Slashdot Mirror

How can someone claim that the company with the largest CCD on the market

Sure the CCD is large but the image quality blows compared to any decent Digital SLR, actually all of their cameras quality blows.

uhm, no. Kodak DOES have the largest CCD available and the quality is pretty much superb, even if they do only sell 2 a year at 28,000$!

"IIRC, they sold more consumer digital cameras than anyone else did last year."

Please get your facts straight.... I couldn't find any specific data about Kodak market share, but quote here clearly implies that Kodak isn't anywhere near the top spot: "Canon, Japan's largest maker of office machines, is also busy jostling with electronics giant Sony Corp. for the top share of the booming digital camera market worldwide."

Largest CCD doesn't mean much, since maybe 0.001% of the market cares about it. If company can't sell much mid-range products then it's "lagging".

Their flagship digital SLR (removable lens digital) ha 14 megapixels, still more than Canon or Nikon (fow now.) Sample Pics Personally, I love the Canon DSLR's though like the EOS 10D for $1500.

Their flagship digital SLR (removable lens digital) ha 14 megapixels, still more than Canon or Nikon (fow now.) Sample Pics Personally, I love the Canon DSLR's though like the EOS 10D for $1500.

Fixed Link

Stewey

Doesn't matter, because the transfer rates for a 3gig $1100 CompactFlash Type II Card are so incredibly slow (3.5mB/sec). You can buy a 80gig IDE drive that transfers at 58mB/sec for $66.

That's 16 times faster for 1/16th the price. Anyone still want to replace your hard drive with a CF card?

My own personal experience with a '26x high speed' card in a PC-Card adapter (a pretty fast interface) bears this out, CF is dead slow compared to even a 4200RPM HD (like the one in my laptop).

Sports photographers are the only people really for whom this is remotely useful. Toting an 8 megapixel camera which takes 8.5 frames per second they may just need the space, and they may be willing to pay not to have the card space run out at an inopportune moment. "Hey guys, could you do that touchdown again? My CF card ran out of space, I've got a new one in, now though and my magazine really wants this shot!" What I can't understand, though, is why it wouldn't be far more cost effective for the photographer to have a WiFi card in his camera and a WiFi enabled laptop or large storage device in his bag. Battery life? Is it really worth $6000 ?

I am surprised that no one has put down DPreview.com. Best site in my opinion, and has a lot of different reviews up there. Reviews are really in-depth, have excellent comparisons to other cameras, and include sample photos that the guy took personally.

... like the new Powershot s1.

Most home video is absolutely unwatchable because the cameraman films 30 minute shots. Ever see a video from a birthday party? Ugh. Especially if you aren't thinking about editing (big mistake), that video is going to be painful.

With the digicam's, you can usually take 30 sec clips - sometimes even longer. This is much more appropriate for family style videos. (how long does it take to say "hi gramma" or "look at the new puppy" anyway? Don't torture anyone with 45 minutes of little johnny's 1st viola lesson.)

The s1 does 640x480, and it's also a digital still camera. Smaller, easier to carry, less obtrusive, and less annoying to the people being photographed and/or recorded.

I speak from experience - I have 7 unwatched dv tapes from my trip across america in 2000, but this week have emailed/posted 3 different little clips of my dog from my s40. And I work in broadcast...

And if you don't have a short film you want to make, ignore the people telling you to get a GL-1 or some such. Yes, canon is awesome, and yes, 3 chip is nicer, but come one... I use my dinky optura with a little post-processing and mix it in with Digibeta and most of the time, it looks fine. Don't get caught up in specs.

It's already in the works.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0401/04012903canondvk e2.asp
And, if I'm not mistaken, was covered here a while ago!

It is discussed here.

Nikon D1 adds GPS information to the EXIF header. See a review. "RS232C port for connection to GPS units, GPS location is recorded in image header"

Canon is very cool - they are one of the only camera manufacturers that still supports the cheapest, non-proprietary form of flash media in all of their cameras - CompactFlash.

