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Which Digital Camera Do You Recommend?
Digital Cameras are becoming the rage these days. It seems that now people are opting for the ease of the CCD and the COMPACTflash card over the trusty 35mm film camera, and why not? Gone are the days of paying to have your film developed at the nearby PhotoHourMart. With a digital camera, a laptop, and a decent printer, you are your own photographer, photolab and even publisher. So what digital camera does the Slashdot Readership recommend? Which one offers the best bang for the buck or has the best features? I'd be interested in hearing your opinions.
Hi. Nobody is saying that digital is ready to replace 35mm. Yet. In the mean time, what part of "Which DIGITAL camera do you recommend?" is giving you the most difficulty? Dang.... and you got a THREE?????? Just goes to show how deep the moderators have to dig to find something to actually score UP these days.
I have owned and used a Canon Powershot Pro 70 for about 9 months now, and have enjoyed it greatly.
My main reason for purchasing it was ergonomic; it is shaped like a 35mm camera with a short lens mounted, which I find gave me a good grip and made it intuitive to use. I had looked at both the Nikon Coolpix 900 and Kodak DC 265, and picked the Canon for the above point.
Strengths of the Canon Powershot Pro 70:
- physical design and feel
- optical zoom
- reasonable battery life
Weaknesses of the Canon:- proprietary rechargable batteries (buy a spare!)
- serial only download
The serial down load is very slow, so I usually pull the compact flash card and use a PC-Card adapter to copy the files directly from one of my lap tops to the server. I have had good luck using the PC-Card Flash adapter with my Linux lap top.I worry about the long-term viability of the fine connections related to the Flash cards through all the remove/install cycles, but the speed of transfer can't be beat!
My thoughts:
A few points: - companies like shutterfly.com will make prints on photo paper from your digital pics - I'm waiting for my first order. - the newer 1 hour processing machines will have the ability to print from your SmartMedia / CompactFlash cards at Wal Mart or wherever. If you want in depth reviews check out dpreview.com
taken with film. How can this be if film is so
'High res'?
I also have my prom pictures. Yes the
top of my head is sheared off. This was
taken by my mother and it would of been perfect
if we had a Digicam.
She would of looked at it and said
'Hey, this didn't turn out right.' "
*******************
Most instant cameras do not have through-the-lens view finder.
The users has to know how to adjust the differential between what
s/he sees from the view finder.
It's something called "parallax" in photography.
In other words. What you see is notwhat you get.
That's why your mom chopped your head off.
Or, maybe she's trying to tell you something. :p
Most instant camera uses film sizes smaller than
the 135mm.
Most consumers just process their films at the 1
hour photo lab in the mall, or drug store,
supermarket, etc., Those are not what you want
to use if you want high quality processing.
Try shoot a roll of Kodakchrome 25ASA with a
decent real camera, and have it processed
by Kodak, then tell me about what "High Res" is.;-)
I use 6 cameras myself. Two Nikons 135mm F- 3 SLR
with motor drives, Two Hasselblads 500 -
6x6cm with Polaroid back, a Sinar 4x5
view camera, and a Nikon digital.
And I process all of my films myself. Except (color slides).
But digital camera is great for snap shots, journalist, and so on.
But for anything that I want to keep for long
term, I drag out my old fashioned cameras and
proper lighting equiptment. Other than the flash on top of the camera.
. /
I had the Olympus 340L, and it was very good, linux and BeOS compatible. For linux just get "gphoto" from freshmeat. But now I have the Fuji-MX1200 which rocks even more. Also linux compatible. Much better options, and menu system. Beside, the fuji mx-1200 looks damn sexy. it set me back $250.
This is a REAL camera!
Michael
mvwmvw.net
I do time lapse exposures all the time with my $300 point and click cannon digital camera.
And professionals are flocking to the likes of the Nikon D1 and better cameras. Journalists are leading the crowd, as the instant turnaround of digital is a powerful enabler for them.
A recent snowboarding event was shot by photographers boarding down the slopes with nikon D1's. They each had a laptop running out of their backpack, using radio ethernet to continously send pictures down to a base station that was putting them up on the web instantly. That's an ability film can *never* match.
Now having my 1st digital camera, I will almost certainly never go back. Digital cameras give the instant gratification of polaroid, but without it costing $1 per picture and with much better quality. Polaroid cameras have been reasonibly successful over the years, and I suspect digital will be as well as they get cheaper.
Using CMOS sensors enables single chip cameras. As CMOS technology continues to develope, it's reasonable to envision fixed focus disposable digital cameras as cheap as those cardboard film ones. Except that they won't need to be disposable, because you can always clear the memory.
Don't laugh... remember that these days you can get microcontrollers from RadioShack for $1 each... not hard to see that in the near future, we'll have $10 (without flash storage) digital cameras.
This thread isn't supposed to be about wheither digital technology is flawed vs film... it's a stupid argument, digital is becoming a de facto presence. This thread is supposed to be about cammer reccomendations:
I reccomend any of the Cannon powershot line. I personally have a Powershot A50. The resolution and quality of this 1.3mpixel unit suffers in comparison to the latest 2.5+ units, but it is dirt cheap. Combine that with a rugged aluminum body, 2x zoom, panarama and continous fire modes, and you get a lot of value. If you have more $$ to spend, the newer S10 or S20 produce very nice images at very high resolution, while still perserving the tiny all metal camera body... perfect to drop into a pants pocket and go.
My only complaint so far is that you'll want a case for it: the mode selector dial can get turned 'on' while the camera is in your pants pocket, wasteing battery charge and opening the lense up to damange.
Properly exposed good film has a resolution of well over 2000 dots (I think over 3000, even) for 35mm film.
I don't know where you come up with this, but I've never heard of film being measured in "dots". Laser printers are compared in dpi. Scanners in dpi. They are digital devices. Film is not. Film, at least according to Kodak and Fuji, is measured in lines per millimeter. To simply make a blanket statement that 35mm film has x resolution, is not correct. They cannot be compared, as the underlying technology is vastly different.
Different films have vastly different resolving abilities. The best film in the world for resolution is Kodak Technical Pan. At 25 ASA, when developed in Technidol Liquid, it delivers absolutely razor sharp enlargements up to 20x24 from a 35mm negative.
It's resolving power is in excess of 250 lines/mm.
Kodak T-Max 400 can resolve a max of 125 lines/mm at 400 ASA in T-Max RS developer. How do these compare to DPI...I don't know. It's not accurate to compare. With these films, the capability of the film to store detail FAR exceeds the ability of the camera and photographer. Razor sharp focusing is hard to do, even for a professional. Most consumers own really crappy, slow, lenses. This too will have a huge impact on photo quality.
For the average home user, a digicam is a good bet.
I agree saying a $600 SLR will demolish a digi cam. But so will a $100 SLR. It's the lens, more than the film. All a camera is, is a light tight box. Nothing more. Too many people get caught up in buying a super expensive camera. Don't. Buy a cheap ass Nikon FM, and a Nikon 50/1.4. Total price, under $300. Quality, better than any digi cam under $5000.
If you buy a digi cam, you're going to have to spend gobs of money printing out all the pictures. You're going to have to find a storage system. CDr's have a limited life, so do crappy inkjet prints, never mind the horrid quality compared to a photographic paper.
Who wants to scrapbook a bunch of inkjet prints with non-archival and acidic inks? If you're serious about quality, stick with film. If you want something to last, stick with film. If you want to take quick little snapshots of your dog, or your partner for a web page or to spam your friends via email with, get a digi cam.
I still think this camera rules for sheer value. A small package, taking smartmedia up to 64mb. Because you are using smartmedia you've got lots of options for getting the stuff into your machine (works for me in linux, beos, and windows via serial, and windows with the little pc-card thingy).
Images have great color, imho. It's quick when using jpg compression (HQ), but slow as hell on uncompressed tiffs (SHQ) -- I think the limitation is the flash cards. The macro distance is really short, so you can get right up on subjects. It also will take images at light levels that a (similarly priced) film camera can't touch.
I think the D-340r is the best bang for the buck in the 1280x960 arena -- and they are even less expensive now.
I've got some virgin images on my site that haven't been re-touched or re-sized (add /news onto the url up there).
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Have you tried it under linux? i know all of the DC2xx cameras are supported on the USB side, but gPhoto doesnt support the 290 yet (but does support the 280 though:), i heard there is a python script for the moment, what, if you tried it, do you think it is worth?
:)
thanks
---
Unless you are talking about a Nikon D1 (around $5,000 US) or better, digital cameras don't even approach the quality of pictures that you get from even the cheapest of 35mm cameras.
My portable camera setup consists of a Nikon F4, a and a Sony DSC-770 digital camera. The digital camera was purchased as a compliment to the 35mm system and it was very expensive in relationship to the quality of images it is able to produce. I paid nearly $1800 for this camera the same week it was introduced and I am not at all happy with the results.
There is something that all consumer grade digital cameras suffer from and there is no escaping it. It is called interpolation. And it will decrease the sharpness of your images noticeably, even to the naked eye on everyday pictures. Interpolation occurs because each pixel in the CCD array can only be a receptor for RED, GREEN, or BLUE. So when the camera takes a reading of a pixel, say a RED one, it has to guess from surounding GREEN and BLUE sensors what the GREEN and BLUE values for the pixel area covered bye this RED pixel would be. This behavoir decreases your image quality considerably, which is precisely why digicams (consumer grade) are woefully inadequate for all but the most trivial of uses.
Then there is the issue of print quality. Do you plan on using these images in print or just on the web. Most people I know that take pictures actually like to see prints of them. Ok, so lets do a little math. We'll compare my Sony DSC-770 at around $1,800 to a cheaper setup, my old Canon A1 which I paid $300 for the entire setup and my trusty Canon FS2710 film scanner at around $800 (or that's what I paid, they are probably much cheaper now).
Ok, we're still talking about making some prints. My Sony spits out uncompressed TIFF images at 1344x1024, 3.94MB which sounds huge if you're talking about web graphics, but not so huge if you're talking about making prints. My Canon scanner spits out images that are 3764x2509, 27MB at 2720dpi for a 35mm negative. Ok some quick math, ... what print quality is considered good? you've just picked up a cheapo Epson stylus to print out your images, and you want them to be sharp. Let's see,.. the Epson does 1440x700 or something like that. A quick glance at the 1440 number tells you that the Sony camera image would print out to be about an inch wide at full resolution. That's not a print, that's a stamp. Ok, something more reasonable, say 600 dpi, or maybe 300 dpi. Well at 600 dpi the Sony camera will print out an image at 2.2x1.7 inches. The Canon 35mm will print out at 6.2x4.1 inches. 4x6 is generally the smallest print that is considered reasonable. At 300 dpi (which is still a decent resolution), the Sony image will be 4.4x3.4 inches. Not even the size of a standard print. The Canon setup however will print out at a full 12x8 inches. Enough for a decent enlargement.
So once again, unless you're taking snapshots of things that aren't really to important to you, don't waste your time trying to replace your 35mm with a digital camera. If you do decide that you just gotta have a digital, then get the best one you can afford because the feature set on the low-end is strictly for point and shoot enthusiasts. Oh yeah, and be leary of the usefulness of any feature that is not directly related to increasing image quality,... most of the digicams out there nowadays are loaded with useless bells and whistles that do nothing but complicate the camera.
And one more thing, if you do get a digicam, .. the service offered by Ofoto.com is outstanding. The 100 free digital prints are worth signing up for alone. I don't work for them but I use them alot, and have grown to love it.
My two cents, Aaron Newsome.
i'm very happy with the 280, but i do wish it had a little better optical zoom (it's 2x optical, 3x digital -- ie. software zoom, yick). i also wish you could adjust its "exposure" and "film" speed a little beter.
i also really like our hp deskjet 970cse. hp says it's the same printer as the ps1100 without the compact flash/smart media interface; the print engine is the same (and quite nice at that).
from buy.com, the price is excellent for what you're getting. i am really curious to see what the 280's successor will be.... maybe my wife would like the 280... hmmmm..... =8]
if anybody wants to ask me any questions about this camera, i'd be glad to try to help. just write me at the above address. (of course, remove the obvious "PLEASENOSPAM." part)
--pete
I sync to a Macintosh, so I don't have first hand experience with syncing to any of the Win OSs. I know my sister and my lady sync to win98se machines and it seems easy enough. There is supposedly NT software to sync this camera, but I can't give first hand user experience on it, sorry.
As for the Canon, yep, it appears that it does take a Microdrive. Unfortunately I didn't know about it at the time of purchase, so I haven't a clue if it has good optics or anything else. An interesting possibility for the future though
----------------------------
I have to say, I love this camera, the only thing that's wrong with it is a flimsy feeling lens cover, IMHO. In the past months I've purchased four of them with the 340 meg IBM microdrives. One for myself, my sister, my father and my girlfriend. Of these people, I'm the only computer-ish one, and they all love their cameras.
/. probably a lot of people.)
They're great because with the microdrive you have enough storage to go on vacation for a week or two, take lots of photos, and not have to sync to a laptop or something. (who wants to bring their computer on vacation? oh, i forgot, this is
The picture quality is excellent, and while no, it will not supplant the professional style 35mm camera with lots of lenses and filters and such, it does a nice job of replacing the average 35mm point and shoot. While I wish it were smaller (if they made one that looked like my Elph, that'd be great), it's a great little camera, with decent battery life, good picture quality (colour balance is fairly accurate and such) and easy to use operation.
As for price, I honestly am not sure. I believe they ran a tad over $500 for the camera plus $350-ish for the microdrive to buy seperate and there's some sort of deal if you buy the camera with the microdrive.
----------------------------
Consecutive picture time on the DC290 is a bit low for my tastes, but it offers great features for a digital camera including zoom, exposure settings, red-eye reduction and you can script it.
With the 990 coming out any day now, a lot of the folks who want to always have the latest and greatest are going to be selling their 950s in the next few months. Watch the used market and pick up a camera that can do everything.
My firm does the website for the Philadelphia Eagles and this year I was invited to spend some time on the sideline during games. Now here's what you do. Open my image, then with a second browser window, open a pro's image.
Both of these images were taken in fairly good afternoon light. Both of them stop the action, at least 1/125sec. Both are web-resolution, I grant you. The pro's image was scanned directly from negative.
Differences? Well, notice how the pro's image has colors that are incredibly washed out. Notice how the pro's image has no depth of field.
Of course, his image is better than mine from a photographer's perspective; hell, I'm a hack. But what does that say about digital photography -- that with a basic understanding of it, a few months of practice, I can produce something that's at least compelling? Note, too that his gear was about $10,000 while mine was the $900 Nikon plus a $150 2x teleconverter. Howzat!
Furthermore, I wasn't the only digital photographer there. Another of the pros had a pro-quality Nikon digital with a 340 Meg IBM hard card.
And furthermore, with the compact flash reader, I could take all of my images and have them web-ready in about an hour. The pro? Well he required a special room in the stadium with another $3000 of equipment.
Lastly, one of the real joys of shooting with a high-res digicam like this is getting to see 1600x1200 shots on a big monitor. It is truly amazing; it takes your breath away in a way that film just doesn't. Go to www.catalystinternet.com/photos, bump your monitor up to full screen, and click on the files that start with "DSCN". Those are the raw files coming straight out of the Nikon CoolPix 950, no cropping, no color correction. (Warning: some of those images are 800K in size. If you only have a slow connection and are male and heterosexual you'll only want to look at DSCN1510.JPG.)
This is the fun of having a digital camera; suddenly photography is a wonder again. Suddenly you want to take tons of shots and look at them one-by-one.
First and foremost: USB, USB, USB. You will regret
it if you go for a camera that uses a serial link
to connect to your computer. Your only hope then
is usually a CompactFlash card reader that you can
hook up to your PC/laptop.
Speaking of CompactFlash, the camera you're looking at uses it, right? Unless you enjoy proprietary ripoff memory you want to stick to
CF memory. Besides, if you ever feel the urge,
IBM's MicroDrive is CompactFlash..how does a
340 meg hard drive sound in your camera?
Another big issue is Linux compatibility. Your
first stop is to www.gphoto.org to check their
list of supported camera models. Their list is
NOT the definitive list, however! If you can put
up with closed-source software, JCam (www.jcam.com) has a huge list of supported cameras.
And one last note..the Kodak guys have been VERY
nice to me and from the sound of it most other
vendors have been pretty secretive about their
specs/transfer protocols. If you want to support companies that treat you right, keep the linux-friendly-support factor in mind.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
I'd say that "decent" is a relative term.
My family has a Pentax PZ-70. The whole outfit (Body and Sigma 28-200 lens) cost around $600.
The main thing I don't like about it is that Pentax isn't that big a brand, so accessories are harder to find. And nowadays you can get a "major" name SLR that beats the PZ-70 for less than $600 including a newer 28-200 lens that can focus a lot closer. (The only other gripe I have about my particular outfit is the focusing distance needed for the 28-200. Sigma now has lenses with far better specs for less than this lens cost.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The 340 now has a successor, the D-360L. It improves a number of new features, and I think some places actually sold it for less! (Similar to being able to find the C-2020 cheaper than the C-2000)
I wish that company that was creating "digital film" for 35mm SLRs would get their damn product out. Oh, and make it cost less... It was basically a 35mm film canister with a CCD that would convert any 35mm camera into a digicam. Unfortunately, last I checked they intended to sell it for over $700-800 despite the fact that digital cameras with optics,LCD, etc. run in the $300 and up range.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Otherwise, why is blowing a picture up to 8.5x11 (or more) possible?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Thos grainy photos are just a bad picture... Either because you underexposed or you used bad film. (Like high-speed Kodak Max. Compare Kodak Max 800 to Fuji's 800, the difference is amazing. And if you really care about grains, use ISO 100 or less film.)
Properly exposed good film has a resolution of well over 2000 dots (I think over 3000, even) for 35mm film.
Then you have medium/large format, where you have film that measures on the order of 4x5 inches at a resolution of over 2000 dpi. (I don't recall the specs, but 2000 is being VERY conservative)
For the average home user, a digicam is a good bet. But for a serious (or semi-serious) photographer, a $600 SLR (Like my old Pentax PZ-70, nowadays I could get an even better camera for less) will obliterate a $600 digicam. (Like the Olympus C-2020. It's sweet as far as digicams go, and my mom is giving my dad one for his birthday, but our old Pentax blows it away if you want to do anything more than a basic picture.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
When in Kauaii, I just looked for a local copy shop that would let me install the drivers for my camera on one of their computers. Found one, no problem. I had brought a zip disk with me, and the shop of course had zip drives available. Worked out fine.
