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You're wrong. All Nikon cameras, right down to the entry-level Coolpix 2100, use Compactflash. Every last one of them.

CoolPix 3200 - Media: Internal memory: approx 14.5MB; SD memory card (not included)
CoolPix 2200 - Media : Internal memory: approx 14.5MB; SD memory card (not included)

I looked at Nikon before I purchased my Canon. Once I saw the SD media, I moved on. We can only pray that Canon does not sell out to the dark side.

I too work in a camera retail shop.

The brand-new Nikon D2h, not the Nikon D100, can transmit over 802.11b when the optional WT-1A adapter. Outside North America, it's known as the WT-1.

I too work in a camera retail shop.

The brand-new Nikon D2h, not the Nikon D100, can transmit over 802.11b when the optional WT-1A adapter. Outside North America, it's known as the WT-1.

So, today are we getting excited about tech converging (eg. your phone+camera+pim+kitchen-sink) or are we getting excited about the tech diverging into hundreds of specialised interconnected devices?

With all the 'innovation' these days it's getting hard to keep track ;)

Landrocker

My suggestion is to buy an entry-level SLR of Canon or Nikon that has a full manual mode.

Both Canon and Nikon's SLR lenses can be used on their digital SLR lines and Nikon lenses can also be used on D-SLRs from Fujifilm and Kodak.

Your idea of a manual focus camera might be OK from a creative viewpoint, but when you are taking party pictures or want to take some quick shots without a lot of fuss, I've found autofocus useful and necessary in order to capture the moment. Both Nikon and Canon allow you to defeat AF and switch the lenses to manual focus when you need to.

For Canon SLRs, look at http://www.canoneos.com/index.html
For Nikon, look at http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp =6

Another important thing is to buy from a fairly reputed dealer who won't try to bait-and-switch you or saddle you down with low quality 'accessories' as part of your special purchase deal.
I recommend B & H Photo and Video or Adorama

B & H has the Canon EOS Rebel GII with a beginner's lens on sale for $199.95, and the
Nikon N55 with a slightly better lens for $229.95

If you have a little more money to spend, I'd recommend you get one of these SLR bodies with a slightly more decent lens, such as a 28-105 F3.5-4.5. In my experience I've found that my lenses are the bottleneck rather than the capabilities of the body. Invest in a decent lens or lenses up-front and you can be a lot more productive and creative from the start.

Krishna

Your project sounds very similar in needs to another application I'd discussed with a friend some time ago. When the Civil Air Patrol gets called out on a search-and-rescue mission, they frequently fly over the suspected area with a video camera, sending frames down to the ground with slow-scan TV so that an expert on the ground can identify likely spots to search. The image quality sucks and the data rate is worse.

It'd be nice if these folks could carry a multi-megapixel digicam on the plane, snap pics of anything interesting, and have the images sent to the ground for viewing/zooming on a laptop. The only trouble is, the search area is usually several miles on a side, well over the range of normal 802.11a/b. The solution we came up with involves a cadet on the ground with a high-gain dish antenna being told "keep this pointed at that plane". Cheaper and more reliable than an automatic antenna tracker, for sure. :)

So what we need here is a way to interface with the digital camera. As soon as a photo is taken, we should suck it of the camera's memory and buffer it for transmission to the ground station as soon as possible. Point to ponder: Assume that wireless connectivity is intermittent. Do you transmit the most recent pictures first, or the oldest pictures first, to make sure the base station has the most useful data possible? (LIFO or FIFO?)

Some time ago, I proposed a bluetooth CF module which would appear as a large FAT filesystem. It would have a limited amount of "cache" memory, where images would immediately be written, and then it would then link to a large hard drive sitting in the user's pocket and free the cache for more images. An 802.11b version would suck more battery than bluetooth, but allow longer range operation. The trick isto emulate a filesystem, so firmware hacks aren't needed. (If you could mess with the camera's firmware, you could use an existing CF wireless card and let the camera handle the protocol, right?) Nikon seems to have released a similar product but it's vaporware and only works with one particular camera.