This statement is just flat out false. The Canon SD-10 (ixus i) takes... SD/MMC (although MMC isn't supported offically, but it works).

To quote DPReview.com:
Storage types SD/MMC card

And the SD-100's the same. These cameras have been out since last year, so you just missed the boat.

Why the move to SD? I think it's a matter of size. These SD cards are about 1/4th the size of a CF card, which means that the cameras can still be ultra small (the SD-10 is 9x5x1.8cm!).

Canon is very cool - they are one of the only camera manufacturers that still supports the cheapest, non-proprietary form of flash media in all of their cameras - CompactFlash.

This statement is just flat out false. The Canon SD-10 (ixus i) takes... SD/MMC (although MMC isn't supported offically, but it works).

To quote DPReview.com:
Storage types SD/MMC card

And the SD-100's the same. These cameras have been out since last year, so you just missed the boat.

Why the move to SD? I think it's a matter of size. These SD cards are about 1/4th the size of a CF card, which means that the cameras can still be ultra small (the SD-10 is 9x5x1.8cm!).

I currently use a Kodak DC-210+ zoom digital camera. It's getting pretty long in the tooth, and starting to wear out. What should I replace it with?

Are you really asking this question here? I'd suggest that you visit dpreview.com for more information. As for the camera, I'd suggest Canon A80 (or A70 depending on the price). It's image quality is quite nice for such a cheap camera.

I currently use a Kodak DC-210+ zoom digital camera. It's getting pretty long in the tooth, and starting to wear out. What should I replace it with?

Are you really asking this question here? I'd suggest that you visit dpreview.com for more information. As for the camera, I'd suggest Canon A80 (or A70 depending on the price). It's image quality is quite nice for such a cheap camera.

I currently use a Kodak DC-210+ zoom digital camera. It's getting pretty long in the tooth, and starting to wear out. What should I replace it with?

Are you really asking this question here? I'd suggest that you visit dpreview.com for more information. As for the camera, I'd suggest Canon A80 (or A70 depending on the price). It's image quality is quite nice for such a cheap camera.

The price seems cheap to me, A 4gig 1" hard drive costs more at retail than the whole Ipod does. People with high end digital cameras are buying the Creative Nomad Muvo2 4gb at $299 just to take out the hard drive and either tossing the player, or replacing the 4gig drive with a one gig drive.

If anyone is interested I found an article here that shows the difference between JPEG and JPEG2000 pictures. I found the original reference to this article in this slashdot comment.

The quality off of the X3 chips are decent, check the DPReview website, for the reviews.

What is hobbling the Sigmas is the fact that they are a blip on the camera body scene...everyone has Nikon or Canon glass...I think Foveon would have done better to fit their sensor to a Nikon or Canon body...we'd see true 10 megapixel X3 sensors by now.

Here is a review of the most recently released Foveon X3 based camera. It is an interesting alternative to CCDs.

Probably neither. My Canon PowerShot A70 shoots 2048x1536 = 3,145,728 pixels, and claims to have 3.2 megapixels. The specs say it has 3.34 million photo detectors, so it seems like Canon took the 'average' of these two numbers... much like for the A60 which claims 2.0 megapixels, and has in fact 1.92 million vs. 2.11 million.

So, aside from rounding for marketing purposes, it seems like the 'mega' is decimal (MPixels, not MiPixels).

Probably neither. My Canon PowerShot A70 shoots 2048x1536 = 3,145,728 pixels, and claims to have 3.2 megapixels. The specs say it has 3.34 million photo detectors, so it seems like Canon took the 'average' of these two numbers... much like for the A60 which claims 2.0 megapixels, and has in fact 1.92 million vs. 2.11 million.

So, aside from rounding for marketing purposes, it seems like the 'mega' is decimal (MPixels, not MiPixels).

They use some fancy math to interpolate the colors that are missing from the neighbors. A good description of the arrays is at
dpreview.