I wouldn't bother asking at Kinkos, though. Look for something independent.
-Paul
I think it is clear that your choice in cameras depends on several quantifiable aspects, like price and storage medium, and harder-to-quantify aspects like battery life (this varies widely between users) and image quality.
The two best review sites I've seen are the Digital Camera Resource and the Imaging Resource. The former has shorter reviews and better reader comments, while the latter has very comprehensive reviews and image comparisons.
I typically use the Digital Camera resource to narrow down the search, and then use the Imaging Resource to compare image quality. Imaging Resrouce also measures how long between pressing the shutter release and when the picture is taken, something I think is important to consider if you photograph moving subjects.
I've bought/helped buy 4 cameras in the last couple years. For myself I have a Kodak DC-260, and I've suggested one Nikon Coolpix 950, a Kodak DC-215, and a Kodak DC-280. The Kodak cameras I've mentioned here all have amazing image quality, and the DC-215 is rather inexpensive as it is old and produces 1152x864 images. The Nikon also takes great pictures, and has a lot of features. I think all of these cameras work fine with linux, my DC-260 certainly does. These cameras were bought at different times with different people's needs in mind. A friend has an Olympus D-340L, which takes good pictures (though it's color saturation isn't as good as the Kodaks') and is fabulous indoors without a flash (something the Kodaks aren't very good at). Note that the Kodak's aren't known for rapid picture-taking ability.
The Casio 2000UX lost to the DC-280 on image quality, but it had an interesting feature set. The Coolpix 950 beat the Kodak DC-265 in features, and had comparable image quality. The DC-215 beat the comparable Olympus cameras on price, and especially beat the Olympus D-400, which has complaints about lack of lavender hues. I've never liked the image quality on Sony's older cameras, and I think the floppy disks are too small or else the lossy image compression is too aggressive (don't know which).
Memory format isn't that big of an issue, and neither is USB capability, because of dedicated card readers. Time between shutter release and the picture being taken will affect every picture you take. Low-light ability may be important to you. Image quality reigns supreme for me, and is an area where Kodak does well (except perhaps the DC-240). Point-and-click versus configurable f-stops, etc, will make a difference for some people. And if you've got $5000 to blow, check out the high end 6 megapixel SLR digital cameras from Kodak!
One last bit of advice--try to get a 'satisfaction guaranteed' return policy. If the camera's pictures come out a little to red, is that a defect? Better safe than sorry.
-Paul KomarekThese 3 always come on top in all reviews regarding image quality and features. The yesteryear cameras are wery good, and now wery cheap (Olympus C2000Z, Nikon CP950, Canon A50, I own A50) They all have decent resolution (1280x960) crystal clear and sharp images (more important than pixel count, IMHO) and good colors. You really should check out sites like Phil Askey's dpreview.com or Steve's Digicams for all the information you want.
J.
I'm not sure if you want a camere for underwater job (Olympus has a case for the C2000/3000 range) but Fuji makes one, the DS-260HD "Big Job", it is supposed to be water (splash?) proof and sand proof.
J.
There are quite a few good websites analyzing and comparing various digital cameras. I wouldn't say one camera is hands-down the winner (although it would seem the great majority of digicam owners have a Nikon Coolpix 900, 950 and soon 990) but one should look at what he or she wants in a digital camera and choose the one that best fits their needs.
I personally find the Canon Powershot series to be quite attractive, and plan on buying one of the two models (s10 or s20) before the end of this year. People interested in controlling the camera's aperture size and the like won't enjoy this camera, however I like its simplicity and image quality. I'll just be taking pictures of my computer and LAN parties anyway (hehe).
Some people say that digital cameras can't replace film cameras. That is true, however for the average user it is truly more convenient, albeit more expensive at first but not necessarily in the longrun (remember, you never have to buy film and rechargeable NiMH batteries last a long time).
The sites you can check are:
Digital Photography Review (maintained by Phil Askey), and Steve's Digicams (maintained by Steve Sanders).
I merely mentioned what camera I was attracted to, I was careful not to recommend it to everyone. I know it isn't going to please all consumers, as the amount of control you have on that camera is rather limited. The quality of the pictures I have seen taken by others have been, to my eye, very appealing and its small size makes it very convenient. The features, albeit limited, are more than sufficient for a consumer like me - i.e., someone who just likes to take a picture and download it on mr. computer, not arrange aperture size, depth of field, interpolation, white balance and whatever other buzzword you can think up. For someone who is an amateur of photography, this camera is quite simply not going to do unless used with a regular camera, something a lot of amateur and even semi-professional photographs seem to do.
What OS'es I use is probably of relevance. I use both Windows and FreeBSD. I don't believe that there are any drivers for Linux or BSD, there might be drivers for the Macintosh. However, I am certain that there is a COMPACTFLASH READER that can be used in Linux and BSD. Those are rarely expensive ($130 at most it seems, usually around $79-99) and are probably very convenient. I must admit I have yet to do research on the matter, but it would make more sense to me if someone concentrated on making drivers for a compactflash/smartmedia reader rather than going after every single digicam out there.
Also, I never said that you can get a digital camera that will do EVERYTHING that you can do with a 35mm. I just happen to believe that for the average slashdot reader that doesn't know much about photography, they're most likely to be more convenient as we have frequent access to computers, power sources to recharge the batteries and (sometimes) enough money to buy goodies such as a microdrive for neverending picture-taking! The s10 and s20 both support the Microdrive, although it uses up more power than a regular compactflash card - meaning batteries will run out on you sooner (but you should still get good productivity out of it if you manage your picture-taking well).
I know digital cameras are still expensive and don't offer quite as much as regular cameras (after all, they haven't been on the market as long - early 90's perhaps?), however they are gradually getting there and I'm guessing that in five to six years digital cameras will be as commonplace as CD players. Prices should go down, high-quality, feature-filled cameras should pop up from Nikon, Canon, Olympus and other manufacturers, and since everyone seems to have a computer (or more) these days, they should sell relatively well. Just my opinion though.
In conclusion, I wasn't recommending the Powershot S10 or S20 (even though I believe them to be excellent cameras). I was strongly encouraging that anyone interested in buying a digital camera should read the different reviews on the sites I linked, and decide what unit would work best for their uses.
I don't think you know what you're talking about. There is only one exposure, not three. The CCD has red, green and blue-sensitive pixels and all are exposed at the same time -- at least with any digital camera I've seen.
Now the computer does take these as three seperate "images" this much is true. But they're all exposed in one opening and closing of the shutter.
Shit, I didn't copy and paste the other end of the message. :-)
I work as an digital editor for a local photographer and we see the digital problem all the time from customers who bring in disks with really funky images, we're usually more than happy to show em the red haze on the top combined with the blue outline on the bottom after zooming in quite a bit.
Could you throw this up on a page somewhere? I've taken hundreds of digital pictures with cameras that certainly are not considered professional (Kodak DC30 I believe, it's been a while, and an Epson whose model escapes me entirely at this time) and have never hit this problem, even with "fast" scenes. I've never used a tripod with these cameras, which would only make the problem more apparent.
For starters, I don't think "most" computer professionals are equipped with a laptop by their employer. Certainly not developers. Maybe account managers, or tech support.
;-)
Secondly - I really really think its pretty sad if you take your laptop on holiday with you... Man - YOU'RE ON HOLIDAY!!! I don't even take my palm pilot on holiday with me.
Finally - pretty much only if you go on holiday within your own country are you going to find identical plug sockets and voltages (e.g. England is on 240V, Europe is on 220V, and the US/Canada are on 110V). I'd rather go somewhere exotic that I can't plug anything into. However if I went somewhere exotic I probably couldn't get floppys for the Mavica either
(yes, I know all about voltage adaptors, etc. The bigger point was about "Leave it at home!").
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I think it's going to be a little more fine grained than that - sort of like how noone now records their home movies onto film - the magnetic storage methods are cheaper and simpler... However, there is always a class of people (i.e. professionals) who will always need _real_ film.
I think the same will happen with digital cameras. The old fashioned point and shoot cameras will simply all but disappear, and we'll be left with a choice of digital cameras or high end SLR cameras that professionals (or hobbyists) use. I think there will also be an option to have your digital COMPACTflash card processed at the chemists into glossies.
OK, back on topic... I think there's something still to be said for the Sony Mavica. While floppy's don't hold all that many high quality pictures, there's something to be said if you're on holiday and you fill up your disk - you can just buy a new pack of ten floppys!
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
It seems very nice. As well as gphoto, there's a nice command line tool on freshmeat called "digicam", which works beautifully with the camera.
I'm no expert -- all I can say is that the images look OK to me (sample).
These things eat batteries (I imagine all digital cameras do). I really need to buy a bigger compactflash card, too.
--
What? Overexposure can't be done with digital cameras? I beg to differ... mine can handle it. It's not quite the exact same thing, but the CCD keeps taking image data and it simulates overexposure quite happily.
And if you think negatives have no problems with resolution you have never messed with photography that much IMO. Graininess can get pretty bad. Analog and digital differ in that respect only in that Analog cameras currently happen to have higher resolution. There is nothing magical that says that just because its analog it can be blown up. Of course, it may be slightly less noticable, but that doesn't mean you can't make the pixel borders fuzzy in digital images either.
I just read some ads for this new Casio with an IBM hard-drive in it, sounded pretty good. 3.3M pixels gives a 2048x1536 (or close) picture resolution, and they said it had an IBM micro-drive that would hold 236 pics (maybe not at high-res). USB, etc. And it looks like a real camera too. Digital cameras have a ways to go before they can really beat std cameras on quality, but this is one I'm tempted to get.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Thanks for the lowdown!
The revolution will NOT be televised.
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My mother just bought a DC215 this morning, and I have been playing with it since.
I think the pictures are a good quality, the camera seems durable, and the features are nice.
What most impressed me was that my mom seemed able to understand the interface right away. This is her first real digital gadget and she seemed navigate the camera easily. I woulnd't have really though much about it if I were buying the camera for myself but I think it is an important thing to have a intuitive interface for those who are new to digital cameras.
We did buy a 16 meg card for it, the 4mb probably wouldn't last too long. Also I made sure to look at the gphoto project before buying it and was happy to see the large number of cameras supported. All in all we are satisified with the DC215.
but the problem isn't resolution. The problem is lens selection, the dynamic range of the photosensor, size, and battery life.
There are only three or four cameras that aren't monsters that can take real lenses - a Minolta, a Fuji, and two Nikons. They all have flaws, including prices starting at four grand.
Furthermore, the photosensors don't have the nice logarithmic response of film. Backgrounds are much more likely to be washed out and so on.
The Minolta RD-3000 comes closest, but its still a little bulky compared to the film version, and I've heard it is rather slow and can't handle low light situations very well. So I wait...
At siggraph last year I saw a guy who was drawing digital holograms onto film with a computer. He used some film that did hundreds of thousands of lines per inch.
The one I use is the Jenoptic JD11 (aka Praktica D500).
Pros:
Cons:
For the price it is a superb camera, although it can't compete with models costing more than twice it's price. It's a case of knowing what it can do, and staying within it's limitations, then you get good results.
Samples: www.custodian.com/album
Manufacturer's page: www.jenoptik-camera. com/english/products/jd11/main.html
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Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Personally, I go back and forth on whether or not digital cameras will replace film. However, one thing to keep in mind is the issue of archival (long term) quality. My wife has in her possession prints and glass negatives of her family from the post-Civil War period. Those negatives are 120 years old and can still be printed in today's darkrooms (with a little duct tape on the carrier).
OTOH, I have 160k floppy disks from 1983 that I can't read on any PC I can reasonably find today, which is probably OK because the file formats aren't usable by any software on the market either.
Something to think about if you want your pictures to last a _long_ time.
sPh
I recently purchased a Nikon Coolpix 800, and it is an amazing little device. It's specs are: 2.11 Megapixel, 2X optical zoom (software zoom is completely useless, IMO, you can do the same thing in Gimp/Photoshop, and it'll look less pixely,) 1.8 inch LCD, and a threaded lens adapter so you can use telephoto/fisheye lens or filters with it. And it's from Nikon, a camera company with a good reputation.
The image quality is awesome, its about as good as you're going to get for any camera under $1500, I would say. The color tone is comparable to the Kodak cameras, which are the best out there.
The LCD screen is incredibly sharp and bright, even in daylight. It is the best LCD screen I have seen on a digital camera.
It has an automatic mode for point-and-shoot types, and a manual mode with several bells and whistles for people a little more interested in photography. With an up to 8 sec. exposue time, this camera is great for low light conditions (assuming you have a tripod.) It has a really cool feature that will take a bunch off pictures in quick succession and pick the least blurry one to be saved to disk. I use this more than I thought I would.
The camera itself is pretty small and light. It fits confortably in my hands. It looks pretty cool, for what that's worth.
Here's its only drawbacks: The camera only comes with a 8Mb memory card: plan on buying a bigger one if you are going to use this camera much. No USB support (serial is too slow if you're transfering say 32Mb worth of images to your HD.) Some people complain that the flash is too weak. I think the flash is fine for a small camera, but there's no adapter for a larger external flash so be forewarned.
I picked mine up at under $500. It's cheap compared to other digital cameras with the same features. Even the guys at the local camera store said it was a good model! Plus it works great with gphoto (better, in fact than it worked with the windows software that shipped with it!)
One area I see Digital camera as useful for is to replace polaroids for checking flash settings, pity most digital cameras don't come with adaptor for external flash
Kill'em! Kill'em all!
I have an AGFA ePHOTO 1280, had it for about 2 years. It swivels, too. It is native 1024 x 768 and uses SSFDC cards...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
The new Coolpix 990 is great (but not cheap at about $900), judging from this in-depth review by Phil Askey of dpreview.com.
I fail to see why anything over 1.3 Megapixels would increase the probabities of taking over 35mm.
Filling your screen is a pretty abstract benchmark of performance considering it's totally dependent on your screen resolution, and it says nothing of clarity, color balance, etc. Also, for serious 35mm users, 1.3Mpixels is not even close to sufficient. It just doesn't work for cropping small areas of the picture; I know, I've tried. I work for a small newspaper and we bought an Olympus digital camera of that resolution. It's nice and fast and all, but you just can't do tight crops on it. The detail is noticeably substandard w/r/t 35mm, even after printing on newspaper.
True, really high-res digital cameras are out there, but they cost about $40,000. I have seen reporters from larger papers like the LA times using these and I'm told they work great. However, it's cheaper and easier just to scan a slide at 4000dpi and really pull even the most minute details out of a frame. In their current state, cheap digital cameras simply cannot match that. That's why they have a long way to go to beat 35mm.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
I've been very pleased with my Sony Digital Mavica FD91. Yeah, it doesn't use compact flash and yeah, you only get about 10 *good* pictures per diskette, but the pictures it does take rival most of the pictures other digital cameras take. It's super convenient, super easy to use and, except for lack of a hot mount for an extrnal flash (for really big rooms that are rather dark), I couldn't ask for more. The fact that you can mount it on a tripod makes it even more useful. Do some research, you'll find the sony's are in super hot demand (It's one of the few items on Ebay where you can recoup almost all of what you spent on it...). As an avid photographer, I couldn't be more pleased with mine!
I purchased my first digital camera (a Agfa ephoto307) 3 years ago, and just purchased my second. The Agfa was very nice (36 640x480 pix, long battery life, no LCD) but is a bit outdated by todays standards. When it came out, I had to write my own Linux drivers, but now gphoto supports most cameras.
I just purchased a Kodak DC280, which is an outstanding camera. 2 megapixel images, 2x optical zoom, supports CompactFlash cards, and has stunning image quality. The USB support under linux is even good, making the download times reasonable (~1 second per image) instead of the wait that serial causes (10-40 seconds per image). The "smaller" resolution (896x592) is very good as well.
One common problem with digital cameras is how quickly you can take consecutive shots. On my Agfa, it is several seconds (and it's gotten worse since it was dropped) which can be very annoying. On my Kodak, it still takes a long time to write to the compactflash card, but it has some built in RAM, which allows it to buffer this. So, your "steady state" picture taking rate is still only one every 4-8 seconds, but you can shoot of 2 or 3 in rapid succession before the temporary buffer is full. This is a key feature.
Another one I seriously considered, somewhat less expensive, is the Olympus D-340R. C|Net has some good reviews.
The major features to look for roughly in order, IMHO, are:
gphoto support (or linux driver availability)
Resolution
Pictures stored (and expandability)
Time between photos
Transfer times
Optical zoom
Battery life
Picture quality
LCD UI/other features
Decide what of these is important to you, and read some reviews. As mentioned above, C|Net is pretty good.
I have one of the CxxxxZ series camera, and they
are truly a joy to use. You get a lot of control
over the picture, and while perhaps still not quite as much as a film camera, you'll find most
of the settings you want are available.
There are some lenses available via an adapter also, so no complaints. First I had an Olympus D320L, which is nice for snapshots, but isn't the
serious camera the C2000Z is.
I'm very pleased with this camera having used most of the models out there (and having worked on some of the first digital cameras). It has good optics, great resolution, good features, and a very compact size. Some of the controls are a little difficult to use, and the menus are not the best organized, but if you use it in mostly point and shoot situations, its a very good solution. There's a newer model (C-2500) to which I'm considering trading up.
Sorry -- had a brain fart.
I highly recommend the microdrive. You can get them at CDW.
Double brain seizure.
Anyone have experience with the DC215?
Also, GPhoto should be pointed out... this is one sweet looking app. Great effort by those guys!
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I wouldn't say there is no digital camera that takes pictures this way, but most of them do not. In many cameras, the CCD has separate sensors for red, green, and blue, all active at the same time. When a picture is taken, the CCD is exposed and then read once. Color artifacts and chromatic aberrations have many causes, but I'm willing to bet that it's not because the CCD in the camera is actually taking three pictures instead of one.
Regards,
Jeremy
After doing a fair amount of research (reading every review I could find on certain models of cameras) and changing my mind several times about which one would best suit my needs, I've decided on a Sony CyberShot DSC-D770. I selected this camera because the 35mm I use most often is an SLR, and after much deliberation I decided to stick with the SLR style. The Sony's resolution (1.5 megapixel) is a bit on the low side by today's standards, but that's the only real shortcoming of this camera. Still, I think 1344x1024 output will be sufficient for my purposes. What I particularly liked about this camera is the wealth of manual controls, especially the zoom and focusing rings.