In lieu of sitting straight in the camera's media slot, there's always software that controls the camera via serial or USB. The problem is, most of it seems designed for interactive use. I don't know whether the protocols support lurking in the background to just suck files off the flash card, without interfering with the camera's normal operation. Several of the packages are based on a common code base with a protocol that's fairly well documented, so rolling your own isn't out of the question. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that your camera supports this and suitable software can be found or written.

If you can get by on RS232's peak speed of 115200bps, and if the software can be worked out, there are several hardware options. Several other posters have suggested PDAs with wireless cards. That's a great idea, especially if you can strip off the screen and case to save weight. Some suggested the Soekris net4511 or similar. It's got a low-power 486 chip, serial ports, ethernet ports, and a PCMCIA slot for your wireless card. Or, you could hack up an existing 802.11b accesspoint to run linux and use its console port to connect to the camera. (Note: The Eumitcom-based APs are getting hard to find now. Not a platform with future potential.) There's a similar project for the Apple Airport base station, but it's limited to etherbooting, probably not suitable for this application.

You could use a pair of Ricochet modems dialed to each other (auto-answer on the chopper, and dial from the ground), in which case they simp

Assuming you are taking photos while in the air, why bother removing the compact flash card at all or mounting anything inside the helicoptor? Use the Nikon D2H for taking your pictures and add on the WT-1A wireless transmitter. You'll need to be patient though, as the products have been announced, but not yet released. It uses FTP over 802.11b to transfer the images.

Assuming you are taking photos while in the air, why bother removing the compact flash card at all or mounting anything inside the helicoptor? Use the Nikon D2H for taking your pictures and add on the WT-1A wireless transmitter. You'll need to be patient though, as the products have been announced, but not yet released. It uses FTP over 802.11b to transfer the images.

I could also imagine setting up a base station in a car attached to a cell phone. Once the photographer gets close to the car, the camera starts sending, leaving the photographer's hands free for what ever is next.

By the way, the blurb at Nikon says that they support WEP and many other forms of security.

The advise is simple. Don't use digital

Film gives you better photos, is easier to carry and the practicallities of using it while abroad are simplier. The cameras and the storage are more robust for film. Then, get the negatives scanned when you get home. I do have a digital, but its a fun camera, not for good photos. I don't bother taking it away with me.

You can now get some good digital cameras. (eg the Nikon D100) but I believe they are still a few years away from replacing film for most professional or keen amatures. The D100 does allow you to use a micro drive, so storage is less of an issue. This is one of the few cameras on the market that is close to a what cheap film SLR will give you in term of picture qaulity.

However... remember where you are going, how you are travelling, and what you'll be taking photos of.

Generally I've found that alot of photos I've taken have been of moving objects, dusk, or other difficult subjects. A good SLR is preferable, but a point'n'click for use in markets, train stations etc etc is also usefull. Your pushing the limits of the CCD in these conditions.

Drawbacks to digital are:
1) Theft: While most of the world has a lower crime rate than New York a 3000 USD camera can be more than a years income for your subject, hotel owner, or fellow hotel guest. Laptops are similar Don't be a target!!!
2) Repairs: Alot of the places I've taken pictures a have been deserts, montain tops, dusty streets. If your away for a few months who do you get to service you camera? With film cameras getting them serviced is easy in many remote locations. Mechanical stuff is easy to service/clean. I have a friend who dropped his camera in a river in Nepal. The guy at the local village could clean the lens, dissassemable and dry/relubricate the camera. It he had a digital it would likely to be more difficult.
3)Quality: Even the best digitals don't have the same speed as slow film. Often you want to take photos of moving objects, in low light, bright days. You need a camera/film comnb with a wide lattitude. Resolution and colour depth are also not as good on digital cameras as 35mm film.
4) Storage: There is no issue with carrying dozens of films with you in your back pack. They don't take up much space, and are reasonably robust. They also fit into plastic bag to prvent rain damage, something that is harder to do with a laptop. You can post film from most big cities via DHL etc. Internet connections are expensive, unreliable, and slow in most of the places I been to. Great for email, but not for hundreds of images (?1-2G) it not practicle.