Tim

This is how virtually all consumer digital cameras work (more or less). They paint a pattern of color filters over the CCD. Then they use interpolation, based on the relative intensities, to figure out the most likely color of each pixel.

Different vendors use different masks, and there is a lot of debate about the best approach. See DP Review's Glossary section for more information.

I guess you haven't seen this yet, then, have you?

Yes, I realize it's not very practical for sports or photojournalism, but this is only going to get better and cheaper. Everyone who's bought a decent digital camera will tell you the same thing: for 90% of my work, digital does the same thing as film, only it's a shitload cheaper, a shitload easier, and offers some fantastic additional benefits. Think of media storage for instance -- storing slides or negs is a bitch, whether you're a pro dealing with cataloging thousands of images for business, or you're an amateur with a dozen shoe-boxes of holiday and travel shots. Digital makes this so easy it hurts.

Now, you can certainly argue the merits of film technology not requiring as much continued investment, but the fact is, the pro-sumer line of cameras that are out now rival film in all characteristics save one: tonal range. The room for new technological growth is still there, but at this point the 35mm evolution to digital is complete.

People that argue about resolution are missing the bigger picture: if I want to do anything with an image, whether digital or analog, the first thing I'm going to do is get it into my computer. That's easier when the format I'm shooting in is already digital. Also, if I'm scanning a slide, even on a *nice* scanner, you're not going to see any improvement over the 5 meg files I get out of my digital body. What you *will* see is lots of dust, which means a few hours Photoshopping. Most of the time, a sub $20k scanner's extra pixels are just interpolation, anyway. There's plenty of software that can do that with low-res images already.

In terms of maturity -- have you seen the long-exposure capabilities of Canon's digital line? Holy-freakin-shit! Even an EOS D60, which is now outdated, can produce 4-minute exposures with no noise. Nothing. Turn the night into day.

Then there's the added benefits for learning photographers. If you want to get good, you shoot your ass off. For the first couple of years, you toss out 35/36 shots. As you get better, you'll slowly lower that, but the fact is, developing that much film is expensive. And as a learning tool, if I'm going to figure out that a blown shot at f/8 would have been perfect at f/11, I need to know right after I've taken the shot. Not a week later when I finally get my film back. And that's only useful when I've recorded the exposure for every shot. Have you ever tried this? After a single roll you'll never want to do it again.

With digital, you get instant feedback as to what you're technically doing right or wrong. Hell, nice pro-sumer digitals offer color histograms of your shots. I can confidently say that with the right teacher, a digital camera will allow an amateur to develop the technical skills of a pro in under a year (now, the artistic skills may never come, but that's another issue entirely).

When you get into bigger boxes (8x10's and the like) you're talking about thousands of dollars of investment for good glass and equipment (and good luck with your processing costs -- you can always buy an enlarger!). Medium format equipment can run you several times more if you want the "35mm experience" like the fancy Mamiya 645's. Frankly, I don't see any advantage to traditional film unless you: 1) Already know what you're doing, and 2) Are currently making a living off of it. And even then I'd recommend it, unless you 3) Have already spent a huge chunk on medium or large-format, and are too unsophisticated to figure out how to "work the eBay".

Eww, why did you buy a digital camera that needs a base station? Even just an internal lithium battery is a bad idea. NIMH are much better and easier to replace, and cameras that run on a set of 4 tend to get much longer battery life than other cameras. (Check out the Canon A70 at the bottom of the page.)

I have four Hitachi/IBM microdrives (the oldest is 2 and half years old) and have never had any problems at all. I've even had my camera crash (dead batteries) during writes without trashing the disk. Although I'm not too hard on my stuff, they have been dropped occassionally and x-rayed innumerable times without ill effect.

Others have found them reliable too. They even been used by NASA on at least two shuttle missions according to this review

While not exactly the solution you're looking for because it isn't bluetooth, the Nikon D2H is Nikon's new flagship digital SLR for sports and photojournalism. It can transmit files by 802.11b. The camera itself doesn't have the feature as standard, you need to buy an attachment.