Other cameras (less than $1000 street price) worth considering:
- SLR: Olympus C-2500L and Canon PowerShot Pro 70. Although the Sony was my favorite of the SLRs, for someone else's needs one of these might be a better bet.
- Versatility: Hands down, one of the Nikon Coolpix cameras. There's a wealth of lens attachments and other accessories available for these things. And while not the most compact, they're certainly less bulky than an SLR. And the new 990 is a 3.3 megapixel powerhouse.
- Bang for the buck: Casio QV-3000EX. For a little more than $900 you can get one of these 3.3 megapixel beasts in combination with IBM's 340MB MicroDrive. Unfortunately there's no external flash attachment, and the lens is not threaded to accept attachments, but someone will find a way around this limitation.
- Portability: Take your pick of Canon's PowerShot A5, A50, S10, or S20 (increasing in capability from sub-megapixel to 3.3 megapixel). These little jewels are about the size of Canon's Elph APS film cameras, which is hard to beat for a go-anywhere camera.
There are plenty of other cameras out there, but these were the most appealing to me (at one time I was torn between the Nikon Coolpix 990, the Casio QV-3000EX and the Sony DSC-D770). There are a number of Web site with loads of reviews out there; some of them are the Imaging Resource, the Digital Photography Review, and Steve's Digicams. Happy searching!Regards,
Jeremy
(And if anyone's interested in how that Sony works out, I'll be receiving the camera this week. I'll be happy to share my own impressions of it once I've had a chance to play with it.)
I've just finished a whirlwind tour of the Pilbara, toting a Sony DSC-F505 (1600x1200, manual everything if required, auto everything if not, also does short videos and sound bites). The ability to pick up a small, light, digital camera from a mouse-mat behind the gearstick and have a viewfinder-aligned picture in seconds, as compared with the time involved unpacking a decent but large and heavy optical camera and getting it steady, has won me many photos from subjects who would otherwise have been long gone. I met a geologist in my travels, with a nice film Nikon and a great set of filters that cost exactly as much as my 505 and 32MB RAM stick. Most of his pictures will look better than most of mine, but I'll get pictures that he won't, and get them faster. In the tradeoff between grain and pixellisation, film still wins (well, serious film still wins), but won't for long. Each year's new generation of cameras seems to up the number of pixels by the golden ratio at no increase in real price, where film seems to be hitting the design envelope. Film, like glow-in-the-dark valves, will be a very long time dying, but the writing is on the wall.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A Mavica with an LS-120 would store a useful number of hi-res pictures, but it would still die in short order if used in the Australian outback at all. Solid state storage is an absolute must where the dreaded red dust proliferates.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The Sony PCR-100 is both a digital video cassette camera (both full motion and still pictures on cassette) and can also use Sony's memory sticks for still images storage.
:)
Unlike most DV-style combos, this one's still resolution is quite respectable (1152xSomething), and it has both a very good optical/mechanical stabilization system, a 10x optical/120x interpolated zoom, active NIR, zero-light shooting, and a great, bright little LCD and viewfinder.
Plus, the PC-card adapter for the memory sticks, usable across the Sony line, makes the stick appear just like a removable IDE drive and works under Linux and Win2k (at least) with no extra driver software. Almost as convenient as floppies, in other words, but uses a lot less power and holds a whole pile more of images.
At full-sized, superfine quality the jpg's are 610kb. The current price point on memory sticks (which are *very* small, convenient, and solid-state) are ~$50 for a 32MB model (55 images at that resolution/quality, several hundred at 640x480 and lower quality).
The PCR-100 also has a very complete remote control, serial, composite, and firewire (DVLink) I/O, and it fits in the palm of yer hand. Can be found around the web for ~$1,600. The full-motion video is very good for a single-CCD camera, btw, but you didn't ask about that
"Professional coder on closed source. Do not attempt."
- Zoom - digital or optical? $$ for a optical zoom. I have hardly ever used my digital x2 zoom because it sucks.
- Battery life
- how quickly can the camera take shots? I miss a lot of shots on my current camera because of the low "snap rate".
- Transfer technology. The C30 uses the serial port. Slow, but I haven't found this to be too big of a deal.
- Of course picture quality - don't even consider anything less than 1MP
C-Net has some good reviews.I've done alot of amature work with 35mm and medium format, and I liked the specs on this camera. Rotating Zeiss lens, 2x zoom 2.1 MP, ability to store MPEG movies, effects (black & white, sepitome, solarize, and negative).
When I got the camera home, I immediately filled up a 64 meg flash card. Held something like 120+ images at 1600x1200.
Then came the process of getting the pictures to the system. The only option is serial, and if you are in windows, a proprietary software. No drivers for making it a TWAIN source either. Sony's support system is like that apparently.
In linux, conveniently, there was Gphoto, and it was handy, but took about 8-10 hours to download 50 pictures. That was unacceptable.
To end the story, I like the camera, but if I want to take some pictures with it, I have to set aside a weekend to download them.
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
I keep hearing about these super tiny hard drives that IBM and company make. They're supposed to be about one square inch, and very thin, yet hold several hundred megabytes. That would be great, since it could hold a bizillion pictures (especially if it used a reasonable compression algorithm, like JPEG2000). Then, I'd love to just plug it into my hub's ethernet port and download the pictures from the camera's built in web server (I'd probably use wget to do the job.) Boy, that would be a great camera -- which neatly sidesteps a lot of ugly software issues.
Kodak has followed Apple's lead and started offering cameras in different colors like blueberry, tangerine, lime, etc...
See literally thousands of examples of my shooting at my picture archive.
The 850Z also has adjustable f-stop and shutter speed settings. I use these features quite often, but only because I have many years of experience with adjusting those settings with an SLR camera. If you aren't an experieced photographer, and you fool with those settings, you will probably make your shots look worse than if you had simply used a fully automatic camera.
Here are some images I took with the 850Z of a trip to Belgium
cya
Did You Know that you can fit an external flash to a Kodak DC20? Apparently it sends a byte of info out the serial port at the exact moment it takes a picture - there's an adapter available, but I forget where. If the cheapest non-toy camera can do it, I'm sure a lot of others can too...
- My First Digital was a Kodak DC20. Smallest, lightest, cheapest. Least number of features. Takes 8 sub-640x480 photos, or 16 really crap postage stamps. A wonderful camera at the time - Kodak made it and it's software so damn easy to use. A wonderful way to learn what you want in a digital camera.
- More recently I purchased a FujiFilm MX-2700. At the time it was the smallest 2.3MegaPixel camera available. It's great, the quality is superb, but I needed to buy a monopod to keep it stable enough to make it worth while, especially in low light. I've taken some wonderful fireworks photos, some of which you might still be able to find at fireworks.krisjohn.net. The only drawback is that there's no optical zoom, but later versions have fixed that. As a general digital, this family is by far the best - it's so small that you don't mind carrying it around on the off-chance that they'll be something to shoot. Highly recommended. Oh, I'm currently using it as a webcam - on and off.
- Most recently I bought a GameBoy camera, for artsy stuff, and I must say that it's the most fun I've had with digital photography in ages. I've got an extra memory cart (from datel), plus a GB Xchanger and Mad Catz cable to transfer images to my PC. I can take about 120 shots before having to return to base. Not for serious stuff, but no equal in the fun stakes.
- At work we got an old Ricoh digital free with a big colour printer/copier. It's about the same vintage as my DC20, with shots of approximately the same quality. Ricoh have made some good cameras since then, but this one shows it's age much more than my DC20.
- The latest purchase at work was a Kodak DC265. It was bought for quality, ease of use and robustness - and it's performed admirably on all counts. If you don't mind something chunky, this is my recommendation for an all-round camera, but make no mistake, it is large and heavy. Ours appears to have a few problems transferring images - it's potentially a dud in that respect - but I've got round that by using a PCMCIA adapter to transfer images, which is a recommended procedure anyway (so damn fast).
- Lasty, two of the staff have digital camera's of their own. One is an Olympus something (sorry) and the other is a Canon Pro something (sorry again). They're HUGE and they're rarely seen. Not being able to pack them inside a bag or briefcase really limits their use. That's why I recommend the small end, and why I bought an MX-2700.
Hope this helps,Personally, at the rate things are improving on digital cameras, the days of 35 mm print film could begin its fast wane as early as the middle of 2001.
There are three reasons for this:
1. CCD manufacturers are already starting to develop CCD sensors with 5-6 megapixels. That is almost the same as ISO 100 35 mm print film. I expect to see the first consumer cameras with 5-6 megapixel CCD's by the middle of 2001.
2. Digital cameras are now increasingly designed so it could use IBM's very tiny "MicroDrive" hard drive. That means by the middle of 2001 digital cameras will have as much as 700 MB of storage space for digital images. And don't forget that Compact Flash memory are also increasing in size, too; 256 MB Compact Flash cards might be common by the middle of 2001.
3. Inkjet printers have improved dramatically in the way they print color in the last 24 months. Today's better Canon, Epson, and HP inkjet printers can print high-resolution color pictures with 1200x700 dots/inch and higher resolutions, which makes them pretty much indistinguishable from color prints you get from most photo processors.
In fact, I see 35 mm cameras increasingly sold only to people that use very high resolution print film (ISO 25, 50 and 64) or slide film. Most everyone else by 2005 that would normally use 35 mm print film will have switched to digital cameras.
Mind you, for larger formats such as 6 x 4.5 and 6 x 7, they will continue to be around because they offer the extremely high resolution necessary for advertising and museum-quality art work.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I found the jump from 1280 to 1800 suprisingly small. Experimenting with the new Fuji tends to yield less improvement over the Olympus that I expected. The main reason for the upgrade, however, was not the resolution, but the manual control offered my the latest cameras (manual focus, exposure and aperture).
The Olympus C-2020Z seems to be a very popular choice these days, and this would have been my 1st option had I not got a lean deal with the Fuji.
All of my cameras were supported under Linux (with gphoto / photopc or fujiplay).
The things to look for IMHO are
YMMV. I'd get an Olympus if I were out shopping now.
-BPFH
1) You want Compact Flash expandability. If your going to take any reasonable amount of pics with your camera...it needs a decent amount of memory. My Kodak DC240 has a 64Mb compact flash card in it...I can take 471 640x480 high quality (low compression) pics with that. Smartmedia will only give you 1/2 and recently 1/4 the expandability of regular compact flash cards.
:-) You want USB connections from the camera to the PC. Of course your next question is..USB and Linux? Yes...Kodak cameras are one of the FEW which currently have USB which works with the new linux kernel.
2) USB!!!! Once you have all those pictures you need to get em into the computer. If you think you are going to transfer 64 megs of pictures over your parrallel port and be happy about it...FORGET IT. I would rather not have to go on another vacation while waiting for the pictures from my last one!
See here: http://home.pacbell.net/david-b/digicam/
3) If your printing out your digital pics...your not a geek...go away. Otherwise, you may, like myself, find 640x480 adequate for most pictures being stored and viewed on the computer. This said, almost all cameras will do that resolution...you basically just want quality at that res and the ability to do more. Do yourself a favor...and save some money.
The Kodak DC240 was slashed in price a few months ago. It has great 1280x960 resolution if you need it. A great LCD. It's easy to use. I have one and am very happy with it (I traded off my non-usb fuji unit to get it). It has all the memory and features you need and can now be picked up for really cheap. Go for it.
The FD91 was top of the range at the time it was released, and only intended for moderately serious use with a price tag to match. It has an excellent 14x optical zoom (no nasty expanding pixel tricks) and takes photos at either 640x480 or 1024x768 res with two different JPEG compression settings. There's also an uncompressed BMP mode that I've never used. At the tight end of the zoom you can get a whole lot of detail on a fairly distant object, so it's good for taking candid shots that people aren't aware of. This is helped by the camera's "steady shot" feature, that I rarely if ever turn off.
Purists will also be pleased to note that all its features are manually overridable, so you can focus manually if you like. Exposure is automatic, but you can do shutter or iris priority, and expose to the entire scene or turn on the spot meter for high contrast situations. There are several white balance modes as well.
On top of this, it will also do audio/visual MPEG recordings at 320x200 for 15 sec, or 160x100 for a minute. Probably more useful is the "audio annotation" feature where you take an ordinary still with several seconds worth of audio attached as a separate MPEG file. The audio can be a bit artifacty, and it's a "convenience" feature: you'd never mistake it for a serious audio recorder.
All in all the camera is easy to praise. It's easy to use and produces very nice results in most environments. My only gripes about the camera would be that the widest zoom angle is a bit narrow, and I'd like better low-light performance. Not that its low light performance is bad, but I know that CCDs can be really impressive in low light when they want to be, and getting a flash photo to work well can be a bit of a challenge.
I'd love to post a "photo gallery" link for you all, but my poor old 'net link would not stand the Slashdotting.
Disclosure: I used to be a Sony employee, and I got mine on the cheap as an ex-demo unit. Sony retrenched me, so it's not like I feel I have to say nice things about them, though.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
The Kodak DC280 is likewise a great camera. It is fairly similar to the DC290, but lacks some of the multimedia and adjustment features and is much smaller. The most notable difference, aside from size, is the zoom capability-- the DC290 has a 3x optical and 2x digital zoom whereas the DC280 has a 2x optical and 3x digital zoom.
A few months ago I payed approximately $600 for my DC280, which may seem like a lot of money until you consider that I've already taken over 1,100 photos with the camera-- all together I have not taken that many photos with my father's Canon AE1 as the added cost and wait time associated with using film is preventative to me.
The ability to transfer several pictures to my computer in a matter of seconds is very appealing to me. My personal preference is to look at photos on my monitor and be able to send them to my friends with ease. I don't have to wait for the film to develop and then to scan each photo in individually.
The DC280 and DC290 create really nice pictures-- the quality is quite acceptable for most people who want to take a few snaps of their friends, family, pets, and even of things you wouldn't normally take pictures of as it could be a waste of film, but not completely unworthy of a photo.
It allows you the freedom to take way too many pictures.
Now, a word on digital camera media:
Compact flash is my favorite as it seems to be the cheapest and is available in a wide range from very small to 340MB (with actual compact flash memory you can go up to 256MB currently-- the 340MB is available from IBM as a very small compact flash hard disk... very cool). Plus, I can put the compact flash card into a PCMCIA converter into a laptop or into the compact flash slot on my PDA to view the pictures (not even practicle on a Nec MobilePro 800 at 800x600... maybe a laptop with 1280x1024).
Smart memory is very low on my list here as I think it's too flimsy, slightly more expensive, proprietary, and is not available in anything above 64 MB (as a matter of fact, I don't even know if it goes that high... I'll give it the benefit of the doubt).
Memory sticks are available in up to 64MB (so far as I know) and they're made by Sony (and only by Sony)... enough said.
From a practical point of view, current cameras with 1600x1200 resolution are pretty close to what most people get out of 35mm; there are differences, but they are a toss-up--digital does actually do some things better. Once the resolution doubles or triples, there is little reason to go with 35mm.
I like SmartMedia much better than either CompactFlash or the Sony memory sticks. CF uses pins (which can bend easily) and is bulky. SmartMedia actually gives you more storage density, even if the individual chips hold a little less data. Sony's MemoryStick is not widely supported by third party manufacturers; what Sony gives you in terms of accessories is it, and if it doesn't work right (like their PCMCIA interface), you are stuck. Sony also can't decide on a form factor: there are three MemoryStick variants coming out, not all compatible.
I like the Olympus and Fuji cameras a lot. The Fujis are high quality, robust, and work very reliable. The Olympus cameras are somewhat quirkier but usually have more features. Both the Olympus C2000Z and the Nikon 950 (and later models apparently too) have some (to me) objectionable color artifacts. The Fuji MX2700 doesn't, but it doesn't have zoom. I don't particularly like the Kodaks: they are a bit bulky IMO. The Sony DSC-F505 has great quality, a great and versatile lens, and an nice form factor, but the LCD becomes unusable outdoors (and it uses the MemoryStick).
Watch out for fake resolution statements. Just like scanners, several manufacturers now overstate resolution because they perform software interpolation. The most notable offenders are Agfa (almost none of their cameras have the resolution they claim), and Fuji's latest MX4700 (which is a 2.2Mpixel camera, not a 4.7Mpixel camera).
Incidentally, a 2 megapixel camera really has only 2 million sensors, not 6 million, as you might think since it takes RGB pictures; the color information is interpolated. So, all the resolution claims are somewhat overblown, but they are comparably overblown. And the color interpolation is actually fairly harmless because of the way human color vision works--the greyscale resolution is pretty close to what they claim, it's just that the color information is a bit spread out (but you won't notice). And at least this is consistent among all cameras.
Altogether, I end up using the Fuji MX2700 most. It is small enough to carry everywhere, it's not too expensive, and it produces great pictures. It also has good battery lifetime (also very important).
I'll tell you what, for the money ($512 on buycomp), you cannot beat the QV-8000SX. It has a great set of features: shutter speed control from 1/2000th to 64seconds, a night mode, a kick ass panoramic mode, 43mm threads to accept standard camera lens/filters, USB and Serial, 2.x megapixel, huge bright viewscreen. It's small and lite. The only down side is lack of an optical viewfinder, other than that, this camera rocks. check it out.
Does the floppy adapter with your Olympus require a software driver? If it does do you know of any SmartMedia floppy adapters that do not require a driver?
I've been really happy with my DC280 ($525 at Buy.com about 6 months ago)... it comes with nice, rechargable NiMH batteries (and the charger too), so it has everything you need except the case and the PCMCIA adapter (the latter can be had for ~$10 if you need it). I hadn't touched my 35mm in years, but now I'm taking photos all the time.
I like the video out feature too; it's nice when you want to show pictures to people and the laptop isn't handy.
Coupled with my HP Photosmart 1100 printer (with CF slot), you have a nice little digital photography setup. Now only if Linux supported all the 1100's features (2-sided printing, high resolution, reading CF cards over the parallel cable)...
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
It's been said for the last 3 years that digital cameras are replacing "film" cameras. I don't think that's happening.
Think again.
I work for a large newspaper (which won a Pulitzer this year, by the way). Five years ago, digital was a joke. We wanted to move that direction (digital allows us to extend deadlines) but the quality and ease of use was simply not there.
This year, we've replaced our analog cameras in almost a dozen bureaus with digital cameras. No longer are there dark rooms in the field offices. We'd like to get rid of the analog cameras in the main office as well and, in fact, are moving that direction. As often as possible, we're shooting assignments digitally.
