor (both links are reviews)
The Kodak costs approx. $ 4000, and the Canon $ 7500. But at least 35mm, full frame sensors ARE here already. If you win the lottery, you can also buy medium format digital backs.

The Canon EOS 1Ds has a full 35mm frame, 11 Megapixel sensor. The Kodak DSC 14n accepts Nikkor lenses (for Nikon mounts) and has a full 35mm frame, 14 megapixel sensor (both links are reviews)
The Kodak costs approx. $ 4000, and the Canon $ 7500. But at least 35mm, full frame sensors ARE here already. If you win the lottery, you can also buy medium format digital backs.

I can't wait until they start making "full" 35mm sensors, that would rock.

Here you go...

Silicon Film has been promising an interchangeable digital back for 35mm SLR cameras for several years. As far as I know, it's still vaporware. One source indicates that the company ceased operations in 2001. The web site still exists, but seems to have nothing more than an "about us" page.

Fujifilm makes a waterproof case for their new FinePix F420 digital camera. The casing allows shooting up to depths of 40 meters, but lord knows the Narrows' waters (I've been, it's a great hike) will never get THAT deep on you.

More info here here.

Although a little bulky, you will get great 5 MP shots and the guarantee that your equipment won't be ruined by water or moisture.

The camera is a little positively buoyant when used in the housing which will help you not to lose it if you have to jump in a river or a pool.

Camera review

If you have a tight budget and are relatively experienced at handling decent (read expensive) camera equipment, I'd suggest visiting a good camera store and renting a pro-level camera, and a bright zoom lens. The pro level Canons are weather-proof and relatively rugged and will give you great quality pics, the kind of which you can even enlarge and sell for obscene prices...

If you are not too keen on renting equipment then there are a bunch of waterproof cameras out there...

The Nikon D70h can take more than 17 frames at 3fps and 44 frames in 20s. It is remarkably faster than the 300D. Take a look here, which also includes a sound clip of the high-speed action.

Obviously you are a troll and/or luddite, but the Epson RD-1 is just the camera for you. It's essentially a digital Leica, with a real rangefinder and Leica M-style lens mount. It even has a winding lever to reset the shutter after every frame. Needless to say, the focus and aperture are set with lens rings; the shutter speed is set by a dial on the top.

Of course, being able to choose white balance, quality, and ISO are like being able to choose your film, so this camera does have those settings. It even has settings that let you simulate green, yellow, orange, and red filters on B&W film.

Go to http://www.dpreview.com/news/0403/04031101epsonrd1 .asp for more info.

aQazaQa

Actually some superzooms (for small sensor cameras) have fast, constant apertures. See the Panasonic FZ10 for instance, a 4 MP camera with a 35-420mm equivalent constant f/2.8 zoom.

Of course, my personal view is that zooms are lame -- give me the pure optics of a prime (non-zoom lens) any day. But then again I shoot with a Canon D30 with "only" 3.2 MP, so what do I know. ;-)

which have more than 3x optical zoom. Perhaps not exactly amateur class, but not quite professional as well. E.g., see this review of a S7000 by Fuji with 6x optical zoom, in this particular page they quote Sony's F828 whichs sports 7x zoom.

And please don't /. the poor site.

The closest thing to what you're looking for is the Olympus E-10, which is smaller than the Canon/Nikon/Fuji/Kodak bodies and can be had right now for $500 or so on the used marketplace. It is 4mp, TTL optical viewfinder, 35-150mm equiv. f2.0-2.4 lens with mechanically linked zoom. Sensor on the E-10/20 (unlike the other SLR cameras mentioned above) is 2/3" so noise can become an issue in low-light situations... but the dynamic range of the camera is excellent, easily better than the Canon D30/D60/10D or the Nikon D70/D100.

The E-10 and E-20 from Olympus were both unique digital SLR cameras in that they were built like an SLR (i.e. optical TTL viewfinder, mechanical zoom, excellent f2.0 optics, zero shutter lag, full manual control as well as aperture/shutter/program priority controls on camera body, not in some menu system), but the lens was fixed and the prism layout allowed for real-time LCD preview (to my knowledge, the only digital SLRs ever to do this).