You're looking at $5,000 for the whole kit plus lenses, etc. Definitely not an amateur solution but it is an attractive feature, especially if you're into sports shooting, and even moreso if you get a kick out of the idea that your pictures are automatically being transmitted to your laptop while you're still taking the next ones!

But then, geeky toys aside, your lovely new camera would say Nikon on it and that would be a shame.

Couldn't resist! ;-)

If you're on any sort of budget then personally I think a $25 firewire card reader is a better/cheaper idea. You can take around 400 high quality JPEGs on a 1Gb card/microdrive, copy them to your computer in a few minutes, then start shooting again. Still, if you're loaded then I guess wireless is the way to go.

Note that the Canon 1D replacement is due within a few months and it would be surprising if that didn't have wireless capabilities, either as standard or with an attachment. Price should be around the same as the Nikon D2H, maybe a little higher, but the features should leave the D2H eating dust.

WiFi & Flash Memory combo cards look more promising for wireless downloading of decent resolution digital images. Although intended for PDAs, these cards might be adopted for use in cameras (if the vendor will support them and if they will fit in the camera). Or, you might wait for Fuji's Wifi digicam. Anyone know of others?

Either way, I'd look for a Wifi solution, not Bluetooth.

The highest density chip samsung is shipping is 4 Gbit (512MB), so the 4GB card probably has eight chips in it. While I didn't do a complete search, Samsung has been on the high end of flash density of a couple of years now. I'm guessing that the new 8Gbit chip will allow for 8GB compact flash cards. I was just comparing leading edge technologies at a low level.

I finally made the digital camera plunge last week (yep, I'm the one who hacked the dakota, and that's a lot of fun, but I wanted something a bit nicer.), and I'm still using the 16MB "starter" card nikon provided... I'm just starting to scope out the compact flash market and will be getting a larger card soon (in time for the holidays)

• Rio Karma (20G) for day to day use, Rio Cali (256mb version) for the gym (Wow just did a currency conversion, and even with the exchange it's about $100CND cheaper to buy this in the states (assuming the $169USD pricetag seen on froogle.google.com)
• AOpen DRW4410 DVD Writer (at under $100 US it'd be cheaper than the above items :)
• Linux compatible Serial ATA card for my fileserver (the Silicon Graphics chipsets don't seem to do linux RAID, but according to some of the forum posts it is possible to get it working). This is just an interim solution until I upgrade the whole box and put in a motherboard with a SATA chip, so just looking for something that works :)
• A couple of big ass SATA hard drives to go with it.
• Aliens Quadrilogy DVD
• A USB keychain storage device... 64 or 128 megs of storage to keep important files safe. According to a recent Linux Journal article, they are the floppies for the new millenium.
• Canon Digital Rebel or...
• Pentax Digital *ist
• Add on bits for my Canon A70 Digital Camera
• Another nice shirt like I got from mom for my birthday
• $1,000,000
• A house that exactly meets what I want (and only costs $1)
• A subscription to Popular Photography Magazine
• A huge and over priced flat panel TV, ungodly expensive reciever, and speakers of such high quality that even the most freakish audiophiles will cry for mercy (this will go in the house I mentioned above).
• CDRs
• CDRWs
• DVDRs (to go with the DVD writer mentioned above)

