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In real terms 11.1 MP in a full size 35mm sensor is going to be just as good as any 35mm film camera. If you are shooting with a medium format camera it is a whole new ball game, but guess what, CCD sensors (or CMOS in the Canon case) have just reached parity with film in terms of resolution. The funny thing is that there is still plenty of headroom to increase the resolution in future sensors, to do the same in film you will have to drop silver and start using platinum.

But heck, most people are happy with dinky APS point and shoots which barely have the same resolution of a 5MP digicam.

Canon EOS 1D Sample Image

Nikon Coolpix 990

The pixel counts are the same but the shot from the EOS 1D looks a lot better, imho. Especially if you blow them up. Unfortunately there's no direct comparison between a $5000 camera and the $800 Coolpix so the pictures aren't of identical stuff, but there's enough to give you an idea. I believe white-balance is set at automatic which explains the difference in overall cast.

Look at the gray of the poster, in the 1D picture it's smooth. In the CP990 picture it's rough and has other colors thrown in.

Canon EOS 1D Sample Image

Nikon Coolpix 990

The pixel counts are the same but the shot from the EOS 1D looks a lot better, imho. Especially if you blow them up. Unfortunately there's no direct comparison between a $5000 camera and the $800 Coolpix so the pictures aren't of identical stuff, but there's enough to give you an idea. I believe white-balance is set at automatic which explains the difference in overall cast.

Look at the gray of the poster, in the 1D picture it's smooth. In the CP990 picture it's rough and has other colors thrown in.

No sir, can't shoot fast moving objects with digital cameras. Especially not this one.

Or check this thread

The $1000USD price was for the 300V but is most likely a misprint. As a 300V is not worth $500USD.

Of course, you have to divide those pixel numbers by 3 or 4 to get a useful pixel count. Camera makers like to count each color as a separate pixel. Tacky.

I'm waiting for Foveon technology to go mainstream. All the colors for each pixel are sensed at the same location, so you don't get color artifacts on sharp edges like you do with other digital cameras. So far, they only make super high end cameras, but I went to a talk by their CTO, and the device isn't inherently expensive if made in volume.

Dealing with super high-res images is a pain, and is overkill anyway.
Give me a consumer grade camera with one of these.

22 MegaPixel digital back now that's a lotta pixels

You know, there is a prototype by Sanyo which employs WiFi 802.11b in a digicam. They are right on the money. Except it's 1.5megapixels, but since it's a prototype, i'm sure there is hope for some high quality stuff out there which will make bluetooth powered cams look like christmas tree decorations.

more info here

According to the article the range is about 10 meters.

As far as I can read from the article the camera will contain some kind of memory system (probably MemoryStick), but that isn't clear.

What would be really cool would be to have something like a harddisk based mp3 player that "bluetoothed" to the camera and sucked it dry once in a while. Something small enough to have in your bag or at your belt.

As for controling the camera from a PC - that has already been done, with a by firewire on the Nikon D1x DSLR.

Bluetooth is nice, but I would rather use firewire to pull a gb of data of a microdrive...

(bluetooth max datarate is 723Kbit/s, which means that it takes about a day to transfere a gigabyte).

This ain't true anymore.
The flagship prosumer digital SLR from Canon, the D60, uses a Canon-made CMOS which renders incredible pictures.
Take a look at some sample image on www.dpreview.com and see for yourself! Things have changed since 2 years...
On another notem, CMOS sensors tends to be slower. Thats probably why their pro SLR like the 1D does use a CCD.

see dpreview

I know of one person sarted on digital, progessing throgh point and shoot to SLR, and then purchased a medium format film camera as his confidence and ability has dramaticaly improved.

Also, no matter what you may have heard digital SLR's cannot produce large prints to the same quality as a 35mm frame.

• DCS 760 experience
• DCS 760 review
• Kodak's information

With the cost of Digital SLR's comming down people seem to be opting for a new camera body to match thier lens collection.

There is a Wi-Fi enabled camera from Sanyo. Fairly useless right now I believe; might be interesting in a year or two.

I asked a similar question on the Olympus Talk forum at DPReview.

I wanted to know the quickest way to scan 1500 photos into my computer. If I could scan 3 at a time on a fast scanner that takes 60 seconds to scan, it would take over 8 hours. If I used a stand and my digital camera to photograph each one, if it took 5 seconds per photo, it would take over 2 hours.

Is there a page feed scanner that can feed 4x6 and 3x5 prints?

Also, a great way to get real photo quality prints from your digital images is to get them printed at Walmart.com. They're inexpensive, very high quality, and they're printed on real photo paper.