Take a look at this. Both, when powered up, have a lens barrel which is the same size (and I'm betting the lenses are quite similar). One is a 10x with 3.1MP (and assumed smaller sensor size), the other is 6x with 6.3MP. I don't think it would be possable to have the 6.3MP sensor with the 10x zoom without using a bigger lens, else they probably would have released a model like it by now.

It all depends of what you use it for I guess. But I'd rather have the bigger sensor and crop the images.

Food for thought anyway.

Right as far as dynamic range and noise are concerned. Wrong as far as "detail resolved" is concerned. A small 8 Mpixel sensor, given sufficient light, will resolve more detail than even the largest 4 Mpixel sensor. Furthermore, in particular for digital SLR sensors, you are better off taking the higher resolution and smaller pixels and removing noise in software than to limit yourself by an otherwise equivalent lower resolution sensor.

Foveon's images have not lived up to the hype in tests, and there is no reason to believe that they would. The Foveon sensor really does have 1/4 the spatial resolution of a regular CCD sensor. In return, it avoids some color artifacts and requires a bit less post-processing. But that turns out not to be a very good tradeoff.

I definitely disagree. Check out DP Review's review of the Sigma SD10 which uses the Foveon sensor. You'll see images from the Foveon sensor that have been upsampled to match those of a Canon dSLR. The Canon does appear to resolve a bit more detail, but remember that the Sigma's images have been "digitally zoomed" from 3.4 MP to 6.3MP.

As for Fujifilm's new sensors that are designed to improve dynamic range, compare one of the pictures here (try the one with a lot of window reflection) with another picture of the same subject. You'll see that in the shadowed areas you can resolve more light detail by using the Fuji. It's not a huge difference but it is one that some people will appreciate.

Slashdot isn't a photography website, but I'll respond to this anyways. Optical zoom wouldn't have helped you much here. As others have responded, it probably would have hurt more than anything.

The shutter was open for 1/8 second. Usually the most stable hands can only hold a camera still for 1/focal length. ie, for a standard camera you shouldn't shoot any slower than 1/30 of a second.

Having a longer focal length would have exacerbated the problem. What you need here is a greater light sensitivity (higher ISO). A higher ISO would have allowed you to shoot with a faster shutter speed.

I would suggest reading up a bit at www.dpreview.com or www.steves-digicams.com before buying a new camera.

If you want to see my credentials for making this comment take a look at: http://www.pbase.com/efatapo

- The quality of the glass. Apparently some prosumers care about this, see Canon's recent PowerShot Pro1 offering. Almost all DSLR owners at the very least *are aware* that glass makes a huge difference - even if they can't afford the best.

- The quality of the body and mechanicals. No point in getting a nice digicam or DSLR when it's going to break in six months/5,000 images.

- The camera's firmware. Canon Digital Rebel owners know what I'm talking about. While firmware won't make or break a camera it CAN have a big impact. If the camera doesn't let you do what you need to do, all the glass and megapixels won't mean poop.

- Many others have mentioned this: egronomics. If you're spending time trying to find the button that lets you do what you need to do then you've missed the shot.

- Control over the camera. I think this is actually a bigger deal than megapixels or glass. If you don't have the control over the camera that you need, then everything else doesn't matter. This is more of a prosumer concern than a "I just wanna take some pictures"-consumer. However, it does matter. That's why SLR's are popular - people want control.

At the end of each the articles in this series, I will comment on what I think camera developers have done right and wrong, and what I think is important to the photographer who wants to produce better photographs.

By the generality of this statement, the author doesn't seem to have much resource on reviewing digital cameras case by case, which is necessary to make any useful assessment at all. I recommend this site for getting camera reviews.

They provide full review of some cameras (mostly prosumer kinds), which would include ISO sensitivity comparison against similar cameras, color tone test, auto focus test, lens distortion/shading, and tons of others. My personal favorite is the resolution chart.

At the end of each the articles in this series, I will comment on what I think camera developers have done right and wrong, and what I think is important to the photographer who wants to produce better photographs.