Costs are down. Deadlines have been extended. Photographers no longer have to leave a sporting event at 10pm to get back to the office and have the film processed by 11:30 pm. Now the photographer waits till 11 pm to stop shooting and them simply emails the photo to the main office.
Real estate agents who used to shoot analog film are shooting digital almost exclusively.
In high school and college, I did a lot of shooting myself. Since I got my Nikon CoolPix 950, I haven't shot an analog picture. While I certainly see analog film sticking around for the foreseeable future (my recent wedding was shot on silver (yes, B&W)), publication work will be almost entirely digital in two years. Futher, I predict, more than half the snapshots in the next ten years will be digital.
Which brings me to the only on-topic part of this message... Get the Nikon CoolPix 950 (or whatever might have replaced it since I bought it). The picture quality is great. The camera is ultra-flexiable. It can go fully-manual or be used as a point and shoot. I own own. My father who was a professional photographer for 35 years got one. I've talk two friends into them. I can't speak highly enough about the camera. (And I don't even have Nikon stock.)
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
Why don't you give me one feature of 950 that will beat similarly priced configuration of a SLR and film scanner.
I can shoot a picture with the 950 and have it on the web two minutes later. Show me a chrome-shooting SLR that can do that.
You're missing the point that being able to shoot and then turn around and upload it to the net is a real benefit.
I'm not anti-SLR by any means. I've got an FM-2, 8008, F2 and Nikonus 5. I've shot a ton of film. I've been published in magazines and in newspapers (the latter as a real photojournalist). I really like film.
At the same time, there is a real benfit to being able to quickly get film from point A to point B. A month and a half ago, I had my wedding shot on silver by the professional, but my father was shooting with the CoolPix. Less than two hours after the reception, my father had the CoolPix pictures online for the out-of-town friends and relatives to check out. It took two weeks to get the proofs and negatives from the professional.
Same thing with the honeymoon pictures. There was no way in hell my wife was going to let me take along a negative scanner and C-41 kit with us. But she had no problems with shooting digital and uploading the pictures every few days from the hotel room.
The professional pictures are better quality, of course, but the digital images served a purpose.
Certainly you see some value in digital cameras, right?
InitZero
The mavica FD-91 Does NOT suck. I have worked and owned Olympus digitals, Sony, and Kodak. If used in the proper setting the mavica does very well. It has great battery life, has been dependable for over 5000+ photos so far (alot I attribute to floppies). Yes it is NOT a high end camera, but it gives you many manual features photographers like. The Olympus and the Nikon are outstanding in there photos, if you want to shoot alot of photos, youd better get mass storage. As for the Kodak. I have been very disapointed in there quality and the batter life really sucks (useing both alkaline and nicads). As far as general every day use I like the Sony FD-91 ( I have all three brands at my disposal) and use the Sony all of the time. I shoot many photos in a day.
But I definately think that it is concievable that in a few (10) years that we will start to see the disapearance of film and the appearance of high quality digital alternatives, for about the same price as their celluoid cousins. Personally, I can't wait!
But if you are looking for an awesome digital camera (still) definately check out the top of the line Kodak camera one built on the Ni kon F5 and one built on the Canon Eos 1N, also, polaroid makes a cool one, but my personal fave is the Leica Studio Digital camera. Ohhh, I want one :)
I've had a Sony Mavica FD7 for a couple of years, and it has performed quite well for me.
The Mavicas are expensive, a little on the large side and the floppy disk isn't super speedy, but there are a couple of things they beat all the other digital cameras I've looked at for... One thing is that the FD7, FD71, and FD73 have hands down the best zoom I've seen. 10x, and extremely smooth in and out -- a lot of other cameras I've looked at only have 2-3x zoom, and there is only like three levels. The Mavicas come with a rechargeable camcorder style battery, which beats using AA or AAA batteries like a lot of other cameras use -- I typically get several hours of use on a charge and I haven't had to replace the battery yet in a couple of years of service. The Mavicas also have a really great LCD display on them. But hands down, the big thing that sold me on the Mavica was the convenience, cheapness and ubiquitousness of the floppy for storage. I can buy floppies 24 hours a day even out in podunk center nowhere, because Wal-Mart carries floppies. I can buy a couple of boxes of floppies for what one smart media or memory stick costs. And I can slap a floppy into any computer anywhere I go and read the jpg's off it -- no having to install special download software or futz around with hooking up cables. And it doesn't matter if its a PC running Linux, PC running Windoze (blech), Mac, SparcStation, whatever. Just about everything can read a 1.4M floppy and deal with jpg's.
What I really want is the Mavica FD88. It has higher resolution (1280x960 if memory serves), faster floppy (4x) and 8x optical 8x digital zoom.
All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend the Mavica line.
Sony makes the floppy-based cameras.
What about cameras that use the 120Meg SuperDisk? Then you could choose between high-capacity or cheap media (take pictures of your friends and hand them the disk).
It seems so obvious; why don't I see them in stores?
(Or what about Zip disks or even hard drives?)
I've heard rumors of a camera that uses MiniDisc being marketed only in Japan; is that true?
I've been interested in one of these, and a friend of mine has one.
One thing that I wanted to try was to use superformat to create floppies that use extra tracks and extra sectors per track--virtually all drives will support this, and DOS is happy with it. Unfortunately, the camera flatly refuses to use any of the specially-formatted disks. (I suspect it would take some firmware hacking to get it to work.)
So much for getting a little extra storage.
For high quality pictures nothing beats a good roll of film and a nice Single Lens Reflex Camera
I'm a geek, however photography and computers don't mix in my own opinon. Some film cameras nowadays are even too advanced for my tastes.
It's hard to beat the resolution, depth of field, and crispness of a good SLR camera. Digital cameras are good for putting a photo on a website, not for vacation photo's, not for any photos.
Eh?
My wife and I started shopping around for a digicam around newyears. We looked for the highest resolution and the greatest flexability.
We chose the Olympus C-2500L, an SLR camera that accepts hotshoe flash and a few custom olympus lenses for wide angle and zoom.
We haven't had a need for many accessories yet. We found it for $1200 with a 32MB SM card and just recently got a usb SM/CF/ATAPC reader with a 48MB CF for under $200.
Now with 80MB we can get 40 1712x1368 images, or 137 1280x1024, or over 600 640x480's. If we ever need physical prints it would be well worth the cost to go to kinkos or the computer labs at school and make some glossy prints. It's not much more expensive than having regular film developed.
I think it's much easier to have the option between hundreds of images so that you can pick and choose new ones as you're taking them. A fair processing job is just a few photoshop filters away. (and better compression gets those huge 2.5 gigapixel images down to 275k)
The only drawback to having our olympus rather than a semiprofessional film camera is the lack of lens varieties and filling up our hard drives with cat pictures. With a digital camera you're never afraid to take a pic, you can always delete it later or take another if the first isn't perfect.
If you're seriously interested in photogrophy I think you'll probably recover the cost of a camera like the 2500 and accessories in film savings.
I'm hoping this gets moderated enough for people to see it; or that people see the title and respond.
So here's a list of low end cameras that seem really nice:
Epson PhotoPC650
Kodak DC10+
Kodak DC15Zoom
For about less than $350. Questions include software reliability, picture quality, ease of use, battery usage, etc.
For the more expensive cameras, here's a representative list:
Epson PhotoPC750Zoom
Kodak DC240Zoom
Casio QV2000+(340mb microDrive!)
Canon S10
For about $800 or less.
Any comments on these models?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
As for your Elph, doesn't the Canon S10 also take the IBM microDrive? It's relatively small, compared to the QV2k+
Yeah, the bundled deal is $799 for microDrive plus camera.
How about upload and such? There's no synching problems for you? I run NT, and Linux, but no 9x machines in my house. Would like to be able to upload my pictures to my PC...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Not to troll or cause flamage, but it really doesn't help the /. reader trying to buy a digital camera; it's interesting, yes, insightful, yes, but also not very useful when one wants to find out about:
Stuff like that.
For example, I've heard from a store that Kodak cameras aren't very well supported from Kodak; a multitiude of Slashdot readers exclaim the praises of their cameras, however.
Then there's Epson's PhotoPC650, and excellent looking camera. HP isn't a great camera, despite their good printers and scanners. Does Epson stack up? Casio's QV2000+ seems a great idea, packing an IBM microDrive.
At least, it seems those are more what the questions was asking for; referrals, recommendations, etc.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The only reasonable choice is a camera based on the Digita OS, so that you can have some fun and run MAMED and MESSD on it. So, good ones for that purpose are Kodak DC265 and DC290.
I provide tech support for a few different Digital cameras. From a Tech Support veiwpoint, I think that the Mavica cannot be beat. We have about 50 Kodak 260s at work and they are nothing but trouble. The FAT on the pic card gets corrupted all of the time. There is just too many points of failure. The pic card must be seated proplerly in the adapter card, the adapter card must be seated properly in the PCMCIA port. (Which is hard to do.) While installing thier picture card, our users often bump thier network card, and get knocked off of the network. If they try to reboot while the card is installed, Mic$@#$#ft NT will not start.
We also support a few Mavicas that work without fail. Substantially less can go wrong. Plug in the floppy, and load your pictures.
Mavica SUCKS bad! I had it for 3 weeks... Picture quality is pisspoor and you can only store several pictures at high quality. Go for Kodak DC290 or DC275 instead. MUCH MUCH MUCH better. Anything that has flashcards is MUCH better
--
GroundAndPound.com News and info for martial artists of all styles.
First, I love my camera. It is an Olympus D600-L. I got the 16 meg SmartMedia upgrade last year, and this past year they came out with a 32 meg upgrade for it. One of these days I will actually send the camera in.
One thing I learned from owning a digi-cam is this: don't go off and buy a camera because of it's price. Buy it because of the features it has. And when you decide on a camera, look at it closely. Much like any other piece of hardware you buy, there is something better around the corner.
I don't mind the resolution. It does 640x480 very well, and does even better at 1280x960. The shots are beautiful, and do not give that CCD White like you normally see (that is, it does not look like a video image you get when you shoot something white in a high brightness setting.) I also like the fact that the camera is a real honest to goodness SLR. Viewfinders suck.
But, the things I hate are not being able to control the exposure, the shutter speed, and not being able to remove the lens. At first I did not think that would be a really big deal. Now I do. I am nowhere near a pro photographer, but I do have applications for the camera that would make it even more useful to me if it had those things.
Granted, if I spent $12K I could get one of those nifty Kodak cameras, or a Mamayia with a digital back on it, but well, $12K is a bit too steep. It would still be awesome to have though.
What are the physical limits on the performance of silver halide film vs CCD? My son (at my shoulder) asks, "don't you know the answer?"; Nope. But I've wondered for a while. It seems to me that if silver catches more photons than a CCD, that there will allways be a place for film, but if not then it is only a matter of time before the film is completely obsolete.
I have a Nikon Coolpix 900. I am going to buy the 990 when it comes out. Here's what I like abou tthe Coolpix:
1. It takes better pictures than film cameras! Yes, the resolution is lower, but the image quality, color quality, exposure, etc, is far better than I have ever gotten with a film camera. The software in the camera picks the best settings and even in poor situations (shooting into the sun, or north of the arctic circle, etc) the camera takes great images. I have never, in my life, gotten a satisfactory sunset picture until this camera!
2. The form factor is the most innovative I've seen. IT looks odd and feels odd the first couple of days, but when you get used to it you can't imagine the constraints of going back to an SLR. You are only so tall- so being able to hold the camera over your head, or in a corner in a tight area in order to get the perspective you want for a picture and still be able to see what you're going to get to frame the shot is really wonderful.
3. Nikon made great choices on technology. A digital camera is like a laptop- you have to choose well and compromise without compromising the product. If you buy rechargable NiMh batteries and a large compact flash card you have a great system.
4. This camera is so much better than a film camera-- I get a lot more shots than I could with film and you will be surprised at how convenient it is not to have to reload film at inoportune times (like taking pictures of orcas that only surface periodically!) Plus, this camera gives you great shots right away to email to mom... no waiting for film to be developed. I mean, if your goal is to hang a picture on your wall, the better resolution of a film camera is an advantage-- but I think most people, and certainly me, would rather have all their picutres in the digital domain.
I have never regretted this purchase, and I haven't bothered to use a film camera since- expect for once when I forgot the Coolpix and I really missed it!
BitGeek
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I've messed with a digital camera from time to time, and I must say that they are OK for low resolution work. BUT if you want to blow up that image beyond a 4x6", stick with film. Kodak will scan your film to far higher resolution than that available on any digital camera. In addtion the cost of the camera is far lower, and you have far greater choice in accessories, especailly lenses.
If you become a serious amateur the advantages of film become even more important - the process of producing a great photograph is two step - capturing the image on film, and then printing it on paper. Serious photographers have long realized that the expression of art in photography comes not in the process of taking the picture, but during the process of turning the image on the negative to an unforgetable print.
WIthout knowing details on what specific features are needed, here's a brief review on two I've owned, the Olympus D-340 and the Kodak DC280.
Olympus
------
+ great case with integrated sliding lense cover
+ ability to store uncompressed tiffs
+ great color, especially in dark situations
+ adjustable ISO setting
+ excellent battery life
+ very sharp preview screen
- way too hard to use, interface sucks
- pictures didn't look as good as the kodak when printed
- serial only
- screen sticks out so it's impossible not to smudge with your cheek
Kodak
----
+ higher resolution
+ 20 MB memory
+ USB
+ good quality printed pictures
+ easy to use interface
- crappy lens cover that falls off all the time
- somewhat slower on taking pictures, has to be held still
- poor battery life, only about 15 minutes of constant use
- crappy preview screen, can't tell how good the picture is
Overall it's a tough call. I think the really really bad battery life of the kodak combined with the useless LCD screen really ruin it. You're probably better of spending a bit more and getting a camera that has the best of both
I was just looking at digital camera choices yesterday and came across
this handy 'tell us what is important and we'll help you choose a camera guide' at activebuyersguide.com.
It lets you set your priorities/preferences etc. and asks you a series of 'tie-breaker' questions, then spits out several recommendations with full stats.
I found it a helpful starting place.
-- Balf
I've noticed that cameras with only a model number only incrementally higher tend to have the same protocol as their predicessors (sp).
side note: I've sent the gphoto people perl source for the kodak DC-120 that someone else sent me, and they never ever put it into the main source! I've given it to them like three times, and they always ignore it! I would port it myself, but I don't know perl.
100 ASA film can be awfully good. For slide (chrome/positive) film, I've seen 3dB points in excess of 6000 lines (you can get 6000 pixels across the image, and still make them out).
I do film recorder (devices that print to film) design for a living. We print to film at resolutions up to 16,384 x 13,448 pixels(614MB/image). 4" x 5" film is the usual target at the top resolution. Getting one pixel off grid by 25% is discernable.
BTW, the reason film resolution is often referred to in absolute pixel count rather than dpi is because the film is rarely the final output size--an enlarged print or a projection screen (in the case of a slide) is. This makes it hard for us to choose point size, as you might imagine.
Resolving power and graininess are different things; it's possible for one film to have both more grain and more resolution than another. Visual graininess isn't the result of being able to see individual grains but rather clumps of grains.
At any rate, film remains far ahead of digital and likely will for a while. Fuji Velvia, for example, resolves 160 lines/mm. You have to scan with at least 4000 dpi to begin to approach the limit of film, and that produces a very large file, certainly bigger than anything you'll get out of a consumer digital camera.
That said, digital as a recording medium certainly does have its uses and is becoming extremely popular with photojournalists (especially with the release of the very nice Nikon D1), but for that application speed is more important than ultimate quality. And digital is great for output. A high-quality scan and an inkjet print of a slide or negative now can look as good, if not better, than the traditional enlarger and silver paper method.
Mark
There's a huge range of prices for both film and digital cameras and, in either case, quality costs money. But there's different ways of measuring cheaper. The Nikon 950 that you'll pay $800 or so for this year won't be worth much in five years, but a Nikon F5 or Leica M6 certainly will be. My ancient Nikon FG is still worth about what I paid for it many years ago. Also, good lenses are expensive and that doesn't change whether you're using film or digital.
Good point about the cost of consumables. It becomes very significant if you shoot as much as the typical high-end amateur or pro.
I share your enthusiasm for the D1 (and Nikons in general), and photo.net is a great resource.
A note to the uninformed medium format film is NOT 35mm--it is an approx 2 inch square of film, and is used to take much higher quality pictures then anything I have seen in a consumer(or even professional) digital camera.
Of course that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use digital camera--a few years ago, I worked at a place where we used 4x5 cameras(yes, that's 4 inches by 5 inches of film) for all our work--we switched to digital because it allowed us to have a much greater turn around time,albeit at a large drop in quality. And we were using the best cameras available at the time--they were 10,000$ each, I can't rememember the model # but it was a kodak digital back mounted on a nikon N-90. The point is that the right format must be chosen for the application, and at the moment that means digital for speed, and film for quality!
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
This camera is really great. And because of the recent release of the 3 megapixel S20, the Powershot's price has plummeted.
The Powershot Pro 70 is a professional camera. It has dual memory card slots (one for CF, and one for CF II, this means you can plug in a 340mb IBM microdrive!!) and no built-in flash -- this means you have to buy a seperate flash unit (but considering how great the low-light capabilities of this camera are, you usually won't need a flash anyway). It also comes with a rechargeable NimH battery, along with a proprietary rechargeable (with recharger!). Of course, it has all the professional features like configurable shutter speed, manual focus, aperture priority, etc. Its resolution, more true to the image ratio of professional non-digital cams, is something like 1536x1024.
The lenses on all canon's are incredible, on-par if not better than the Nikon 9xx line of cameras, which are (were?) considered standard-bearers in terms of consumer digital cameras. This particular camera has an infrared light under the lens that does some extremely nice automatic focusing.
This camera is also built to look a lot like an SLR camera, with the zoom switch placed on the side of the lens. Another cool feature is that the LCD display flips open from the camera and can be configured to face any direction -- basically just like the displays on newer video cameras (this is IMHO even better than the nikon 9xx "swivel" design).
And let me remind you that the price of this incredible "pro-sumer" camera has plummeted. You can probably get it for under $600.
Check out the review of this camera, and other high-end consumer/pro-sumer reviews by Phil Askey at photo.askey.net. This dude really knows what's up. I've barely even touched on all the details about this camera so make sure to check it out. And back when he did this review, the only reason the Powershot Pro70 didn't win hands down as one of the best cameras is because it cost about $1200 when it was released!
do some research - my nikon coolpix 950 does overexposure beatifully, and beats most film cameras in that i have never needed the flash. it adjusts the brightness itself, and if you know how to use it, it looks much better than a flash.