PS: I have some of my recent digital albums on my web site.

Ditigal Camera Resource isn't too bad, either.

I agree, less than VGA rez 640x480 isn't very useful for pictures (though it's adequate for video, i.e. VCDs). Said Logitech camera is actually based on technology from Smal Camera, and is also employed in the Fujifilm Axia. The tech is small enough (and fairly advanced - it has automatic saturation control so details still come through) and could be integrated into a cell phone. Sony also came up with a memory-stick using camera that was about the size of a pack of gum. Not to mention the recent X3 technology which should give big improvements in color and sharpness and smaller sensors per rez, particularly for low-rez imagers which have the most trouble with color artifacts.

In any case, the technology is already there now and will get significantly better in the near future. A tiny camera you have with you at all times can still be very useful.

I recommend dpreview, however I also agree with the other posters that the media should be your 3rd or 4th criteria.

That said, you also won't be able to get a removable lense for less than a couple grand and most of those cameras are CF only.

I have a CF camera (also a Canon S100) and it's great, my wife has a sony D75 that uses a memory stick which works for her. There are USB adapters for all of the current memory types and my Sharp Zaurus can read SM and CF if needed.

Another good digicam review site is Digital Photography Review at dpreview.com. If you are definitely sticking with Smartmedia, then they have a good features search that will let you find cameras by desired features, including storage type.

Another good digicam review site is Digital Photography Review at dpreview.com. If you are definitely sticking with Smartmedia, then they have a good features search that will let you find cameras by desired features, including storage type.

Hmm. You might want to browse www.dpreview.com; they let you filter cameras based on various criteria such as megapixels and whether or not nonlossy format is provided.

I've got a Minolta S304 -- 3.1MP (actual; 3.3MP is sensor size), 35-140mm zoom (35mm equiv) w/ 35.5mm threads (so certain Olympus step-up rings will work, for instance), CompactFlash (so just about any CF card should work AFAIK; I use 128MB SanDisk cards. Only Type 1 slot, 'tho, so no MicroDrive.), takes 4 AA (in my case, 1600 NiMH). I figure it's pretty good for what I paid for it (~$400 late last year), although at 14.9 oz and 4.5"x2.6"x2.3in it's not particularly compact if that's important to you. It's good enough for squirrels, not good enough for (non-caged) hawks...

If macro is particularly important to you, be aware that the S304's "macro" doesn't focus well within 6" or so. Also, the TIFF format it can use is, 'natch, pretty big, so you'd want a big CF card. The newer S404 is similar, from what I've read, although at 4MP you'd want a bigger CF card for those TIFFs, heh.

It's no DSLR (standard parallax viewfinder + LCD), but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a Canon D60 + lenses.

Both cameras (4 megapixel and 5 megapixel respectively) have time lapse features. You can set the time from 1 minute to 24 hours.

J.D. Hodges

One rather major correction of detail: I wrote "people who did darkroom... have mainly converted...". This is a miswording on my part. I meant to say that some "people" have "mainly converted" (now use digital processes more than chemical processes), not that master printers as a group had mainly converted to using digital processes. There is definitely still a major market for regular darkroom prints. But for the majority of amateurs and advanced amateurs, darkroom printing in color is Not Workable, leaving digital printing as the most workable option.
There's a lot involved with printing digital images. The Digital Photography Review Printers and Printing forum is a good resource for all sorts of information about printing issues.

That is just a big No no no.

First of all, it's really not "most of all printer" which have the print head directly on the cartridge.
In fact, HP has the print head on the cartridge, Epson has the printheag IN the printer, and with new canon photo printer (from the S800), the print head is IN the printer but user replacable.

I've got an Epson 1280 and a Canon S800 at home for a while now, printing my own photographs.
Clogging IS a problem with my 1280 if I am not printing often and THAT is the major thing which could ruin a printhead.
I've never got ANY problem with the S800 yet.
One other point, I run a CIS on my 1280 and I've not experience any more problems then by using genuine epson cartridge.
It is less expensive and after a few minor adjustments, I have the same exact "pareil" result.
Epson has came up with the chiped cartridges to solve a problem which wasn't really one. Now, if it was really only to solve that problem of monitoring cartridge, they would not change the configuration of the chip so often, wouldn't they?
Check this site if you want some info CIS vendor, be sure to check which printers are supported, and note that the epson 820 isn't because the chip is different then the other ones...