By the generality of this statement, the author doesn't seem to have much resource on reviewing digital cameras case by case, which is necessary to make any useful assessment at all. I recommend this site for getting camera reviews.

They provide full review of some cameras (mostly prosumer kinds), which would include ISO sensitivity comparison against similar cameras, color tone test, auto focus test, lens distortion/shading, and tons of others. My personal favorite is the resolution chart.

It is the software that performs the metering and ultimately controls the image you are going to get. One of the major advantage that the DSLRs from Canon and Nikon have is that they can use the software that these companies have developed for their film bodies, bodies that are used by a large percentage of the professional 35mm market.

When I switched from an EOS film body to an EOS 10D I found the switch was quite simple because the camera's controls and metering behaved just like the EOS bodies I had been using for years.

I also own a little Canon Digital Ixus for snapshots and although it takes great photos for its size, things like shutter lag and its simplified metering and focussing can be really annoying.

-----
Need affordable stock photography? Check out iStockphoto.com

The camera sitting at the extreme of the low megapixel, high quality spectrum is the Sigma SD10, which is the only camera to use Foveon's x3 sensors to capture three colors per pixel. This results in a very high quality image, even though the total pixel output is ~3.4 megapixels. I would like to see some of the other major players put out cameras with Foveon's tech. With competition, we might see further refinement of the design.

Here's a comprehensive review of Sigma's camera.

More proprietary you mean since barely any non-Sony devices use memory stick.

Yeah, except for stuff made by NTT, Samsung, Acer, Konica, Lexmark, Mitsubishi, Brother, HP, Kenwood, Toshiba, etc.

Besides, Memory Stick is the youngest of the top 3 competing memory card formats, so what's your problem?

I know on principle that I'm not going to lock myself into their products or media when I can't use the cards interchangeably with other devices I might own.

Sony products are not necessarily limited to Memory Stick. You don't have a good case either way.

Hmm, according to everything I have read it can't. For instance this thread from dpreview says that the card can't be made to do modes other than IDE. Now if you can point me to a site with info on replacing the Apple firmware on the drive controll electronics with a version that works I would be very interested.

(Anyone have any links to the best wireless cameras right now?)

This do?

Nope. It's a plain old hard drive, just small. Magnetic. Spinning parts, you know the drill.

These, however...

Nope. It's a plain old hard drive, just small. Magnetic. Spinning parts, you know the drill.

These, however...

RAW data is just not an image yet.

Parent is spot-on.

To be specific RAW != TIFF because TIFF has an RGB triad per pixel (assuming we're talking digital cameras here so the TIFF isn't CMYK or grayscale or 1-bit) but RAW will be in Bayer or some other pattern of RGB or CYGM where each pixel only has a level for one color.

Bad pixels may not have been interpolated over yet and white balance may not have been applied.

I dunno what they do about black frame subtraction. You want to take an exposure with the shutter closed right before or after the main one so you get a noise profile based on current temperature. This would make the RAW file 2x, but Canon losslessly compresses their RAW & the black frame should compress very well.

Cameras are tools. The differences between all the higher end cameras is negligible. Check out Dpreview and do a side by side comparison of the 10D, the D100, the 1D MK ][, and the D2H. Most of the features are close enough. It's not the tool, it's the person using the tool.

Oh, and MP count doesn't really mean much of anything once you get over 4MP. It's all about the size of the sensor (less noise = Cleaner image). An 8MP P&S camera will still have a sensor half the size of a professional digicam.

I have a Powershot G3 and a Canon 10D. One of these is much nicer than the other, but it doesn't really change the quality of my pictures all that much. :)

Cameras are tools. The differences between all the higher end cameras is negligible. Check out Dpreview and do a side by side comparison of the 10D, the D100, the 1D MK ][, and the D2H. Most of the features are close enough. It's not the tool, it's the person using the tool.

Oh, and MP count doesn't really mean much of anything once you get over 4MP. It's all about the size of the sensor (less noise = Cleaner image). An 8MP P&S camera will still have a sensor half the size of a professional digicam.