Part of the problem here, is not the digital technology, but the digital camera itself. For most work, two megapixels should provide enough resolution and clarity. The problem is the camera.
Digital cameras (with a couple of exceptions) seem to be aimed at the point-and-shoot crowd. There are only a few (one or two?) digital bodies with a reasonable set of controls to allow depth-of-field, exposure time, etc. control. The ones that exist are outrageously expensive. (Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong and tell me where I can buy one.)
Greg
I got one of these cameras a few months back, and I agree. It's very nice. However, the next in the series has been announced (980?) for release in a month or two. From what I can tell, it's solved a few of the complaints most people have about the 950. Nameley, they've done some sorta upgrad to the battery and flashcard ports so they arent as easily broken. It's been a while since I read the reviews on it, but there were a couple other nice fixes, IIRC.
... I suspect one of the cats decided to play with it) and the LCD isnt bright enough if you are outdoors (even on cloudy days). Mind you, there are very few digital cameras that handle that very well.
Also, the newer model has all the features of the 950, but adds MPEG capture! Dunno if it's actually any good, but it might be an interesting capabability to have around.
One feature you didnt mention, is that along with BestShot, there is a continuous shot mode that will just keep snapping shots and storing them until you let go of the shutter button or you run out of memory.
My only gripes with the camera are as follows: no way to attach the lense cover to the camera when your remove it (I've already lost mine
One other thing I feel compelled to point out. This is a camera made for taking "real" pictures, not snapshots. Sure, you can set it up for taking snapshots, but if you havent done so before hand, subjects have a tendancy to get a bit annoyed while you fiddle with the settings. While discussing this with a friend of mine, we came to the conclusion that if you are mostly just going to take snapshots to publish on the web or email to your friends, this camera is overkill. So, we decided, the optimal solution is to have two cameras: something like the coolpix for "serious" photos where you need high image quality, and a point-and-click camera for snapping pix at the company BBQ, birthday parties at the local pub, etc. It's not that you *can't* do both with the coolpix, it's just a bit inconvenient. And even the "cheap" cameras are a few hundred bux, so it's not in everones budget.
The coolpix is also also much bulkier than the less expensive point-and-click models which makes it a bit of a drag to carry around while you are playing pool with your local IRC friends.
BTW, gphoto (linux app - dunno if it's ported to other OSes) supports the coolpix line, altho it's a bit (ahem) buggy.
Who cares if 1.3MPixels already fills your screen completely? What if you want to crop a portion of the image and enlarge it? What about making posters or banners? If you try and enlarge a photo taken with a digital camera to poster size, it's going to look like crap.
The lack of resolution is also a problem for post processing -- applying 'filters' (the Gimp/Photoship kind, not the 55mm things) to the image degrades the quality of the image each time they are applied (it emphasizes aliasing in the im age).
By the way, you CAN print pictures made with a digital camera -- most photolabs will print it for you with a high-quality (iow, unaffordable) printer.
Sonys are okay, but lack basic controls (aperature, etc.) that are available on the Nikon CoolPix 950/990 and the Olympus C-2000Z and C-2020Z.
It's still a decent camera (I have one), but it takes -a long time- to startup, -a long time- between shots (especially if you're using the flash), the battery only lasts an hour, and the 4MB memory stick is laughable.
Fine for web stuff.
The Mavicas, while the floppy stuff is kinda handy, are sort of big and clunky to hold. While the floppy storage is kind of neat, a single floppy doesn't really hold *that* much; a 32MB (or larger) compact flash chip holds a shitload of pics.
And, for this sort of device, the fewer moving parts the better, I'm inclined to think; I've seen enough cheap-ass floppy drives go bad in PC's that I get a little cagey about having one in a $600 digital camera. (Yes, I imagine Sony's got some pretty good hardward in there, but still).
Overall, from the admittedly limited experience I've had with 'em, the Kodaks are pretty swanky.
The DC240 product page
Kodak Digital Cameras product page
--
Short answer: the Canon PowerShot rocks!
Background:
Early 1999 my wife & I were planning a vacation & I wanted a digital camera. After some research, (and two-hours of owning a very bad Agfa) I decided on the Canon PowerShot A5 Zoom. My criteria (and rationale) were:
This was going to be in my pocket or in a small cam bag for this trip.
Even within the size constraints, I wanted good picture quality. I also wanted actual focusing, not "focus-free", which is weasel-speak for fixed focus. Hint: avoid cheaper Agfa.
For previewing pix, composing close-ups, end-of-arm shots, etc.
Research indicated that even the best LCD was hard to see in bright sunlight. Also, always having to hold the camera away from your face amplifies jitter.
Compact flash (CF) v. SmartMedia v. floppys. Floppys are slow, SmartMedia has low capacity. CF is about the same price as SmartMedia & comes in very high capacities.
The A5Z was then "last years model", about to be replaced by the A50. The A50 is essentially identical, but with a higher resolution. So, the A5Z was cheap ($350). I added a battery charger ($90), two more rechargable (NiMH) batteries ($30 x 2) and a second 8MB CF ($40). Remember, these are early '99 prices. Total cost: $570.
There were several cameras with similar capabilities (Olympus, Nikon and Minolta) but none were as small OR as cheap.
The results since then have been excellent. I have been very happy. Several of my friend have tried it, and bought their own A50's. They really like theirs as well.
The current versions of this camera are, the A50, S10 & S20. The S series has added USB, even higher resolution and Type-II CF (which can take a hard drive). If I was buying a new camera today, I think the S20 would be my baby.
One recommendation though: do buy a charger and extra batteries.
I'll have to try isolating out some of the variables - one thing I intend to try soon is scan a print taken with an old 35mm P&S, both at 300 and 600 dpi - then try the same scan from a film scanner at 4000dpi and see how much more detail is revealed (if any!). That's a comparison I've not seen done, to see how much detail is lost to printing even in the case of an old camera with a mediocre lens.
That effort is hampered only by my flatbed scanner having died recenently... (hint: never buy a UMAX scanner!!!)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Try scanning some 35mm prints sometime. You run out of resolution at about 300 dpi
Part of that is that the paper you are scanning does not hold as much information as the film does - here's an interesting comparison page that shows film scans ranging from 2400dpi to 6000dpi (drum scans). They also comapre the same images from digital cameras, 35mm, and 4x5 (large format) cameras.
I think even counting for the enlarged size of the photo, film still has a lot more resolution than you think!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I recently bought a DC280 as well. It's my first digital camera so I don't have much to compare it against but I have been amazed with the quality of the photographs it takes. Plus it comes with Adobe Photoshop which is pretty good with touching up photographs. It's 2.1 megapixel and cost me $599.
Whatever camera you buy, get one that uses Compact Flash for storage. Then head over to buy.com or your favorite computer parts store, and purchase yourself an external USB flash card reader. If it's fast enough to stream MP3s off of like my Kingston model is... it's fast enough for everything else.
I recently bought a DC290 and it's been amazing to use. It can take TIFFs and timelapse photos. Its exposure settings let you take pics in near darkness. The built-in scripting language is kick ass - someone even wrote a script which lets you use the focus-laser as a rangefinder. When I view the pics it takes I'm reminded of the scene in Bladerunner when he spends an hour zooming in and out of tiny details in a picture. To download pictures you just plug it in via USB and it appears as an additional HD on your Windows PC. I've heard that you can access it using Unix freeware as well. Also, the first thing everyone says when they see it is, "Wow, it's much smaller than it looked in the ad!"
I scored mine for $560, AFTER tax and shipping. Here's how:
- Go to iVillage and sign up for an account there, using fake info if you want.
- They send you a confirmation email that has a link to promotional deals. Go to that page, and find the link to MobShop.
- Follow their link to MobShop, which sets a cookie. Buy the camera at MobShop, type in the code that iVillage gave you (LIONLAMB when I did it) for your 20% discount, and wait for camera to arrive!
I also picked up a 128Mb CompactFlash card. This lets me take 160 pics at max resolution, or something like 1400 pics at 640X480.The 950 is a great camera, and I'm quite happy with it, but it has a couple of quirks: Every time the power comes back on, for any reason, the lens zooms to full telephoto. Most of my shots are somewhat wider, forcing me to constantly fuss with the zoom. It eats batteries --- a set will not last long enough to fill the 66 pix I can put on the 64Meg flashcard. Have multiple sets of fully charged rechargeables on hand. And the camera, while much faster than previous generations, is still slower than I would like. From the 1/2 second or so delay when you press the shutter, to the several second delay to store the picture, there's much room for improvement.
Nevertheless, I'll never go back to film. These pictures are as good as anything I ever put on film...
Olympus is really strong because they are leveraging their experience in film cameras and lenses very effectivly into their digital cameras. They have really nice capture.
My strong reccomendation is to get a camera with an optical zoom (3x is good). It really makes the difference, and digital zoom is a joke as we all pretty much know.
- Mike
To me, the main benefit of a digital camera is that because there's essentially no marginal cost to taking pictures, I take a lot more of them, which makes the digital camera more fun.
Current discounted street prices are around $450. FWIW, here's a buy.com link to the camera. I understand that Fuji has higher res models in this form factor now, but you'll naturally pay more.
The camera takes very nice pictures, even at the lower resolutions. It has six resolutions...three quality levels at 1280x960, and three levels at 640x480. It has a ton of features, including a zoom lens, telephoto, 180-degree rotating lens, and a ton of options that you can set such as auto or manual focus, white balance, etc. If you want to see some pictures I took with my camera, go here. Those pix were taken on the lowest quality setting at 1280x960.
Oh yeah, and the camera also records sound bytes, if you're into that sort of thing. All in all, a very professional, high-quality camera for only $329. I was surprised.
--
Not all countries get the accessories you get in the US. A DC290 purchased in Hong Kong does not have charger, rechargeable batteries, pcmcia reader or power adapter. It did have a serial cable which was unusable for 5 months as the release date for the software that supported it got pushed back with no explanantion on the website. A request to the kodak's email elicited no response at all for two months, then a reply came when the software was released.
Now I am using windows 2000 and linux, since NT4 decided to stop functioning ion this laptop, and I needed to buy a pcmcia adapter to get pictures down, as the slow serial connection no longer works.
I have also suffered two corrupt flash cards, meaning may pictures have been lost, and since the last firmware upgrade, I seem to have to wait much longer between taking pictues.
On the last point point, while sad it is sometimes true. I work in the internet field, and this laptop is away with me while I am at holidays at the moment. One of the main reasons is so that I can upload pictures to it, as well as to play CD's and DVD's.
Actually, the DuPont Corporation had congress
in its pocket. They had just patented a new
process for bleaching and pulverizing wood pulp.
Just one problem: they needed to eliminate hemp,
so they cooked up a lot of racial fear and bogus
medical testimony (which the AMA protested)
regarding marijuana at a 3 hour congressional
hearing. Just like that, it was done.
As a matter of fact, you could always grow
hemp with little or no THC. This didn't matter,
of course.
Library/school filtering software would
probably prevent you from learning this on the
'net, right?
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
First, they're cheaper, and less fragile.
Traditional cameras are most definitely not cheaper. As someone who does a ton of photography, I should point out that most people don't realise it, but most of the cost of owning a camera is paying for film, development and printing.
Second, traditional cameras, are likely to be just as fragile as a digital camera, except that they have more moving parts (shutter screens, rollers, etc.) that can seize up over time. I certainly wouldn't take this into consideration when buying a camera though -- unless I knew it was going to be handled rough.
That being said, my recommendation would be to head over to www.photo.net, Phil Greenspun's excellent photography resource, and check out the ton of recommendations tips and techniques he and reviewers have posted.
Though I don't own a digital camera, I have done a ton of looking in the past few months because I am thinking of getting one to reduce the cost of photography. The Nikon Coolpix is the best I've seen for the snapshot shooter, while the Nikon D1 is the most fantastic SLR I've had the pleasure of checking out. Nikon is known for their excellent optics, and I have been nothing but pleased with anything I have owned from them. I was also impressed with some of the Kodak cameras I played with, so you might consider checking some of those out.
Before you buy any camera, ask to play around with it a bit first. Most shops will allow you to shoot a roll (or, I guess, a flash card?) if you give them collateral, or know them well. If not, ask to shoot a few in the store. And, last but not least, definitely read the reviews available on the net before you buy.
Uh oh... you're not even gonna get a decent new analog SLR body for under $500...
Nikon's D1 is an excellent digital camera which works with almost all standard Nikon AF lenses, but the price is $5000-ish US. Kodak also makes some digital cameras, but they are converted analog cameras from Canon and Nikon, and they are in the near $10 000 US range.
As I say, even a decent (I expect if you want an SLR, you want decent quality) used SLR body is going to run you $300-ish, so I wouldn't count on any digital SLRs near that price anytime soon.
Anyway, my conclusion is the same: One day, digital cameras will push traditional cameras into a niche, but not yet.
I agree 100% with you there. The average consumer has no need for gigantic enlargements, and wants a no fuss point-and-shoot camera.
There are always going to be a few people (namely professional photographers and enthusiasts) who want a film-based camera. Digital cameras are high enough quality now for a lot of newspaper shooting, but I would never consider taking extremely low-light pictures (CCD noise tends to be quite nasty on long exposures, or enhancements of low light shots, unless you have a bucket of liquid nitrogen handy like they do at observatories). But most people don't take pictures with large areas of black or in low light (unless they have a flash).
Anyway, the unfortunate end result is that film cameras will likely rise in price as they become less and less popular. I hope not...
The main thing I don't like about it is that Pentax isn't that big a brand, so accessories are harder to find.
Hmm. Pentax seems to be no problem to find up here (Victoria, Canada), but then again, one of the shops in town specialises in Pentax.
I'd say that "decent" is a relative term.
Oh I agree 100% there. You can definitely get a decent camera for anywhere upwards of $500 US. When I said decent, I decent (as in niiiice). If you want autofocus, a good metering system, aperture and exposure priority modes, you're going to be looking somewhere upwards of $900 US at least...
I use two cameras on a daily basis: a Nikon F100 and a Nikon FE. The F100 is loaded with a ton of options, but not as heavy as the F5 (and without a few of the F5s cool gizmos), and is great when I need high-quality pictures without in a hurry. On the other hand, I have a really nice Nikon FE from the early 80s that is completely manual, doesn't have particularly wonderful metering, and is exposure priority only. That camera is great, and indestructible, and cost $300 CDN (about $200 US) used but in mint condition.
For a lot of things, I much prefer the FE, but if I'm taking shots of birds and other animals, which a propensity for moving just when you've finished focusing a manual camera, I prefer the F100.
It won't save images without compression.
No CompactFlash (Memorystick is a SONY proprietary format == more expensive and harder to find than CF
Sony isn't well known for releasing specs either. So under Linux, you are limited to serial transfer.
Here is a review of the Sony vs an Olympus.
Here is an excellent website that has many in-depth reviews of digital cameras, including sample pictures:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/DIGCAM 01.HTM
They also review Kodak's Picture CD where you can take your standard print film to a regular film development house and for about $8-10 extra get back a CD with your pictures in addition to the prints. (resolution about 1.5K by 1K, but equivalent in quality to most 2Megapixel cameras)
There are many reasons for this, most of which I covered in a Wired article last December.
Eventually digital will catch up, and it is an at-least-theoretically-unnecessary-and-definitely- costly pain to develop and scan in slides and negatives. But digital still isn't there yet.
Some examples, from my personal photo site:
DMCA protest:
analog
digital
Supreme Court:
analog
digital
B&W portraits:
analog
digital
B&W scenes:
analog
digital
Images that would be very difficult to replicate in digital:
portrait
nude
I've had a lot of success with the MX-2900. Its a pretty nice camera in the mid-high end (that is, its not your standard party camera). 2.3 MP,
1800x1200; its not got the best of user interfaces, but that's for the non-geeks. For the geeks, its easy to use and has way too many features. I like manual control of all aspects of my 35mm camera, and this one has it.
It uses SmartMedia, which is cheap and cute. There is some basic support under linux for the camera, and the software that comes with it is lame. However, given that the images are typically 300 or 900+k, transfering over serial sucks. Get a smartmedia PC card adapter (assuming a laptop) and you can transfer at 20Mbits/sec, which is much nicer. And linux supports them very well - you just mount the card as a harddrive.
If you want a geek's camera, with gorgeous resolution and images, and like to play with the best... and are willing to spend the money (though cheaper than its comparable units), check out the 2900.
I've taken my Olympus 400Z down to 120' in the North Carolina waters with its polycarbonate housing. Works like a champ and got some great wreck photos and shark shots. No floods yet and the 400/450 is cheap enough that even if it does flood, I'm only 25% of the cost down to a used Nikonos.
Karen
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GAT d-- a? C++ UX+ L++ P++ E--- W+++$ N++ o-- !K !w O---- M++$ !V PS++
...there is always a class of people (i.e. professionals) who will always need _real_ film.
While some may not consider photojournalists "real" professionals, that is where I see professionals going completely to digital.
For photo journalists, it makes good sense with digital cameras: short processing time is important, pictures are anyhow uses in "low quality" (i.e. rasterized grossly) and the main layout work is done electronically anyways. Hence in that field it is "speed over quality" any day.
I don't even dare to think about what the Nikon/Kodak-D1 costs (without any lenses), while The best camera in the world is well within reach of the serious amateurs and pros, as are lenses and other acessories.
Most digital cameras do a decent job as replacement for compact cameras / APS-cameras, but they do mostly aim for the auto-focus, auto-everything situations - and are ill equiped for most anything else (very few have manual focus / exposure in a way that is easy to use, very few offer spot metering etc). Yes, I am a dedicated Zuikoholic and swear to manual focus and such. However should I go out and buy a digital camera, the one which comes closest to what I expect from a camera would be Olympus C3030 zoom. I would not replace any 35mm film camera with thatone, but it is imho the "least bad" of the affordable digital cameras. It has no good manual focus facilities, but it does feature spot metering and manual as well as auto exposure.
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."
There are some great review sites, like
http://www.imaging-resource.com/
I am getting a Nikon 990. It has nearly all the features I want (except voice) at a good price (899).
Using digicam to take picture wilder than 28mm or longer than 200mm is like using perl to write a OS. Nuff' Said. You are the guys who can't tell 128kps and 256kps mp3 anyway, so what's different. Saying digicam can replace 35mm film camera is like saying web can replace book/paper, which actually there are some moron believes in. Now I'm not talking about the 5k digital back that takes real Nikon, Canon lenses. I'm talking about the stuff Olympus and Kodak throw at you.