If you need any more info read on the forums on This digital photography site, section printers

Also, Canon has a way of monitoring their cartriges very efficiently using only prism. So you can refill their cartridge as you will. BUT canon sells their cartridge almost 3 times the price of the equivalent epson cartridge. Canon as sued a german cartridge maker for Patent Infrindgment. And yes, all those company sells their printer at losses and make most of their money on their ink. They can't come on you for selling ink, but don't push your luck, if you infrindge a patent, you WILL get sued, no matter the industry. Now, I much prefer canon's way of doind things. Separate ink cartridge(much less waste), no f*cking chip to mod, yet still monitoring ink usage and I can still use refill if I want, I just have to mess up myself. I think that they really are in their own right to sue if their as been patent violations, research in this area is very expensive and they at least deserve the right to sell their own technology. Nothing stops you from buying ink at the gallons from another supplier tough... So stop trolling about printhead wearing off, yes they do wear, but not at the rate of a printhead for each ink refill. Not even at the rate of 20 ink refill.

Some corporations seems to be into it, kodak, and others are reporting of how great this new technology is.

I surely hope this will never catch on seeing how a normal CD is better and more conveniant than this RIAA loved piece of trash but you never know, especially if it continues to get touted in the medias like this. "Ohh so it is ALMOST as good as a CD and can protect our valuable music GUARANTEED? Give me 5 000 000 please and...yeah...those...them old CDs over there...you know what to...yeah ok good..THANK YOU pleasure doing business with you!"

It may be that we just haven't learned to see the JPEG2000 artifacts, unlike JPEG which we're much more familiar with.

On the dpreview page, the highest-quality (1Mb) files of JPEG and JPEG2000 look very similar, but even at the next lower setting (568k) the JPEG2000 has started to blur the subtle texturing on the watch faceplate into smooth blankness. Maybe ok for web viewing but not what I'd want happening automatically when I save a full-resolution image from my digicam.

That said, at anything below the 1M file size on that page, the JPEG2000's clearly look better than the corresponding JPEG's.

But web pages aren't the only things digital images are used in. Think cameras.

This site illustrates the difference in quality between JPEG and JPEG2K. You get essentially a 5x reduction in storage space without losing quality, and the type of artifacts aren't as annoying, either.

hParnoff Coproration announced developing a CMOS sensor which could capture VGA images with 17 stops of dynamic range. Here's a link to the press release on dpreview

"The Foveon X3 image sensor is the first image sensor designed and in production using standard 0.18-micron CMOS semiconductor production line."

BZZT. If you had followed the link, you would have noticed the new Sigma camera with the cluster of other articals about the new sensor.

This one's supposed to be better. According to Digital Photography Review, "...no pixels, or dots, were visible to the eye, even with the photograph blown up to a size of 8 feet by 4 feet." Wow! This chip is also supposed to be 16Mp megapixels, but at a lower price than Kodak. With the new technology though it's supposed to be "...able to capture digital images with a resolution of 4,096 by 4,096 picture elements - or pixels - per square inch. That, by some measures, is about twice the resolution of 35-millimeter film."

The current highest-end I think is 5 Megapixels. There are actually 15 Million individual sensors on that camera. Now each one can record the exact color individually, so thoretically, we should see cameras with this Foveon sensor, at least 10+ Megapixel for higher end

All the 5Mpixel stuff on the market, like the CoolPix 5000 mean 5 million sensors, not 5 million of each sensor. Really. Go check some of the spec pages on dpreview if you don't believe me.

It makes a lot less difference then you would think, but it does make some difference.

No details on when, how much, what features. Anyone have more info on when this will be available?

Sure, the front page of dpreview has 3 pointers to X3 stuff, including the Sigma camera. More info in the forums, but you have to dig for that.

Sorta... but now there are 3 full arrays to capture each color. Meaning it doesn't have to just downsample the color separation... It gives accurate color representation "in software".

A 400% increase in the amount of red and blue light accounted for and a 200% increase in the amount of green. (See figure 1.) A mean increase of 300%, but the overall image quality will be exponentially better because the true color balance will be maintained.

This is freakin' awesome, btw.

I think they did start shipping at a point this year actually, but after a month they suspended operations:
link.

anyone have any advice on a good digital camera in the $300-$400 range?

Yep, and for most other price ranges. Visit DP Review, and browse the reviews (you will need to get current prices for the cameras though, since I doubt the Canon PS100 is still $600!).