I have a Powershot G3 and a Canon 10D. One of these is much nicer than the other, but it doesn't really change the quality of my pictures all that much. :)

Anyone know how much that camera costs?

The cameras are (1D)s (parenthesis because the 1Ds is a different camera costing twice as much). They've come down a bit in price now that there's a couple successors to it out, but I think you're still looking at between $3500 and $4500 for the body. The camera's pretty crazy -- up to eight frames a second means it rocks for sports and stuff.

Don't forget, though, that this is the camera body. And in sports, you need a really fast lens if you don't want a big blur -- figure several thousand more for the lens. (And a lot of photographers -- I'm not sure about SI -- carry around multiple lenses. Actually, the really good ones have a camera for each lens, and keep them on a strap, so you drop one camera and pick up one with a longer lens when you need it. Costs rack up real quick.)

By way of being a total 'photogeek,' there are a pair of cameras that 'replace' the 1D now: the 1D Mark II (8.5 fps, 6 megapixels?) for around $4500, and the 1Ds at 11 megapixels (though not nearly as many frames/second as the others), going for about $8,000.

I'm not sure what your point is, though. Why spend $5,000 on a laptop if a $2,000 one works just as well?

Anyone know how much that camera costs?

The cameras are (1D)s (parenthesis because the 1Ds is a different camera costing twice as much). They've come down a bit in price now that there's a couple successors to it out, but I think you're still looking at between $3500 and $4500 for the body. The camera's pretty crazy -- up to eight frames a second means it rocks for sports and stuff.

Don't forget, though, that this is the camera body. And in sports, you need a really fast lens if you don't want a big blur -- figure several thousand more for the lens. (And a lot of photographers -- I'm not sure about SI -- carry around multiple lenses. Actually, the really good ones have a camera for each lens, and keep them on a strap, so you drop one camera and pick up one with a longer lens when you need it. Costs rack up real quick.)

By way of being a total 'photogeek,' there are a pair of cameras that 'replace' the 1D now: the 1D Mark II (8.5 fps, 6 megapixels?) for around $4500, and the 1Ds at 11 megapixels (though not nearly as many frames/second as the others), going for about $8,000.

I'm not sure what your point is, though. Why spend $5,000 on a laptop if a $2,000 one works just as well?

Anyone know how much that camera costs?

The cameras are (1D)s (parenthesis because the 1Ds is a different camera costing twice as much). They've come down a bit in price now that there's a couple successors to it out, but I think you're still looking at between $3500 and $4500 for the body. The camera's pretty crazy -- up to eight frames a second means it rocks for sports and stuff.

Don't forget, though, that this is the camera body. And in sports, you need a really fast lens if you don't want a big blur -- figure several thousand more for the lens. (And a lot of photographers -- I'm not sure about SI -- carry around multiple lenses. Actually, the really good ones have a camera for each lens, and keep them on a strap, so you drop one camera and pick up one with a longer lens when you need it. Costs rack up real quick.)

By way of being a total 'photogeek,' there are a pair of cameras that 'replace' the 1D now: the 1D Mark II (8.5 fps, 6 megapixels?) for around $4500, and the 1Ds at 11 megapixels (though not nearly as many frames/second as the others), going for about $8,000.

I'm not sure what your point is, though. Why spend $5,000 on a laptop if a $2,000 one works just as well?

Fluid lens is in the corner.

sony had this out in 2002... and it did work through a bluethooth phone...

Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-FX77

A pretty sweet camera... great design... i'm STILL using the earlier model with the same design...

I lreally like www.dpreview.com

They have many technical information regarding Digital Cameras.

They also have a little articel regarding KODAK vs. SONY here

ASDF ASDF ASDF ASDF ASDF ASDF

I lreally like www.dpreview.com

They have many technical information regarding Digital Cameras.

They also have a little articel regarding KODAK vs. SONY here

ASDF ASDF ASDF ASDF ASDF ASDF

The ones out of the Ipod Mini have a very large barcode and so far there has not been a single documented case of that microdrive working in any digital camera anywhere.

If you can provide a link to instructions on how to get the ipod mini's microdrive to work in other devices, you will be my new best friend!