/_____\. .......|
I won't say these people concern about content over quality. Because you people are the same who drool over DVD. In this sense Rob is a hypocrite, because you are only worshipping the media/new technology, and don't really have a opinion and taste on the story/music/movie/game/picture.
btw Pentax really ought make a low end digital back, something in the range on 1k. I might be able to buy one. They can collarborate with Sony, which doesn't have a mount and lenses line. I don't think Sony will work with others ought.
CY
vvvvvvv../|__/|
...I../O,O....|
...I./
..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
A must have, though, is a card reader. This RADICALLY changes how you use your camera. I have the USB Cameramate from Microtech. If you're a Wintel user, it allows you to mount the card reader as lettered drives (e.g. G:\), then getting pictures off your card is just a matter of inserting the card, then browsing to the drive and copying pictures off like files. And it's quick since it's USB.
Sure, digital isn't going to kill film anytime soon- but you didn't throw away your gas-fired oven when you got a microwave, did you?
When the ultimate usage of your images is going to be digital, such as a photo galley posted to a web page, the simplicity of downloading your photos to your computer far exceeds any "convenience" of dropping off your film at a half hour developing stand, then scanning each photo. When you factor in the cost of film and development, especially if you don't intend to make prints of the images, a digital camera becomes a far simpler and cheaper solution.
Additionally, when you don't have to worry about "wasting" film, you're free to take many more photos than you would with a film camera. I shoot over 300 pictures a month on my Fuji MX-1700; my wife still has film in her camera from last Thanksgiving!
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
at least as far as digital photography goes is digital photography review
They have tons of camera reviews, specs, samples, etc., tho they are tilted a bit towards the high-end side.
if that first link doesn't work, try
http://photo.askey.net/
In any case, I'm not buying a newer camera until I can find one that has decent resolution and a fast cycle period. Has anybody bought a 2Mp or greater camera with a reasonably small amount of cycle time between photos?
For example, I'm a very amature photographer. In this respect, I'd say I'm similar to about 30 percent of the camera owners on the planet, the rest are either professional or advanced amatures, or don't use their cameras for more than memorabilia photographs.
What I do do is take a lot of really bad pictures; every once in a great while, though, one will turn out really well -- something I'd consider marketable, it is so good. When this happens, I want to be able to blow it up to a 14" or so print and maybe frame and hang it.
The problem is that the digital camera I have is great for snapshots, but if I happen to ever take that one special picture with it, I won't be able to blow it up.
I don't think that the niche I'm in is that small. I'm sure there are a very many people out there who are like me. A decent resolution digital camera, one that will let me have a photo printed at a larger size with no noticeable pixelization would be a godsend.
I just picked up a canon rebel 2000 (analog) and a 50mm/1.8 lens. I'll bet my camera can take higher resolution pictures than the D1 and in general 'better' quality pictures with good slide film. On the other hand the D1 can probably take bursts faster and probably has a faster/smarter AF. But my camera+lens weighs 17 ounces. And the whole thing costed about $350. Bwaahahaha.
On the other hand, photocd prices are nasty.
Ryan
I drew some holograms by hand. They were simple geometric shapes at approx 10 lines per inch. It actually worked quite well. Sort of like really low res white light holos.
Ryan
But I only care about MY computer, not those 9 others that don't have usb.
Ryan
> I have never, in my life, gotten a satisfactory sunset picture until this camera!
Let me guess, you just pointed at the sun/horizon and pushed the button, yes? You should try pointing at a different spot in the sky, one with a more 'average' brightness. Then push the button halfway to lock the metering, point at the sun, and click. That way you sunsets will contain more than just black silhouettes.
Ryan
What the FUCK is a 'zebrachrome?'
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a witty reference to Art Wolfe's exploits in photoshop. Really quite funny.
On the other hand, you might be referring to ilfochrome prints, previously known as cibachromes or just cibas.
Nothing beats a ciba for quality and long term stability (except maybe some BW stuff). It'll outlast your slides.
Ryan
> Very few individuals get prints larger than 6x4.
Nobody gets prints larger than 6x4. At least not the whole roll. But when I take that ONE photo that's really good, I want to make it big ansd hang it on the wall.
Ryan
For me, everything ends up digital anyway, and that's how it's all distributed. Film isn't an option for me, really, due to the price of film and its development.
For what I do - taking pictures, editing them, and putting them on the web, digital is good enough quality. (for published stuff tho, I'd probably only use "film" cameras. not taht any of my stuff would ever get published)
I currently don't have a digital camera, but I've fallen in love with Sony's Mavica line. They produce fairly high quality images, have the ability to take mpeg movies, and have very inexpensive storage - floppies. That makes for great transport and cross-platformability. (if that's a word)
Well, that's quite enough nonsense for now.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
siri
I own a Powershot S10. It's a VERY good camera. The only problem I find with it are....
1. Short battery life (get the rechargable pak option)
2. Very small (8mb) bundled CF (Compact Flash) card.
3. Minimal Zoom.
4. CF trap door feels chintzy for such an expensive camera.
Other than those 4 gripes, it's an excellent camera and takes superb quality pictures. It is truly a nice camera.
It's small, light, and takes snaps real easily without much fuss. It has a USB interface, so transferring pics is a joy. For those who have no USB, it also comes with a serial connection. It really is a full featured camera. The LCD also refreshes quite fast, and is very bright, and the colors on the LCD are indicative of the actual pic.
All in all, I say it's a good buy for the first time digi-cam user.
Visit http://hardwareflux.com
I agree. My friend has a mavica, and I really don't think it's that good.
For web uses or for e-mailing, it's fine, but it's rez is so low, that printing a pic is relatively out of the question. A superdisk mavica on the other hand would be VERY good!!
Visit http://hardwareflux.com
Overall I'm really impressed by overall image quallity. The flash seems a bit too strong, but can be controlled. It's way kewl to be able to take a ~20 .AVI movie - very clear too!
x -review/index.html
H TM
:-)
I don't wanna take up too much space telling you something others have already said better, so.....
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/casio/qv2000s
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/Q2K/Q2KA.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/qv2000.html
Here's a small page I set up with some samples of pictures and movies. Just took them all in a few minutes on a rainy day last week to show my Mom.
http://homepage.mac.com/mattmccabe/
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.
fnord.
Well. 6.1 megapixels through software-interpolation. The CCD is not really 6.1 megapixels. Also, the camera is based off of the Nikon N60 body. IMHO, an unfortunate choice. The N60 doesn't support many of the really novel features of the newer lenses coming out, like AFS and VR. Its' autofocus also leaves much room for improvement. A better choice to have built this camera on would have been the Nikon F100, N70, or N90s. It is, though, still cheaper than the Nikon D1 or a Kodak Hybrid.
fnord.
Digital cams are getting to be much less of a hassle. You take your pictures then plug the camera into USB or plug the media into a pccard slot. On Windows it just shows up as another drive, so drag and drop your pics.
A lot of web sites now do photo albums and make it easy to put your pics on the web. Yahoo! Photos even has an upload tool that lets you put titles and resize the images as you upload.
It is WAY easy now deal with digital pics, and I find I'm using my camera a lot more. I use the small Fuji one.. not sure the model number...
blog
I knew a guy once who made is own holograms. (Or should that be holographs? I don't know.) He claimed the film was ASA 1. I'd love to know where he got that stuff.
--
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
My Canon S20 makes pictures of 1,5 Mo average... so floppy disks pretty sucks. They are only good for very low-resolution cameras (which sucks)
Here's why :
- smallest size ever (which is important, since when pics don't cost anything you usually want to take a lot of them everywhere)
- 3,3 megapixels (2048x1536 pictures). (CCD) Size does matter - it is probably the #1 criteria
- 2x zoom (not very powerfull but usefull anyway)
- USB port (serial too for linux), because 1,5 MB/picture is slow to transfer
- Compactflash type II (accept the IBM mini hard-drive)
- special "panoramic" mode (unique feature of it)
- looks cool too (alimunium case)
I had a Coolpix 950 from Nikon before which was great too - for different reasons. Stay away from Sony digicams, the floppy disk sucks (quality digital imaging on a 1,44 (very slow) disk ? they must be kidding).
Who needs a printer ? You have very good online digital picture printing that are cheap :
:-)
- upload your pics
- pay with your card
- get your pictures in the mailbox 3 days later, on neat paper for less than 40 cents/print
With time these shops are going to get cheaper and better. The convenience of digital cams + the convenience of online pictures processing = killer app. No need to go to the photo shop anymore
"Modern" digicams all have cache memory to shorten cycle time. At highest res my Powershot S20 (3.3 megapixel) can take 4 pics in a row with about 1 to 2 seconds between each pics. My Coolpix 950 had also some buffering (don't remember the size). Ever since I sold my first camera (a DC260 from Kodak) I never had to wait between pictures (4 pics buffer is more than enough for most usage)
I quite don't agree :
- Last year digicams were already over 5% of all cameras sold ! Must be ever higher today. So it IS taking over regular camera, slowly but surely
- 3,3 megapixels digicam are available and make great pictures, once we get to 5 or 6 megapixel (in 2 or 3 years probably) it will be hard to sell 35 mm.
- Many digicam manufacturer use "analog" camera bodies and lenses too. Also having everything digitall makes some functions more easy to do on digicam rather than on 35mm, and many standard digital camera have functions you can only find on very expensive regular cameras
- digicam are so convenient that it has really the power to kill analog cameras. It is not just digital, it makes the way we take pictures really different and better. No need to wait to see the results, no need to pay for your pics (which means you can make more pictures and just keep the good ones instead of having one or two shots and pay thru the nose for pictures that are bad).
To me it is only a matter of 5 to 10 years to kill the analog cameras. There's no way back !
THe DC-215's an incredible value. Besides getting Kodak quality(I used plenty of higher up Kodak models at work), you can actually zoom in and out with it! This is something I've only noticed on much more expensive cameras. The CF reader(in the mill. edition) very much saves on battery life and it's less of a hassle to use.
If you have all the money in the world, get the AGFA 1680. This takes INCREDIBLE pictures.
Avoid the Polaroid PDC 700 at all costs. I returned mine. Picture quality was horrible.
We have one of these at work. I was surprised by the crystal-clear quality of the pictures. No funky artifacts, good color saturation, etc. The only downside is the funky European GUI and that there's no viewfinder.
Reasons... 1) Flopy disk media means that you never have to have a computer nearby to download pictures to. Making it great for vacations. 2) flopy disk media will work in any computer (almost) So weather you are a linux guy, mac, or windows...the same disk works for you. 3) Lots of models. Sony offers 5 or 6 different models, all with different features. 4) They're just cool :)
What I would like is an (affordable) digital camera that is SLR, and can use "standard" 35mm lens. I own a digital camera, but I would really love the ability to change the lens, set the focus, etc manually. Most digital cameras just focus into the middle of the shot. (Unfortunatly, a lot of the time, thats not where you want it focused...)
So can anyone recommend a Megapixel digital camera, that uses "standard" off the shelf 35mm SLR type lens, AND is affordable.. (I'll qualify that as $500 w/o lens...)
--Mark
Hey, some people might actually like a sorty grainy picture, for the same reasons that people choose black and white or physical manipulation of polaroids. Personally, I'd love to have a digicam that had a much higher resolution, but was only black and white.
Ah, I don't factor in the cost of the Printer, ink, paper, etc because I just display my photos on my computer.
Are you going to list the Computer as a cost? A digital camera is pretty much useless without one.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I believe there is more to this than the numbers.
I have some grainy photos for you to look at, taken with film. How can this be if film is so 'High res'?
I also have my prom pictures. Yes the top of my head is sheared off. This was taken by my mother and it would of been perfect if we had a Digicam. She would of looked at it and said 'Hey, this didn't turn out right.'
What's your obession with turning the Amazon rain forest into paper products? How about an LCD screen for showing photos and only printing out the ones that you want to give to other people?
If they have email you can send them all a copy, for free.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
That's odd. I just use the PCMIA slot on my laptop. Buy an adapter for the Compact flash and plug it in. Copies over the pictures as fast as the hard drive can handle it.
But if you MUST have universial acceptance, I would go for the Sony line that uses floppies.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
How much money do you got?
Hmm, still need more info?
Actually, I was going over all the digicams a while back. It seems that they are still working out the bugs in these new cameras.
Decide what you MUST have.
rec.photo.digital is a good place to ask if anyone has had problems with X camera.
http://www.pcphotoreview.com/
for those without access to newsgroups.
Then go to professional sites that review digicams like
http://photo.askey.net/
I ended up buying an Epson 750Z due to:
Fast updates on the LCD.
Only camera that had a 'Sun assist' on the LCD.
Not a single hardware/software complaint.
Came with Card, NIMh batteries and charger.
Optical sight and LCD sight.
Good reviews.
Good price. Got it on sale on Buy.com
I'm STILL happy with the camera even though it's 'only'
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
You can get a very good one if you take one of the Nikon coolpix models.
When money is not a question, you should although take a look at the Nikon D1, it makes amazing pictures and you can use all your old "mirror-reflex" Nikon compatible stuff.
But remember not to be to far away from the batt-charger...:-)
Yours
Michael
I actually went through this process about a week ago.
I eventually decided on getting a Nikon Coolpix 800. I also bought a 32mb compact flash card, usb cf reader, and a set of 4 NiMH rechargable batteries to go with it. Total cost: $600 (Camera: $425 -- 32mb CF: $75 -- Batteries: $33 -- CF Reader: $30).
The camera came with an 8mb card. That's enough to take about 24 pictures at normal quality. The 32mb card usually ends up taking between 60-80 pictures at that setting; the normal quality setting is more than adequite for good pictures. In the lowest res/quality mode, an excess of 300 pictures can be taken.
I don't think it'd be practicle to take a digital camera on a 2 week vacation yet unless you have a number of compact flash cards to bring with you. But for a one or two day event, or for a holiday gathering it should be more than adequate.
For just playing around with cameras, it's great. I've already taken over 700 pictures with mine in under a week; the thing has practically payed for itself when you think about how much money I would have spent on film/developing -- just so I could play with an idea or something.
Note on quality settings: the camera has a number of different quality settings. You have the normal mode which takes pictures at 1600x1200. In this mode you can save the pics as an uncompressed tiff (~5.5mb), has a high quality jpeg (~800k), as a normal quality jpeg (~400k), and as a low quality jpeg (~200k). You can also tell the camera to save the pictures at a resolution of 640x480 at the high, normal, and low quality settings (no tiff option).
Features: Has a 2x optical zoom. Takes pictures at a res of 1600x1200 (and it's SHARP too). You can screw on filters/attatchments to the lense. The LCD screen has several different modes to suit your "style" (ie: always on and focusing, always on, only show the picture you just took, never on). The thing has shudder speeds between 1/750s to 8s. It has 3 different metering options (all which are very useful). You can manually adjust the focus (has about 50 different steps). You can also adjust the exposure slightly.
End result: I love it. The camera's featureset sits on the border between an amateur camera and a profesional one. You can set it to automatic or set many of the features yourself. It takes AWESOME mixed light pictures, and the CCD doesn't bleed out (ie: you don't see a farking verticle line in the picture like you with with a cheap digital camera) if you point it at a bright object.
>If you are really interested in photography, why would you want to buy a digital camera? What
Convenience. The "instant gratification" factor. I can get photos for my web site faster with a digital camera. My kids and their friends like it when I occasionally photograph them and then print up the results for them to take home. I agree though, that there are plenty of advantages to a good 35mm setup. My old SLR is much more flexible in terms of available lenses and control over exposure than my digital camera is, and I don't doubt that the 35mm will take higher quality pictures too.
Jonathan
Pros:
*Very, very small - I carry it around in my pants pocket.
*High-resolution - max 1800x1200.
*Decent price - I got mine on the net for $550.
Cons:
*Only stores pics internally as JPEGs. This means that, even at highest quality, you still get a few compression artifacts.
*No built-in USB. USB transfer package costs extra.
*No optical zoom - no room for a zoom lens on this tiny thing.
I was torn between the Sony Cyberblahblah and the MX-2700. The Sony picture quality was higher, but the small form factor, convenience, and lower price of the 2700 won me over. I've been very happy with it.
erik
It's my second Powershot, the first was an A50, now in the hands of a grateful friend. I liked the A50 a lot, especially with a 48M CF card and the Canon rechargable battery kit (get this - 2CR5 cells get expensive, and you'll go through a lot. Who wants to turn that beautiful LCD off and save power?). It was rugged, easy to use and produced great pictures. My big complaint was that it was SLOW. I missed some good shots waiting for my camera to turn on, and reviewing images on the LCD was always an exercise in patience.
The S20 fixes the speed problem and adds some ease of use. Instead of just left and right buttons it has a 4-way gameboy style controller (but not so cheap looking). Flipping between images is almost instant now. Also if you turned the camera off while the LCD was switched on, the LCD will wake up when you next turn it on - the A50 required turning it on manually every time. The menus are better, and settings appear as icons in both LCDs, so there is no need to look away from the image to see if you remembered to turn macro on.
My method of getting the images from the camera is via a SanDisk USB CF reader - this is also highly recommended. I don't use the supplied cables or software, the software is in Japanese and I don't read that yet.
I don't think there is much between the top end in digital cameras right now. All cost too much, and many have good processing speeds with >3 Mpixels. For me it comes down to look and feel, especially since I don't use the supplied software or cables. The Powershot is rectangular, slighly gold in color, a solid-feeling metal construction and is easy to slip into a pocket, the lens retracts fully so there is nothing left sticking out. I have a leather pouch that used to belong to a Leica Minilux and it's almost a perfect fit for the camera + a spare CF (available from any Leica dealer; around $40). In comparison I find the shape of the Kodak a bit weird, and the Kyocera VERY weird, and the swivelly lens of the Coolpix looks hard to use and carry. The Camedia has a big lens sticking out and the new Sony is all lens and no body. All good cameras, but none as easy to just pick up and use as my Canon. I'd buy it again, for sure.
In short it's the Palm Pilot of digital cameras. Others may have more features, but it does what it was made to do simply and well.