If you can afford it the Nikon CoolPix is an extreamly nice camera (the 900 series is nicer then the 700/800 series, but still...). I did buy the PS100 for the small size though, and there are a few others that are now that small. Of corse if you can afford it the Canon D30 or 1D are very nice, but not as small :-)

It was on sale in a pre-Xmas sale at PhotoAlley (price went back up the day afterwards), but my Minolta DiMAGE S304 cost $399.95, not including sundry accessories like extra CF cards. That was a sale price, but if you wait a bit and search around you might be able to find it at that price again.

It's a 4X optical zoom, 3.1 MP (that is, 3.3MP total, but 3.1MP used), fits in... about a large coat pocket, say. The LowePro 20AW case that I bought with it is a very snug fit -- note that it doesn't come with a case, and Minolta doesn't seem to make any.

I'm happy with it so far, 'tho it does have a weakness -- there are only two aperture settings available at any given set of other parameters (focal length, which can be selected from a list [IOW not continuous dial], exposure compensation, exposure time, et al). The cf card included is only 16MB, 'tho, so you might want to buy, say, a SanDisk 128MB (what I currently use). Oh, and it includes 4 non-rechargeable AAs -- use NiMHs instead.

Try DPReview for specs, review and comparisons.

Ah, found it, as an added bonus if you read the rest of the thread you get to see me be beaten up for not knowing the difference between a PCB in the camera and one in the lens.

Indeed, here's a IBM press release [ibm.com] dated June 20, 2000.

Yeah, on the other hand I remember them being really costly when they came out, like about $1000. Now they are about $300, or free with the right camera. Well the right $2200 camera at least :-)

Predictable, but still important.

However I still haven't seen the promised type I 500M clones. Ah well.

Because flash cards and other competing storage media this small havent reached the 1GB plateau (yet...)

I stumbled upon an article yesterday which announced a 1GB Flash Memory CF card, but can't find it now. But, a quick
search on google offered me SanDisk announce 1 GB CF Type I that was dated November 5, 2001 and predicted retail availability in Q1 2002 at under $800. Granted, that's a higher price than the IBM MicroDrive, but it also has a much lower power consumption, so battery life would be greatly improved. In addition, the SanDisk offering has no moving parts, so it also has greater shock resistance.

Looks like the story link is /.'ed. However, Digital Photography Review has this story with reams of specs and evaluation data. Read it whilst you can!

The G2's been tested to have about a 3.5 hour battery life, as detailed at the bottom of this page from its review at Digital Photography Review.

Quick answer: I don't know if the LCD was on or off for this test, but he was able to get 350+ pictures and 3.5 hours out of it.
I would recommend a second battery if you're going to be out away from wall plugs for a while... it's cheap compared to losing that One Great Shot.

I heartily recommend the camera... and be sure to look at DPReview - it's a great site with loads of info.

The G2's been tested to have about a 3.5 hour battery life, as detailed at the bottom of this page from its review at Digital Photography Review.

Quick answer: I don't know if the LCD was on or off for this test, but he was able to get 350+ pictures and 3.5 hours out of it.
I would recommend a second battery if you're going to be out away from wall plugs for a while... it's cheap compared to losing that One Great Shot.

I heartily recommend the camera... and be sure to look at DPReview - it's a great site with loads of info.

look at www.dpreview.com it has very good reviews on digital cameras and comparisions. Should mention battery life in there... you may just need to buy a spare battery or two.

I can't help you on the fractal side of things, but once you have the large fractal image, there are many services that can print it, such as
http://www.BigNose.com/
See the DPreview printing forum for more information
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=100 3

Try this out:

http://www.dpreview.com/

Lots of good info for geared towards photographers so you get lots of geeky details.

I don't think I could find a use for anything greater. 2megapixels is 1200x1600, which is full screen at the resolution I run at

In a word: printing

2Megapixels from most digital cameras (say the Canon PowerShot 100) will not make a good 8x10 print. The Nikon D1 is a pretty big exception, it's 2.7Mpixels can make decent 8x10 prints, you have probably seen some on the cover of Newsweek or Time. However it has exceptionally noise free images (as does the EOS-D30, Nikon D1x, and Nikon D1h, and some of the other $2000+ digital cameras).

Another good reason to have excess pixels is for cropping. Most good photos have their subject off center, like about 1/3rd over and up or down. Most cameras either only have a central focus point, or have the best focus point at the center, so cropping is useful. It is also useful if your viewfinder doesn't show a 100% view...

Wander over to DP review (digital photography, not double penetration) and see how disappointed people are that the new Canon EOS-1D has only 4.1Mpixels!

The casio wristwatch camera sure has a nice profile, but does not do well for taking pictures to view on a monitor.

Here's a tiny Sony prototype that has 640x480 resolution...