The ones out of the Ipod Mini have a very large barcode and so far there has not been a single documented case of that microdrive working in any digital camera anywhere.

If you can provide a link to instructions on how to get the ipod mini's microdrive to work in other devices, you will be my new best friend!

The ones out of the Ipod Mini have a very large barcode and so far there has not been a single documented case of that microdrive working in any digital camera anywhere.

If you can provide a link to instructions on how to get the ipod mini's microdrive to work in other devices, you will be my new best friend!

The ones out of the Ipod Mini have a very large barcode and so far there has not been a single documented case of that microdrive working in any digital camera anywhere.

If you can provide a link to instructions on how to get the ipod mini's microdrive to work in other devices, you will be my new best friend!

-1, Blatantly Incorrect

s/iPod Mini/Creative Labs MuVo^2/g -- to get the correct version of the parent comment.

iPod Minis contain a different version of the Hitachi 4GB Microdrive. In the iPod Mini, the ability for the card to do CF+ has been disabled, it operates only in IDE mode -- making it useless for digital cameras and most other things one would want a Microdrive for. The MuVo has the standard consumer model of the Microdrive with working CF+ support. It has been tested to work properly in the Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) among other cameras.

You can see whether a drive is from the MuVo or the iPod Mini because the iPod Mini version is barcoded and serial numbered on the label, while the MuVo version is just an empty white label.

More info here.

At least in the Sigma SD9/SD10, I know you can in fact format a 4GB card using Fat16 with 64k clusters and the camera can read it. In real life, on a real camera - and I think many other devices that know Fat16. I had also talked to a technical person at Foveon at PMA that said the only reason they did not add support for formatting larger cards using this technique into the camera firmware was that the Mac would not be able to read them (OS X at the moment cannot read the 64k cluster formatted disks, supposedly - looking into working around that).

Here, read this and this.

If I did not have a number of CF cards already and a portable storage device I'd probably get one myself. I'll bet this is > 50% of the MuVo player sales.

At least in the Sigma SD9/SD10, I know you can in fact format a 4GB card using Fat16 with 64k clusters and the camera can read it. In real life, on a real camera - and I think many other devices that know Fat16. I had also talked to a technical person at Foveon at PMA that said the only reason they did not add support for formatting larger cards using this technique into the camera firmware was that the Mac would not be able to read them (OS X at the moment cannot read the 64k cluster formatted disks, supposedly - looking into working around that).

Here, read this and this.

If I did not have a number of CF cards already and a portable storage device I'd probably get one myself. I'll bet this is > 50% of the MuVo player sales.

Those URLs have spaces in it. These should work better (1,2)

This thread over on DPReview talks about why the mini iPod drive doesn't work, as opposed to the muvo2 drive. Rumors are that newer Muvo's are using the same drive as the mini does now, so you can't stick them in a camera . . .

Maybe someone in the slashdot community could contribute to the thread over there with some ideas on how to get it to work?

Here, 'the joining points of the image are deleted', so any overlap is not analyzed further.

In theory you could develop this algorithm further to account for the fact that the overlap looks at slightly different areas of the page, thereby deriving sub-pixel information (like fuji's octagonal CCD technology ) but I think the point is that this technology does not try to make too many assumptions about the quality of the source image.

This would also significantly increase the complexity of the algorithm. Assuming this technology is also being targeted for phones with cameras, a simpler algorithm is also one that will not drain the battery (as much).

From DPreview.com EF-S lenses are designed to be used with digital SLR's (although Canon don't stretch to calling them 'digital lenses'), the rear element of these lenses protrudes further into the shutter box (space behind the lens mount) as can be clearly seen from the third image below (beside the EF 28-135 mm). Interestingly this protrusion has a hard rubber ring which appears to seal against the shutter box when the lens is attached to the camera. Remember that the EF-S lens can only be used on the EOS 300D (as no other EOS cameras are compatible with the EF-S lens mount).

For more on this camera, there's an exhaustive review at Digital Photography Review.

If you have a collection of Nikon lenses, wait for the Nikon D70, which is on the edge of being rolled out. It will be in the same price range.