HAS been duplicated in the digital world. Go check out some of the stuff Nikon has released. With the more advanced coolpix series, you can control ALL of those things INCLUDING lenses. There are also digital cameras that are shaped and look almost identical to SLR 35mm's that you are talking about in your post. In all of those you can change the lenses and adjust aperture, focus, exposure time etc. And with the camera I have (Nikon Coolpix 950) I have a 48 mb compact flash card that holds up to 120 VERY high quality pictures. Now I to am a photography buff (have 3 35mm SLR cameras myself) and for many years I have loved my 35mm SLR cameras. If you're going to use pictures for production reasons, film is DEFINATLY the way to go. But if you're going to have them for family reasons etc. I feel digital is the way to go. You can simply take your pictures, transfer them either through floppy, cable (USB, Serial), etc., then send them to your entire family via email. For those that want hard copies that won't last nearly as long, there are photo printers, sure they cost an arm and a leg, but the quality is very good, I should know my friend is a professional photographer for many large companies in DC (TRW, Raytheon, Washington Metro Transit Services, etc) and THEY use digital cameras. Digital photography technology is only getting better, and I can see it some day going beyond the film world.
End Of Line
I bought the Nikon Coolpix 950 several months ago and I love it! I used to use a couple of SLR 35mm Camera's but now I don't think I will EVER give up my digital. If you've ever used an all manual SLR 35mm camera, the Nikon Coolpix 950 gives you the ability to adjust everything on it, from manual focus, shutter speed, aperture, style of autofocus, flash types, and the list is practically endless. Some of my favorite features are the "Best Shot Selection" where it takes 10 pictures of the same thing then chooses which one is of higher quality. It uses the compact flash cards and there are tons of adapters, serial, usb, laptop. You can also buy seperate lenses for Telephoto, Wideangle, and Fisheye. Has support for external flashes also. If you're willing to shell out some heavy money on a high quality camera...this is it!
End Of Line
http://www.nikonusa.com/assets/coolpix950rebatefor m.pdf
? cycle_id=240545
well it saves youy $100 bucks. that can't be bad.
and, an extra plug.http://www.mobshop.com/washingtonpost/cycles
with promo code CWORKS to get 20% discount. coolpix 800 ain't bad either.
Although I'm pretty sure this camera doesn't work in Linux (yet!), it is a great deal for the cash. It costs about US $150 and takes 92 640x480 pics. Simple as can be. But wait, theres more! Plug the usb cable in the back and not only can you transfer the pics back to your Win98 box, it can be used as a Video Camera while plugged in! If you just want to take quick shots for e-mail or the web and do video conferencing and such, the Creative Webcam Go is the camera to have.
XeoMage
The Sony Cybershot cameras are unquestionably the best I've ever encountered. The DSC-F505 CEE has a 2.1Mpixel CCD (1600x1200), a superb lens, great optical zoom, and good upload capabilities. It's pricey, but worth every penny. Some information is here.
I recently picked up the Kodak DC280. It lists for $699, but I got it from Buy.com for $499. It has Compact Flash, Serial and USB. If you install the USB patches for the 2.2.14 kernel, it works with Linux. gPhoto supports it really well, and you can take the compact flash card, put it in a pcmcia adapter and pop it into your notebook to get the pictures that way. The resolution is something like 1700x1100 and the pictures look great.
I've just finished my first all-digital shoot and really like the results. When I compare my costs with those of my last analog shoot, it's no contest.
My last analog shoot had $ 15-20 in film costs, $35 in process and contact sheet costs, then $ 450.00 in 8x10 custom color and B&W prints ( ~ 20 ).
My latest studio session, all digital, is here. I was floored by the ability to review shots quickly on my laptop and discard the less-than-perfect ones.
These shots were taken in the Nikon 950's "Normal" mode and have been scaled down for the web. They wind up as 250-300K JPEGs. Nikon's "Fine" mode would produce images about 6-8 MB in size (TIFFs).
The Nikon CoolPix 9xx series offer a smokin' macro mode that biologists, naturalists and physicians have jumped on.
Essentially, it comes down to what you need. For family snapshots, get an easy-to-use cam like the Mavica or other point-and-shoot. If you're a serious amateur, get something that offers camera controls like: "shutter" speed, ISO, aperture, flash, manual focus, image quality, etc.
If you're a pro, get a Nikon D1 .
As others have mentioned, Digital Photography Review is a terrific resource if you're researching digicams. Lots of pros and serious amateurs post experiences, measured performance and images that'll assist in a decision about "which camera?".
Cheers,
shall
Ok, before i start I have two URLs for anyone intrested, first is Philip Greenspun's photo.net guide to digitals, albeit a bit outdated, has sound advise. :) :)
Second is the Altamira software. I have played with this, and it has a 20 use free demo. What it lets you do is use a fractal algorithm thingy to upsample lower resolution images to a high enough res to print, this is GREAT, it works well, and the results, while not as sharp as if you had started with hi-res, are decent enough for snapshots to show friends. And no, I dont work for them, but I wish I did
Now, on to my 2
Well, being a photographer I have to throw in my 2 (yes, a real photographer, I make money selling pictures)...
The world of digital is, intresting, to say the least. It's my feelings that digital has a _LONG_ way to go before it takes over film. In the pro photo market 35mm is only one type of film. Digital cameras today can take on 35mm for under $5000 and with a decent printer, and some software, yes, you too can be a digital photographer.
However my personal aditude towards it is that digiutal cameras are _GREAT_ for only one thing, websites. I currently own a Kodak DC215 and an Olympus D630 and both of them shoot high enough res to be used to print a fairly sharp 5x7 but nothing more. With the bigger cameras, the kodak modeks based on the Canon EOS system, and the nikon D1 you can get a decent 8x10 and those are in the $5000 range.
Most consumers will never have need for a snapshot biugger than 8x10, so I feel that these cameras "do the job" but I think they're best for just putting images on the web, and doing a photo archive of your life.
For the print/advertising world however, who often times deals with putting images on billboards, buses, and even buildings, a cheap digital camera doesn't cut it. Megavision and Lightwave Inc. both make high quality backs for medium and large format camneras that start around $20k and go up to a bit over $100k and these are getting to the point where they can be used for billboards and such, but most firms still prefer film. So...from this photographer, I say film is the way to go for at least another 10 years, and as an artform, I dont think film will go away in my life time. That's my 2 anjoy
Q. What's it take to get a story posted on
Recently acuired a Ricoh RDC-5300.... The picture quality is superb, there is no RGB "noise" like on a lot of cameras, it does not compress the pictures too much so they look very clear. It is very light-sensitive and can produce bright pictures with barely any light (works like an analog, basically by keeping the shutter open longer). Does not need TWAIN drivers - the built-in memory and the SmartMedia slots act like filesystems connected via USB.
Kodak DC-290 is also a great camera, but much more expensive...
--- sig moved for great justice.
Yes, the flash is slightly offset over the top of the lens (overlaps the right edge of the lens as you're looking through the camera). It's probably a little more noticeable in the wedding pictures because of the gamma correction I did on a lot of those shots (the rooms were really dark). I wonder if there's a post-processing app, or a filter for PSP, that I could use to clean that up.
However, even given that flaw, I think this is one of the better cameras out there. The other ones that I was looking at were the new 3MP cameras coming out, like the Powershot S20 and the new Fuji 4700. However, they weren't available yet, and the price I got on the DC290 was just too good.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Haven't tried it under Linux yet (my Linux box is at another location right now, and since I'm using PSP to clean up the pictures when needed, it's easier to pull them onto my Windoze box). However, I'd be surprised if the DC290 didn't work with something that worked with the 280. And really surprised if it was more difficult than a couple lines of code to make it work if it didn't. The protocol used isn't that dissimilar.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
The Kodak DC290 is one of the better digital cameras I've seen. Great picture quality, decent zoom, great controls. And the scripting language (Digita) really tops it off. With that you can load apps on your camera to help you take pictures. Like things to assist with panoramic shots, or exposure settings. I've had mine for a few weeks now, and I've taken plenty of pictures. Combined with Paint Shop Pro to clean up pictures that were too dark (because of distance), the pictures are better than anything I've taken with a film camera. And the USB cable makes it pretty quick to get the pictures onto the computer.
I ended up buying mine at Accompany (now MobShop). They regularly have them for $680 to $650. And I happened on a NYTimes promo code for them, and got 20% off that. So it ended up being slightly more than $500. For a $900 camera, that's not too bad.
If you'd like to see some pictures from my camera, check out the Photos section of my web site. It's still under construction, but the pictures taken of the Explorer, as well as the pictures from the wedding and the pictures of Akamai's servers, are all from my DC290. The only ones that I cleaned up in PSP were the wedding pictures (since they were in a dark room).
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
I recommend the Olympus C2020. I got one and I found that the picture quality is quite good. I got this one after starting on an Agfa C50 (I think that was the model). I have compared this one to the Agfa, the Olympus D450, and another smaller digital camera (was a friend's, can't recall the model).
The picture quality of the Olympus C2020 is better than the others I have tested and Battery life is decent (compared to other cameras).
I definately recommend the C2020 for any web photography. With the resolution available on the C2020, you will need to use GIMP or Photoshop to reduce the image sizes but I have found that the clarity is excellent and even reducing the image size down, there is little loss of quality (for the web).
The main reason you want to go for a higher quality/higher resolution image is that if you need to take a picture of something small, this is quite helpful as you can get in close for a detailed shot. For example, taking pictures of custom action figures (which are about 4 inches tall), this is useful if you want to be able to clearly show detail.
Printing pictures out, you definately need the higher quality images as they will be much clearer and much nicer. The lower end cameras are fine for things like group photos at a party or something else where you will want to share the pictures with your friends via the web but as far as printability goes, definately go 2 Megapixel or higher. Otherwise, you are left printing out small 2x3 images just to sharpen up the images.
If you are really interested in getting a digital camera, I recommend looking at a few digitial photography magazines and/or websites. Last I read, the C2000 (which the C2020 was based off of) was rated number one or two in picture quality in it's class (price/feature range). Sorry I don't have the URL's for any of the mag websites or other digital photography websites.
I also recommend a smartmedia reader or compact flash reader of some sort as these speed up your download time immensely. Downloads over a serial comnnection take forever. And, if you are using a digital camera that uses AA batteries, definately get rechargables. I actually recommend an extra set or two if you get extra media as batter life on digital cameras leaves a whole lot to be desired. You are usually fine for the memory you got (unless you got an IBM Microdrive), but if you are planning on getting 2 or 3 extra smartmedia/compact flash cards, you definately wanna consider an extra set of NiMH batteries.
Hope this helps!
I'd say this one is the best, but only because you can play MAME on it when you're not taking photos. If only more devices were pac-man compliant...
That green slime had it coming.
Yeah, resolution is important. That's an incremental technical issue. And quality lenses can be attached to the better digital cameras now. But exposure latitude (the ratio of complete black to complete white, you might say the "luminosity bandwidth") is what really "tells" your eyes if you are seeing a natural film photo or a digital capture.
In my eyes' experience (certain brands of) film excel at granting wide exposure latitude across the entire color spectrum, whereas CCDs are more cramped.
Actually the UK (there is more than just England here you know) is now on 220V and has been for a good five years or more.
Al.--
The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
There are places that you can "drop off" digital images and have them make the prints for you.
Quality on the latest megapixel digital cameras is acceptable, and I predict will soon be equivalent to "analog" film - for most practicle purposes. Yes, if you're talking about blowing up pictures to 8x10 size on a regular basis then you're not the typical comsumer and a low-priced digital will probably not suffice.
There are professional digital cameras that cost $25,000 that would probably aleviate any concerns you have.
Traditional cameras will always have their place. But, I think digital cameras are going to replace them for the vast majority of users who only want/need 4x6 or 5x7 prints.
Think of this:
Most people who are on Slashdot are computer people (i.e., their profession involves computers in one way or the other).
Most computer professionals are equiped with a laptop by their employer.
CompactFlash can be put in an adapter that fits in a standard PCMCIA slot.
Most computer professionals take their laptop on vacation with them.
If you have your laptop and the PCMCIA adapter (which comes with the Kodak camera) there's no need to puchase more digital film when you run out. Simply hook it up to your laptop and save the pictures you want on your hard drive.
If your laptop is short on space, it's relatively easy to backup large applications that you WON'T need on vacation to your Linux server at home before you head out, and restore them when you get back.
No other camera has the unique two part body of the Nikon Coolpix 9xx series.
It's amazingly useful! Imagine not having to hold the damn camera up in front of your face?! You can take shots of yourself, over your shoulder, up down, to the left, to the right, enourmously handy.
You can get a CoolPix 950 for under $500 after rebate since the CoolPix 990 has just come out (street price around $850).
I'd get a 950, and spend the rest on a a few sets of NIMh batteries (forget standard AA for any digital camera) with charger, and at least 128mb of CF. You did realize it comes with a pitiful 8mb card, right? (all the digital cameras come with pitiful storage out of the box). What would you rather have, a bunch of crummy lo-res jpegs taken on a 3mega pixel camera, or a bunch of super crisp tiffs (or low compression jpegs) taken with a 2mega pixel camera? Spend your money on storage and batteries.
The 990 is higher res, has a brighter display, and USB. The brighter display is for outdoors, but even with the brightest display, it's still pretty much hopeless in full sunlight, you need either a little hood, or use the viewfinder. The USB at first sounds great... then you realize that USB is around 120k bytes per second... Hmmm, so 120mb of pictures takes 1000 seconds to download, or over 15 minutes, Yikes!
What you want is the PCMCIA adapter, forget USB except for tiny little batches. With PCMCIA you can copy data off the card faster than your machine can write them to a harddrive. Besides, the drivers for CF PCMCIA are built into every os that supports PCMCIA, so you can plug it into any laptop and dump your photos, or even edit them directly from the CF.
Of course if you have the bucks, go buy a CoolPix 990 and a 160mb CF card!
(no the CoolPix 990 doesn't support CF Type II, so it won't work with the IBM Microdrive, but then I think 160mb is just fine, and isn't the harddrive a LOT slower and use more power than CF?)
By far the best review site is Steve Digicams
http://www.steves-digicams.com
We picked up a Canon S10 just before Christmas and I'd recommend it highly. I've been frankly astonished by the quality of the images, having worked with several other digital cameras over the past couple of years. Printing on an Epson 740 on glossy paper is as good or better than photos you get from a regular photo-finishing place. True, it doesn't have interchangeable lenses and stuff but it's small enough to put in your shirt pocket! Here's a good review.
If you want an easy way to share photos with friends/family over the net, then digital is the obvious choice. Check photo.net. Phil has done a great job with that site. Cameras like the Canon Powershot S10/S20 are really good for that purpose.
However, if you intend on taking photos to print out, I would say get a film camera. I don't know if it is any cheaper, but unless you are using top-of the line archival quality ink, the photos printed from *any* inkjet printer will fade rapidly...and even then, film is still probably better (for now). expect a film print to stand up much more than an inkjet print..
I disagree to your disagreement, this is quite like the whole "Will the web destroy print" argument. Neither will destroy or negate the other. Digital cameras will never be able to produce the same results that regular cameras do with such things as overexposure (ever seen those night-time pictures of cities where the cars are just big red and white lines) and photography hase a history about it. If anything, I think the consumer market will buy digitals over normal cams, but for the professional -- there is nothing like the original. Maybe analogs will become obsolete (sp?) over the course of time, but with that process, many of the smaller things will be lost. Negatives have varying resolutions, you can blow-up or reduce them with little or no detail problems, whereas digital images can only be reduced in size. You can re-print negatives any time you'd like, have it developed poster sized or wallet sized, with a digital camera its just that single source image. Sure photoshop (which I am an expert in) has become the digital darkroom, but I would trust and respect my oldie cam more than my digital. Just my $0.02.
I haven't tried it - I've got a $99 Toshiba I'll comment on separately.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'll second this... I've had my 800 for a couple of months now and have been VERY happy with its performance, battery life, everything. However, as soon as I have the cash I'm upgrading to the 990... the extra resolution is nice, but I want aperture-priority and shutter-priority options.
Speaking of options, the coolest accessory I've picked up is this tiny tripod from REI... in its folded state it looks like a fat tent stake, and you can use the velcro wrap to attach it to anything cylindrical--4x4 post, stair railing, stop sign.
I have a kodak DC 215 and im QUITE ipressed with it
i got the special millenium edition, which coeted a bit more, and you cant git anymore. the only diff is that it comes with an 8mg CF card instead of a 4, and it has a cool shiny glodlike case.
but the normal DC-215 is a GREAT bargain, its a great camera for $300. good resolution, good loooking images, and its a pleasure to use. i would recoment this camera like a crazy mofo.
and the higher end kodaks like the DC-240 are even nicer, with bigger optical zooms and such
but for its price this camera is an incredible deal
-Sham
OK, summarizing the replies:
A cheap ($300) digital camera is (almost) as good as a cheap ($50) analog camera. A professional ($25000) digital camera is (almost) as good as a professional ($1500) analog camera. I think that proves my point. The price-performance just isn't there yet. And you can get a set of prints made from your memory stick or floppy just as you can from your 35, you just might have to drive a little farther and pay a little more.
Of course the consumables are higher for analog cameras--especially if your end goal is images on the computer.
This especially true in the middle range, where someone's going to be spending either $800 for an analog camera or $1000 for a digital camera, and the savings in film will make a huge difference.
But the kind of person who buys a FunShot disposable is not going to switch to digitals until the $5 digital disposable that the next poster mentioned is available. And the kind of person who takes pictures that are meant to be used as magazine covers isn't going to switch to digital until they're as good, as flexible, and much cheaper than $25,000.
Eventually, digital cameras will provide better price-performance than anything in the analog realm, and the majority of people will switch. Of course even then, traditional cameras will have their place. However, its place will be a niche.
Digital video may replace 1" video (much less VHS), but people will always keep using film; newer digital audio formats may eliminate CDs and MDs and DATs, but records will always be there. And in the future, traditional cameras will occupy a similar niche to film and vinyl.
no
"Second, traditional cameras, are likely to be just as fragile as a digital camera, except that they have more moving parts (shutter screens, rollers, etc.) that can seize up over time. I certainly wouldn't take this into consideration when buying a camera though -- unless I knew it was going to be handled rough."
Digital cameras certain _can_ be made less fragile than traditional cameras, and some models are. But the vast majority of cheap and midrange digitals out there are easier to break than cheap and midrange traditional cameras, and cost more to replace.
One point you didn't bring up in support of your point, by the way: "Most shops will allow you to shoot a roll (or, I guess, a flash card?) if you give them collateral, or know them well. If not, ask to shoot a few in the store." In the case of digital cameras, this doesn't cost them, or you, a dime. You can try out every digital camera in the store without having to buy 100 rolls of film. This gives the truly discerning consumer a lot more power.