My solutionis to take an SLR and a point'n'click and use film. When I get home I have the film scanned by the photo shop. Search around, there is a big range in quality of scanning. I pay 5 USD for 36exp at 9megapixels with 8bits depth per colour. Thats almost the most you can get from 35mm film, and its far better than even a good digital camera. Film is easy to carry and available everywhere.

Despite being a geek I still recommend film for travelling.

Elivs.

Obviously you've never held a real camera, like one of the Nikon F-series models. Drop the G3, it looks like little bits of plastic would go skittering everwhere. Drop the F5, look out below.

Oh, and by the way, the article wasn't that funny.

czth

Although I could not find any information pertaining to the Fuji Finepix 6900 on their website I have been doing research in this area ever since Slashdot ran an article talking about Foveon's new CCD chip that is suppost to revolutionize the industry. Although Sigma's SD9 hasn't hit the market yet, other manufacturers have been lowering the prices on their cameras, binging 5 and 6+ Megapixel cameras closer to reach.

For example, Nikon's Coolpix 5000 is a 5Megapixel camera that retails for $1K US, but can be found on the Internet for closer to $700. It has the ability to add and remove lenses, but it is nothing like the bayonet mounts that you may be used to with a standard 35MM SLR. Canon recently came out with the EOS D60 digital camera with a 6.3Megapixel CCD chip , that retails for approximately twice as much as the Nikon. It is suppost to handle almost exactly like a 35MM SLR, including the ability to switch lenses, which is what a professional photographer would want to work with.

But if you are like me, then you will be waiting with baited breath for the Sigma SD9 and its revolutionary CCD chip. Even though the chip itself is only a 3Megapixel chip, the quality of the photographs taken are said to be comparible with 9+Megapixel cameras. Or you could stick with the tried and true 21+Megapixel analog film and emulsion camera.

The newer digital SLR's on the market let you do this. The Nikon D1H offers a RS232C port for capturing GPS data.

Canon

OK, there are the two manufacturers of high quality photo journalism cameras. GUess what- no 3 CCDs. Please research before you try to post that junk, yourself.

Two- I say 12 bit. Thats because film holds 4 logE exposure information- in your terms that works out to be 12 bit, or 4095 levels of grey. That means it has to be stored in 16 bit, which means 2x as much information density as your standard 8 bit, 1 ccd camera.

Three- No jpeg compression because, wow, jpg doesn't work very well with anything other than sRGB 8 bit images. Go figure! You want to talk about jpeg 2000, however, you can, but I'm afraid that there are no hardware solutions that do that currently and there are pitifully few software solutions. Heck the spec hasn't even been finalized.
Four- no photoJournalist leaves his finger on the button for 36 frames- except maybe when the towers collapsed. You shoot in 3 to 5 shot bursts. Digital video is, wow, under 1 meg? Per frame? Captured at 1/125th of a second? Guess that wouldn't make a good large printed image, huh?

Five- Ever drop a 1 gig microdrive from a height of 6 foot? Guess what- it doesn't survive the landing. Ever drop a roll of film and had your pictures scrambled? Didn't think so.

I find you use arguments you've heard other people mention but have no insight into the technology, nor it's uses. Thanks for extrapolating Moore's law on storage devices- did you forget there is a quantumn limit to the size of information density on a magnetic platter? Guess what- you hit it. Might wanna look that one up yourself.