• Rio Karma (20G) for day to day use, Rio Cali (256mb version) for the gym (Wow just did a currency conversion, and even with the exchange it's about $100CND cheaper to buy this in the states (assuming the $169USD pricetag seen on froogle.google.com)
• AOpen DRW4410 DVD Writer (at under $100 US it'd be cheaper than the above items :)
• Linux compatible Serial ATA card for my fileserver (the Silicon Graphics chipsets don't seem to do linux RAID, but according to some of the forum posts it is possible to get it working). This is just an interim solution until I upgrade the whole box and put in a motherboard with a SATA chip, so just looking for something that works :)
• A couple of big ass SATA hard drives to go with it.
• Aliens Quadrilogy DVD
• A USB keychain storage device... 64 or 128 megs of storage to keep important files safe. According to a recent Linux Journal article, they are the floppies for the new millenium.
• Canon Digital Rebel or...
• Pentax Digital *ist
• Add on bits for my Canon A70 Digital Camera
• Another nice shirt like I got from mom for my birthday
• $1,000,000
• A house that exactly meets what I want (and only costs $1)
• A subscription to Popular Photography Magazine
• A huge and over priced flat panel TV, ungodly expensive reciever, and speakers of such high quality that even the most freakish audiophiles will cry for mercy (this will go in the house I mentioned above).
• CDRs
• CDRWs
• DVDRs (to go with the DVD writer mentioned above)

For example, a 4x5 using Velvia color film is in the 200 megapixel range, and the 8x10 would be closer to the gigapixel category using 25 ASA black and white...

Your numbers are way, way off. I don't know where you're getting those, but the results of 4x5 prints from cameras with 5-6 megapixels are indistinguishable from their negative counterparts, even with pro-level 35mm film. This is true of color, sharpness, and resolution. And for really impressive results, the new Kodak 645H digital back for the Hasselblad H1 does captures at 16 megapixels, and can have it's pictures blown up to 20x20 and beyond with no noticable pixelation or loss of image quality. All for the low, low price of $12,000. (Camera body not included.)

The simple fact is that you are mistaken by a factor of about 50 in thinking that 200 megapixels is necessary for 4x5 prints that are comparable to 35mm film. Such results can be achieved with digital cameras today.

The second point is that the smaller size of the digital detector really screws you with respect to wide angle lenses.

Not all of them. Canon, for example, makes a full 35mm sensor camera (the EOS-1D has an 11mp full frame CMOS sensor) and takes all modern Canon lenses with no focal length adjustments needed.

Advantages over film SLR:

1) Running Cost Effectiveness
Fixed costs (purchasing the digital camera body, memory card, and printer vs. purchasing film camera body, developing tools, scanner) will be different, but the total costs of creating a final print for film SLRs will soon exceed your cost total for the digital SLR because the film SLR has a higher running cost.

You'll want to take pictures of everything and setup your own tests to improve. It's essential to test your lenses as well to make sure that you didn't get a defective copy.

Many of your film shots you will regret having developed whereas taking a digital shot will allow you to conveniently preview them on your computer before deciding to make a print out of it.

The cost of a decent dSLR body like the Canon 10D or crippled Canon 300D will run you between $750-1300 (non-gray market) whereas the film equivalent Canon EOS bodies cost around $100-300. The lenses cost the same since you can use them on either digital or film body...

2) Instant Development/Feedback
With digital, you can view the histogram immediately after taking the shot to see if you overexposed, underexposed, or blew the highlights. You can also view the picture to see if you framed the shot properly, and most importantly, chicks (or whatever gender-orientation you may prefer) dig it when you show them the shot you just took of them.

Time is money, so I'd rather save a lot of time than a little bit of money.

3) High resale value
Check eBay for used prices on dSLRs. The ones that still function are very close to the price of a new one. Most film SLRs don't retain their value quite as well.

4) Limitations
Limitations of digital photography will probably cause you to encounter more issues in which you will need to be careful about. It is advantageous to learn about these in advance. For example, blown highlights is a common problem in digital photography. You will learn methods of avoiding blown highlights and become particularly conscious about it, while film photographers mostly ignore the possibility.

This being said, I would recommend the Canon 10D ($1300) and 28-135mm IS lens ($400) to start with. It's a great combination You can judge for yourself if you made the right decision, and if not, you could sell off the equipment for close to the price you paid for it.

I would also recommend the site dpreview.com -- the forums are especially helpful for getting others' opinions.

It's been said a couple times before, but, you asked the wrong place.

Try a photography forum if you're serious about your question.