The long-term issue caused by the movement to digital cameras by the journalism world (especially fast turnaround publications like daily newspapers) is not storage or archiving. These are inconveniences that will be settled with the advancement of technology and time. While CaseyB might be able to get a few more images on his consumer digital than a professional journalist using a Nikon D1H, I agree that these are not the important issues.
The real change that digital cameras have brought to journalism has nothing to do with what's inside the camera, but what's on the outside: the preview window. Before digital cameras (and scanners in the situation of photographers that processed film on-site and then transmitted), most photojournalists didn't see the results of their shooting until it appeared in the paper the next day. Because his images were being recorded into a 'black box' the photographer was always forward thinking - trying to get the best image from the subject in front of him. Giving the photographer the power to see what they had just produced suddenly put the photographer in the editing chair, and gave him the power to judge whether an image was newsworthy. With a push of the 'trash can' button, the image was lost forever.
Shooting and editing are fundamentally different challenges. I've been in both shoes before and they require very different skill sets and motivations. Editors are responsible for representing the intent of the story, as well as trying to find the best image. Because these tasks aren't mutually exclusive, an image that the photographer might have considered unusable (because it was slightly out of focus, poorly composed, underexposed, etc.), could be the perfect choice if it does a good job of 'telling the story' despite its flaws. So, while it is true that 'infinite' storage in the future will elimintate the need for the photographer to delete any images, it won't get rid of the photographer's new role as pre-editor.
Probably my favorite example of a situation where shooting on film created an unexpected timeless image was shot by Dirck Halstead, a veteran Time photographer. He shot the famous Monica Lewinsky hugging Bill Clinton photograph. At the time he shot the image, Monica was an unknown intern that happened to receive a warm hug from Bill at an event on the White House lawn. There were a lot of photographers present, but Dirck was one of the only ones shooting film. When the scandal broke a few months later, Dirck had the feeling that he had seen her face before, so Time hired a researcher to dig in his archives and find the image. The image was found, and Dirck was the only one that got the shot despite their being many other photographers there -- other photographers, all shooting digital. Many of them probably shot that image, but who would save an image of the President hugging an unknown person?

This is progress. The big question for me is, will it work in a Nikon professional digital SLR? (The Nikon D series has a PCMCIA slot but has 'issues' with the IBM micro drive and thus possibly with this one as well). And 5GB is almost enough. Yes, I'm not kidding: from a typical 2 month trip I come back with 50 rolls of film, or about ~1500 pix. Even assuming the instant feedback of digital allows me to avoid bracketing and taking redundant or spec shots, I'm still going to have about 1000 pictures. And lossy compression is not an option, so I'm still not going to be able to fit all of them on a single drive. But it's getting close. Of course other issues are still a problem: power draw and impact damage. My film camera typically needs one set of 4 Li AA's per trip; I suspect that using this thing in a digital camera is going to require multiple recharging stops per day (assuming I can find (a) and outlet and (b) a plug adaptor) or a lot of extra batteries. And while rolls of film have to be protected, I currently don't have to worry when my pack full of film gets thrown off the roof of a bus in Kyrgyzstan.

1. Halo
2. Nikon Coolpix 990
3. Po rsc he Carrera GT - Screw that wimpy 911 Turbo that came out, THIS is the real deal.

they don't take "standard" 35mm accessories... I'd love to see a company come out with a digital camera that could take some of the fancier lenses

Assuming I haven't been trolled, check out the Nikon D1. It does all of that you requested and feels like an F5. That it's only 2.74 megapixel is not really relevant to its target audience.

The newspaper I work for has all but stopped shooting film. As of more than a year ago, those folks in our remote offices stopped shooting film. Deadline sports and out-of-state assignments went digital shortly thereafter.

In the past couple months, we've bought two dozen D1s and should be all digital by the end of the year. If you live in a major market (over 500,000 people), chances are that most pictures in your newspaper were not shot on film.

I always hear that digital cameras don't have the resolution of quality of film. That is true and will be true for a long time (years if not another decade or so). Quality isn't always the deciding factor. For the news business, speed of turnaround is most important.

Any business in which the quality of the image is secondary to a need for quick turnaround and minimal cost (realtors, newspapers, insurance companies, etc.) will be digital this year if they aren't already. Further, catalogs and ads where the image quality is greatly important but the iamge size is small, will be digital.

InitZero

For point'n'shoot photographers additional annoyance will be lack of red-eye reduction.

The 900, 950 and 990 all have red-eye reduction. All three have also have a connection so you can use an external flash (SB-28/28DX/26/25/24/22 supported as well as clones).

In addition to the CoolPix 950's still ability, it also allows you to do video out (NTSC and PAL). Since I don't have a real video camera, this is a useful feature for me.

Nikon is offering a $100 rebate on the 950 now the Nikon CoolPix 990 is out. The 990 has some awesome specs.

I won't take it personally if folks don't buy the Nikon CoolPix series, but I will think that they are making a mistake if they are looking for a serious, one-step-under-professional, digital camera.