Here are a few good places:
Photo.net - All around great place to learn about photograpy/different cameras. Excellent forums and reviews available.
dpreview.com - Digital camera reviews. Check out some Digital SLRs, you might be pleasently surprised.

/. really isn't the best place to go to find answers about this question. You may want to try the following websites:

Photo.net
THE professional photographer's website with TONS of information about different cameras, tips, whole articles on how to get that perfect picture, and learning how to get the most out of whatever camera you have. I've found it to be the diffinitive starting point for any information about photography.

Digital Photography Review
If you plan on getting a digital camera, this site is considered the digital camera authority.

Hope these help you and any other would-be amateur photographers out there.

Why not just get a digital SLR? Digital has so many advantages over film, and especially going into the future...I could be naive in saying that "film is dead", but I believe that's pretty much the truth. Especially for someone like yourself.

A good site to check out for reviews of Digital cameras(including SLRs) is Digital Photography Review.

Also, to make the "search", easier for you, I'll go ahead and recommend the Canon EOS-10D. One of my good friends(amateur photographer) has one, and swears by it.

So, I'm sticking with AT&T but still wish someone had the ultimate phone- bluetooth, mac and the ability to use ssh without spending $500+. I don't want a camera or to even browse the web, just give me mail and shell and I'd be extremely happy.

I snagged an Ericsson T610 recently...free after rebates, with a Bluetooth headset thrown in for another $20. It works with my Palm, so there should be no reason why it wouldn't work with your Mac. The rate plan I'm on with T-Mobile includes free unlimited data on certain ports (25, 80, 110, and 143 IIRC), which would get you your mail. An extra $10 per month should enable SSH. (I might go for that myself, as I haven't figured out how to get VersaMail to read anything beyond my main inbox...mailing-list traffic gets filed separately.) As things stand now, I'm paying only $10 more per month than I was spending with AT&T, and I'm getting more than double the airtime and data for my notebook and my Palm. (Yes, the T610 has a camera...it's little more than a novelty feature. It won't exactly replace my Coolpix 995 anytime soon.)

(In the past month, the price has come down...you can now make $50 after rebates at Amazon when you get this phone.)

There's one out now that doesn't use interpolation. It's marketed as a 10MP camera, but actually has around 3.3 full megapixels for each color and produces 3 MP-size images.

Check it out...kinda cool...but still can't touch pro cameras like the EOS 1-Ds.

What about the other 50%? When I'm looking for info about my cell-phone (e.g. to learn more about its Symbian programmability), most of the 1st page of result is "Get free ringtones and logos for $PHONEMODEL!" , it pisses me off. Likewise, I sometimes like to find reviews of some camera models (when Imaging Resource or DPReview don't have them), but all I get is "Review" sites where the camera gets glorious marks (or just the salesman intro paragraph) because they're trying to sell you the shit.

That is how the wifi addon (WT-1) to the Nikon D2H work. http://www.dpreview.com/articles/nikond2h/

It seems wherever you go these days we're taking photos of it - these days usually in digital. Having become the (proud) owner of a Canon 300D 6MP camera in the last few days I am amazed that in the good old days of the 8086, where Wordperfect 4.2 and DOS 3.0 didn't quite full a 10MB drive - today that same drive would hold only ~ 3 JPG photos from the camera ...

and then there is the old saying that junk *will* fill the space provided.

FireWire readers are faster than USB, and CardBus readers are faster than FireWire.

I work as a photojournalist at a local newspaper, just about to switch to digital photography. It would be great to have a small multipurpose device to backup a compact flash card but ~22 minutes for a 512MB card.

Maybe it's worth waiting for a Foveon-chipped camera with a 35mm-equivalent exposure area? The only one on the market now uses the X3 chip, which is basically a 25mm, and has a 1.7x multiplier..

Maybe the next generation?

oops overestimated the intelligence of the slashdot system.
here are the htmlized links:

Silicon Film site (amazingly, still up)

Wired Vaporware 2002 list

Dpreview news roundup