InitZero

For point'n'shoot photographers additional annoyance will be lack of red-eye reduction.

The 900, 950 and 990 all have red-eye reduction. All three have also have a connection so you can use an external flash (SB-28/28DX/26/25/24/22 supported as well as clones).

In addition to the CoolPix 950's still ability, it also allows you to do video out (NTSC and PAL). Since I don't have a real video camera, this is a useful feature for me.

Nikon is offering a $100 rebate on the 950 now the Nikon CoolPix 990 is out. The 990 has some awesome specs.

I won't take it personally if folks don't buy the Nikon CoolPix series, but I will think that they are making a mistake if they are looking for a serious, one-step-under-professional, digital camera.

InitZero

As far as my experiences have gone, Nikon makes great digital cameras with lots of useful features. My Coolpix 950 has served me very well. For instance, one unique feature it sports is one where it will take a number of shots in a row and automatically select the sharpest and only save that one! Very nice in low light. Kodak also makes nice cameras. My first camera was a one-megapixel Kodak DC200. I took to school every day and ended up with over 3,600 pictures by the time I got my new Nikon! Kodak generally has very good lenses with accurate color balance.

Be sure to get at least 2 megapixels. By now you can get 3 if you really want to shell out the money. Of course, when you get into the professional models, the sky's the limit. I've seen an in creadible 6 megapixel that Kodak makes for thousands of dollers. At this point, digitals can really replace film cameras, since often these cameras are traditional film cameras with the film area replaced with digital circuitry; professionals can therefore use their lenses.

Be careful about interpolation; some companies will try to pass off their cameras as a higher res then they really are. Fuji and Agfa are two examples with their SuperCCD and PhotoGenie technologies, respectively. While these special techniques might do more then a typical resample, they are still no substitute for a higher CCD. Same applies for "digital zoom". That's marketing speak for resizing or resampling in the camera. Don't expect anything from it.

One more thing: be careful what kind of media you are investing in. Some like Sony's Mavica line, but I would rather not carry around a bunch of unreliable floppy disks if I don't have to. Also, Sony's other new camera uses their own Memory Stick format too, which will make me avoid them flat out. I've already invested a lot in CompactFlash, and I don't want to support a proprietary format with no real advantages and a few disadvantages (higher price, lower space, etc.) CompactFlash is, IMHO, the better standard when compared to Smartmedia, as it is generally cheaper and available in higher capacities. There are two types of Compactflash slots; type 1, and type 2. Type 2 slots are really nice; they take IBM Microdrives that hold 340 megs of pictures!

By now, Digital Cameras can definately take very good pictures that rivel film based cameras. When they are printed out on a modern color ink-jet priter with photo paper, they make very sharp prints indeed! I would encourage anyone to go to a local computer store and print some sample photos from a store inkjet. Or even better: you can download a jpeg from Imaging Resource and print it out. You WILL be impressed.

As far as my experiences have gone, Nikon makes great digital cameras with lots of useful features. My Coolpix 950 has served me very well. For instance, one unique feature it sports is one where it will take a number of shots in a row and automatically select the sharpest and only save that one! Very nice in low light. Kodak also makes nice cameras. My first camera was a one-megapixel Kodak DC200. I took to school every day and ended up with over 3,600 pictures by the time I got my new Nikon! Kodak generally has very good lenses with accurate color balance.

Be sure to get at least 2 megapixels. By now you can get 3 if you really want to shell out the money. Of course, when you get into the professional models, the sky's the limit. I've seen an in creadible 6 megapixel that Kodak makes for thousands of dollers. At this point, digitals can really replace film cameras, since often these cameras are traditional film cameras with the film area replaced with digital circuitry; professionals can therefore use their lenses.

Be careful about interpolation; some companies will try to pass off their cameras as a higher res then they really are. Fuji and Agfa are two examples with their SuperCCD and PhotoGenie technologies, respectively. While these special techniques might do more then a typical resample, they are still no substitute for a higher CCD. Same applies for "digital zoom". That's marketing speak for resizing or resampling in the camera. Don't expect anything from it.

One more thing: be careful what kind of media you are investing in. Some like Sony's Mavica line, but I would rather not carry around a bunch of unreliable floppy disks if I don't have to. Also, Sony's other new camera uses their own Memory Stick format too, which will make me avoid them flat out. I've already invested a lot in CompactFlash, and I don't want to support a proprietary format with no real advantages and a few disadvantages (higher price, lower space, etc.) CompactFlash is, IMHO, the better standard when compared to Smartmedia, as it is generally cheaper and available in higher capacities. There are two types of Compactflash slots; type 1, and type 2. Type 2 slots are really nice; they take IBM Microdrives that hold 340 megs of pictures!

By now, Digital Cameras can definately take very good pictures that rivel film based cameras. When they are printed out on a modern color ink-jet priter with photo paper, they make very sharp prints indeed! I would encourage anyone to go to a local computer store and print some sample photos from a store inkjet. Or even better: you can download a jpeg from Imaging Resource and print it out. You WILL be impressed.

For serious work you still have to look at the Nikon D1, Kodak DCS560 and the like for good external flash support, interchangeable lenses such as telephoto, macro, fish-eye, decent filtering, anti moire, low noise and other features most consumer and prosumer camera vendors keep the buyer totally unaware of. Having a gazillion pixels does you little good if the optics smudge the image and the CCD is noisy, slow and has a poor dynamic range. If you want a good and cheap digital camera, you still have to buy two different ones.

The camera has good automatic modes, and a manual mode allows you to change all the settings (aperture, shutter speed ...), albeit through a rather clumsy menu-interface. It works best with bright light, obviously, but the grain in low-light pictures is viable, and in any case, the built-in flash is quite powerful. The quality of the optics is what you would expect from Nikon: very good!

Pictures are stored on a CompactFlash card, in 1600x1200 pixels. In "normal" compression mode, you can fit about 16 on the standard 8 Mb card. You can take pictures in burst mode, at up to 30 frames per second (but images are 320x240 then).

The camera works on 4 AA batteries, and for best results, it is very much advisable to use rechargeable NiMh batteries. The camera has energy-saving features, so battery life is rather good.

The biggest drawbacks in my opinion are the high price, but especially the lack of USB connectivity. The download speed using standard serial ports is not exactly fast. One way around this, especially useful for laptop users, is to get a PCMCIA adapter for the CompactFlash card, that way you can transfer pictures to your computer as easily as copying files from a floppy.

Nikon's product page for the Coolpix 800 can be found here.

iefpe

The Nikon D1.

It is beautiful. Its a professional quality Digital Camera, takes Nikon's F-Mount Autofocus lenses. This isn't a camera with a cheap, small CCD. Its not a full 35mm size ccd, but, its still a really really good. And, Only $6,000. Btw, you'd have to spend a good $2000 on lenses, too, like the 17-35f2.8, 50f1.8, and 80-200f2.8 AFS.
Nikon Website's Propaganda
Or, You could get a Kodak DCS 620, which has a full-frame 35mm ccd. Its ungodly sharp and crisp. Only, what, $20,000? (This too, uses Nikon Lenses.)
Nikon lenses are quality. Yeah, They're not Zeiss lenses, but, They're not shabby either, better than that Tamron/Canon/Fuji crap.
The reason I point out these two cameras, is because often times I see people buying just by the numbers. They want to maximize the amount of pixels, and minimize the cost. Now, In my humble estimation, 1024x768 sharp color-balanced pixels is better than 16000x12000 pixels that have been software-interpolated from some crappy ccd.. I really want a D1, and may purchase on this summer. It'll use all of my nikon lenses, and is a really really nice camera. Though, I'm really tempted to wait until they come out with a Digital camera which has the same frame size as a my film cameras. So, until then, I shall stay with the best digital photography solution: Nikon film camera, Fujichrome (velvia, provia, astia, whatever.), and a film-scanner. The Fujichrome has a lot more resolution than a ccd. However, The CCD's they put in slide-scanners take minutes to go over the whole slide, thus, they do a much better job than the CCD's in a regular digital camera.

Moral: Check out Nikon Cameras.