Anyway, my conclusion is the same: One day, digital cameras will push traditional cameras into a niche, but not yet.
no
Don't fret; I'm guessing things will go the same way they've gone in other fields: a fire-sale period, a drought, and then a new equilibrium that's not far from the original.
Look at turntables. After a couple of years of vinyl being declared "dead," you could find turntables for a third of their old price, record pressing equipment for a fifth--and records that were marked at $10 were in the 50 cent bin. DJ's had a field day.
Then came the backlash. Vinyl was cool. Suddenly, the only turntables being manufactured were high-end DJ decks, ultra-high-end audiophile equipment, and ultra-low-end throwaway trash, and people were selling used Technics 1200's for more than list price. The end result? A dozen new companies got into the business. The top-end models are still slightly more expensive than they were a decade ago, but there are decent turntables available for $100-$150, far better than anything in that price range in the old days. And where there used to be only one decent cartridge for under $50, there are now dozens of options. Sometimes the free market actually works....
Of course in the case of turntables, consumables are much less of an issue--a cartridge lasts a lot longer than a roll of film. So when the crash comes, stock up on film. But don't worry about the cameras and lenses.
no
Well, there are still reasons for traditional cameras.
First, they're cheaper, and less fragile. Do you want to bring your $600 toy into the pit at an Atari Teenage Riot show, or would you rather carry a disposable camera?
Second, if your ultimate goal is to have prints to keep around, it's cheaper to develop a roll of film than the print out a digital image on a photo printer (with photo paper and ink). Plus, while it takes about the same amount of time, sometimes it's more convenient to just drop off the film, get lunch, and come back 23 minutes later than to spend that 23 minutes over your computer.
Third, there's quality. I'm not going to go into the old argument of the theoretical quality of analog vs. digital (records vs. CDs, for example), because they're mostly biased BS. But anyone can look at a picture taken with a consumer digital camera and a picture taken with an equivalent-priced analog camera and see the difference. And when you factor in interpolated digital zoom vs. optical zoom (since most digital cameras only do a small amount of optical zoom, whereas for the same price you could buy a good traditional camera and any zoom lens you want), it's even more dramatic.
I'm not saying that digital cameras don't have their place. But for the time being, traditional cameras have their place, too.
no
I have had and used my Olympus D-450Z Digital Camera since about Christimas of last year and I love it! It has many advantages over other cameras and such.
First of all, it's shaped like a normal camera! The front slides open to reveal the lens (similar to Olympus film cameras), and it's not big and bulky, like the floppy disk kind (or even some memory stick ones I've seen).
The quality on these cameras is nothing to laugh about either! Super-High-Quality stores the images as 1280x960 TrueColor JPEGs. High-Quality stores them at 1280x960 (24bit I think, maybe 16) JPEGs. The lowest quality setting stores them at 640x480.
Included with the camera is an 8mb smartmedia card. At SHQ, it stores 12 images, at HQ, it stores 36, and at LQ, it stores 118! That's just 8mb though. I believe that they sell up to 64.
I love my little screen also, because in an hour lets say I take 20 HQ pictures. I can scroll through them quickly and delete everything I don't want or came out blurry for some reason. I can get the pics on my computer four different ways, the first (and slowest) is with a serial cable. The camera also has a RCA video out on it, so I can show my pictures in a slide show on a tv. I can get a USB device that reads the smartmedia super-duper fast, but the best thing I think is a little floppy disk adapter that I can put the smartmedia in. That way, it can go onto ANY computer.
I know that battery power is something people always complain about, especially if they like to use the digital display a lot. I don't blame them! The Olympus D-450Z takes four AA batteries. Yeah, on normal batteries it doesn't last me a week, but I found these energizer lithium batteries at the hardware store (I think I saw them at the shack also), and four of those lasted my two months, running the flash and the screen all the time! wow!
Maybe I'm biased, but I've used several cameras and if I had the choice I'd stick with the Olympus brand. Honestly, I haven't seen any higher quality pictures than with it.
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I like the Pro's image better.
Keep in mind that digital cameras are generally better, if you are going to keep the image in the digital domain (ie, viewed on monitors.)
For print images, there isn't a printer yet that can truly match a good print film. At least not a printer that mortals can afford.
The Pro's image I'm sure looked much better on the film rather than the scanned image, it looks like a bad scanning job.
Here's where the expensive equipment shows through... I don't know a whole lot about photography, but the pro photographer really knows how to use depth of field. In the digital shot, can you look at it and tell instantly "what is this a picture of?" Well, the player is just as sharp as the spectators in the stands. It's all kinda busy and running together, you really can't tell what the subject of the image is, other than what's closest to the center of the image. The pro shot clearly says "the player is the thing." And the exposure is such that you can see the expression on his face, whereas the digital shot just kind of blacks it out (autoexposure shows its ugly side).
In other words, the digital shot is just as good as any shot that I could take with a disposable 35mm camera with a tiny lens.
Now clearly there are areas where digital cameras will overtake, such as press (I don't think National Geographic will go to digital anytime soon though), anybody taking snapshots, evidence documenting, etc. Just keep in mind that there are inherent advantages to analog film, just as there are inherent advantages to the digital media.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I've played with several different brands/models of camera, and the one uniting factor that I found is that they will all run a standard set of batteries flat in no time at all. This is exacerbated if you use the LCD screen to aim for long periods of time, or if you need the flash on every shot. I finally ended up with a Kodak DC215 (good quality, cheap deal ) and I am right now examining what battery options I have.. because this sucker will kill a set of 4 alkaline AAs in ten pictures or less.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
I really did have my eye on the Powershot S10 from Canon. It had a 2.1 MP resolution, with a wide array of features that I think I would use...However, I am still waiting for the S20 to drive the price of the S10 down a bit... ARGH.
In any case, I found Megapixel to be an invaluable resource when doing comparisons. They seem to have it together.
Advice I can offer (that I was offered during my search):
I could go on, but you're likely to find a lot of useful advice from more experienced photographers; or those with a recent purchase.
-- Greg
i am a little late posting to this topic but i already had something typed up from when i picked a digicam last weekend, so i will copy and paste it here for anyone interested.
wanted a good-for-all-occassion portable digicam. i narrowed it down to the nikon 950 and olympus c2020z (considered the tiny canon s10, but it's flash is too weak, battery life is poor, and is only 2x zoom).
so, here are my cp950 vs c2020z notes:
*****************************************
both
pros
- use aa nimh batteries
- good battery life
- 1600x1200
- good image quality (sharpness, color, etc...)
- reasonably quick cycle and lag times
- 3x zoom
- manual and auto controls
- continuous shooting modes
cons
- chromatic aberration (2020z worse than 950)
- removable lense cape (vs built in cover)
advantage 950
- amazing macro ability. like low power microsope. 2020 only focuses to 8".
- has solid metal case
- has bag
- uses compact flash (but no cf2 support). 2020 uses smartmedia (up to 64mb)
- swivel design useful in many situations
- chromatic aberration not as bad on 950 as on 2020
- 2020 lense cap prevents lense from extending if left on (bad for camera?)
advantage 2020
- smaller and lighter
- f2.0/f2.8 (vs f2.6/4.0 on 950)
- comes with remote
- comes with 4 aa nimh and charger
- panoramic function (requires olympus media)
- better flash (950 has redeye problem)
- can record quicktime movies
- has distance readout for manual focus
- battery life *slightly* better
- cheaper: $476 vs $557 (950 = $657-$100 rebate... also need to add $40 for batteries/charger = $597)
- 2020 in-stock at above price
cf vs sm
- cf has onboard controller (devices can read future releases. sm requires firmware update for future releases)
- sm is more fragile
- sm is smaller (though both are tiny)
- sm takes less power for writing
- sm is faster for writing
*****************************************
i like cf a *little* better, but i'm somewhat indifferent to it since both have pros & cons. it came down to size/weight and speed of lense vs macro and swivel. if the 950 had been the same price, i might've gone with it instead. but the difference in price made the choice easier.
i ordered an olympus c2020z sunday and got it wednesday. have taken ~ a hundred shots and a few movies so far... i am quite happy with it.
check out these sites for reviews:
www.steves-reviews.com
www.imaging-resource.com
Being able to instantly emailing the picture to another person has huuuuge advantages for a lot of users.
Does such a thing exist?
___
When we made the purchasing decision to get these camera, we counted the number of computers in our office that needed to view and/or distribute the pictures to customers. Then we counted the number of computers *at our customers facility* that would be able to read the images and the choice became clear.
Also, being able to choose the distribution method has proven to be a huge plus. Got email? fine, I'll attach them. Got a fax machine? the fax gateway can get the, somewhat crappy, image to you. Network problems? at a trade show? No email? fine, I'll FedEx the disks.
___
Couple that with the fact that floppies are *almost* free, and you've got an open and affordable format to make sure every computer can view the image. In recent years, the ability to read the jpg format has been increased since almost every computer has at least a web browser.
With every camera manufacturer offering their own proprietary storage media, remember that your images, like undeveloped film, are just bits untill a computer can read them.
___
The 2020 is great, the quality is amazing, it's easy to use and nimh batteries last for ages!
I've had mine about two weeks and have no complaints!
ed
-- You ain't seen me, right?
Check out the bajillion discussions on just this topic by looking it up on deja.com in rec.photo.digital.
This gets hashed out every few weeks on that group.
The FAQ can be found at www.crosswinds.net/~rpdfaq
I somewhat agree with you.
For the average consumer, who just wants a simple camera, that works well and doesn't take much to use it, but still wants to be guaranteed good photos, get a normal "film camera".
Although, if your willing to invest time and money in a digital camera, that's high enough quality, then i'd say go for it. You'd need a high quality printer and paper too though, which may cost you a lot also.
Most people say the benefit of having a digital camera is not having to go to the store to have your pictures processed. Altough, with all the work you have to do, the one hour photo might be easier. Its all a matter of opinoin.
I recently shopped for one, and purchased one after doing a ton of reading and comparing online.
But, there are so many out there with different trade offs, it all depends on what's important to you.
I would really recommend starting by going to a site like Active Buyer's Guide
which will allow you to give it preferences, and it will suggest cameras and allow you to compare several ones side by side.
Then, start reading around about it. For some good expert evaluations, try:
Megapixel
Imaging Resource
Steve's Digicams
For some generally useful user reviews, check out:
PC Photo Review
Good Luck!
I have been using the MX-2900 for about 6 months and can not complain. Resolution and clarity is among the best that I have seen from Mega Pixel cameras. The Slow serial interface sucks but ensures compatibility for Linux, it is supported in GPhoto, and Windows NT 4.0. If you insist on USB, digital film readers are fairly inexpensive and allows you to share media with family and friends. God luck to you
Interesting. The problem is that there are so many variables that go into the process; the quality of the lenses, the film, the developing and of course, the scanner.
When I compared scanning a 4x6 print from an SLR camera at 300 dpi and at 600 dpi, I couldn't see any more detail. I'm sure using pro equipment and pro film you can get considerably higher detail than my stuff.
--
Try scanning some 35mm prints sometime. You run out of resolution at about 300 dpi. They are not as high as you think they are. I've been doing some experiments, and I was surprised by how low resolution 35mm is, even with a high-quality SLR camera with low-speed film.
--
Dude, a negative is like 1 inch wide. I'm scanning a 4x6 inch print, which at 300 dpi corresponds to 1200x1800. Allowing that a bit of resolution is lost by transfering to a print, we're saying the same thing: 2000dpi * 1 inch ~= 300 dpi * 6 inches.
The point is that 35mm is not 16000 dots across.
--
If what you're claiming were true than the maximum obtainable picture from a film would be about 400pixels wide and everything else that those 2000dpi-film scanners do could be accomplished with interpolation.. I don't think so.
PoC
One thing I HAVE to say about the D340-R is that if you go to the Image menu in the CAMEDIA Master software that comes with it, there's an "Instant Fix" option available when an image is loaded. This will make 29 out of 30 photos look MUCH better (brighter, crisper, sharper).
If I could find a similar waterproof digital P&S, I might consider buying it. Does anyone know if these exist (for a reasonable price)?
First thing you must always remember is that every camera is a tradeoff - you get something and lose something. There isn't any "best camera for this money", but you must balance between features. Some tradeoffs are even theoretical - if you put more pixels in a CCD, the less light each pixel will receive and you get poor low-light capability and lots of noise. Cameras with big zooms generally have little pixels and poor sensitivity (big F-number; F2.0 is very good, F6.0 or more is rather bad).
I decided to take Casio QV-3000. It is definitely a very good value/money, especially in USA with the 340MB Microdrive bundle. I ordered mine from Germany for about 800 euro, without the drive (they don't offer the bundle here). The Microdrive costs about 450 euro separately.
QV-3000 has very bright (sensitive) optics - F2.0. The optical zoom is 3x (about 35mm-105mm). Resolution 3.34Mpixels (about 2048x1550). Very long exposure times (up to 60s), good manual controls for exposure and focus. Capability for Microdrive. Eats AA-sized NiMH batteries (they are cheap so you can buy a lot of them). Good connections (USB, RS-232, IrDA-TranP, Video). Plus some other nice features. Tradeoffs are lack of external flash connection, slow pic-to-pic-time (3-6sec), a bit weight, and some minor things.
Canon Powershot S20, Nikon Coolpix 990, and the Olumpys C-2500 and C-3030 are very competitive in the same resolution group. They have perhaps slightly more clear pictures and better colors, but that varies greatly on conditions, and often QV-3000 is much better. QV-3000 also a bit cheaper than the competitors, at least in Europe. But, as I've emphasized, it's always a tradeoff.
My QV-3000 will arrive in mail next week. I hope it turns to be *nice*.
Look at: www.imaging-resource.com, www.steves-digicams.com, www.dpreview.com
I just came back from a trip to London where I took very nearly 1000 digital camera images with my fuji mx-700. My only complaints are boot time and smartcard write time. I think the newer versions improved this. I took 5 32mb cards on top of my 2 8mb cards and 1 2mb card. I also took 3 batteries. I bought a charger/powersupply while I was there and after that I had no problems. It's a great camera. I use it all the time and have stopped using my 35mm, because most of my shots are crappy anyway, and this way I can cut and crop and print whatever I want. All the pictures I took were 1280x1024. I came home with 150 shots I still could have taken. The cost per picture for the 5 32mb cards was about 2 cents less than taking actual photos and having them developed. But the cards can be reused over and over again. (plus it was an upfront cost because I had to pay my taxes the day after I got back which would have hampered developing film) Unless you are doing incredibly large prints, a digital camera is the way to go. I use it mostly for collecting images for use in paintings and just to record things happening around me (this morning it was bubble blowing) I was snap happy and took about 40 images. that's almost 2 rolls of film. The cost of doing this was nothing, because it's all reuse. Just in case you do want large prints, I recommend genuine fractal. It's a great bit of software for large format printing. I don't ever think about how much it costs to take a picture anymore, or if I run out of film, I just snap away. And it fits in my pocket so I literally can take it anywhere without anyone knowing I have it. Oh, and since my Mom doesn't have internet access (all my images are posted at 166.70.34.67/london/ ) it has the option to output video. I'll definitely buy another one. -calvin ps. My underwater camera is not digital, so I guess I'm not completely digital (yet)
Having used a Mavica myself, I agree that its awsome. Seems like most reviews tend to denigrate it. I guess the thing just evokes strong emotions.
But besides the convenience of using floppy disks, you also don't have to go through the software hassle that most other cameras put you through. Simplicty is a definite advantage, and the movie option is cool. Personally, though, I'm waiting till they develop a digital camera that accepts zip disks. Anyone know if such a beast exists?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I did a lot of research when buying my camera, and found this to be the best bang for the buck, at $500.
:)
you need to make sure that you get OPTICAL zoom because digital is the same as pulling it into photoshop and making it bigger.
This camera also can record small movies (about 30-90 seconds) and has support for the ibm microdrive, which can store 350 meg on it.
It also has a lot of control over the image, unlike most of the cheaper cameras.
-Wiglaf
- Wiglaf [IoStream Productions]
- Wiglaf [IoStream Productions]
You do have some good points aout paying for the pics, getting the new digital functions, and more.
Digitals are great for snapshots, web-related stuff, and the like, but most individuals that have a serious interest in photography will own a digital, plus one or more "film" cameras.
It seems that the digital camera is an add-on- you don't replace a good camera with a digital, you simply use both.
It's amazing how good the quality of old-fashioned film cameras is. The level of control over your subject through aperture, focus, lenses, exposure time, film usage, and more hasn't been duplicated in the digital world. The quality of 35mm has not been matched in the digital space yet, not to mention medium format!
I agree the Toshiba PDR M-4 is a great camera, the pictures are very crisp due to its 2.1 megapixels. Battery time is excellent. And for the price I couldn't pass it up, I got mine for $300 =) w/ 8mb. Target had the wrong price in their ad and sold it to me for the quoted price. The only thing I wish it did have was an optical zoom. The casing is also very solid compared to many of the cameras out there that have a flimsy/cheep feeling. I give this camera 9/10.
The images are too soft to do "photography" with, but they're OK for making web content.
Eats batteries, but then don't they all.
they are a lot more fun. they dont take the fun out of photographhy. part of photography is the entire experience. take the pictures. adjusting the f-stops and exposure times, smelling the bitter smell of developing chemicals, and being in the darkroom are what make photography what it is. dont get me wrong: i love the new technologies that are changing everyday, but some things dont need to change. like photograpy. to me, all the digital stuff totally ruins the entire expierence of taking your own pictures.
The newer digital Handycams have a jack in the camera that connects to your parallel or serial port. You can then transfer the images from the camera to your computer without any special capture board.
There are two settings for the picture quality (High and Low) so you can take pictures with slightly higher resolution than the video captures. I'm not sure of the [resolution] numbers, but I'm betting that you won't get the quality you can expect from the higher-end digital cameras.
The other advantage I can think of is storage space - a standard 8mm tape fits an hour of digital information (each picture takes approximately seven seconds on tape; there's also a rewritable memory chip that you can store the pictures on for fast retreival).
And, if you get bored with taking pictures, you can always go film stuff.
Just something to ponder.
Cheers,
Bart
It isn't often that a topic comes up on /. that pertains to my area of expertise so I feel compelled to reply. The digital photography market is incredibly exciting lately. Digital cameras outsold SLRs in 1999, which many people thought wouldn't happen for a while. New models come out every couple of months and the image quality in some models has already surpassed most peoples expectations. Here are a few guidelines that I suggest to people buying their first digital camera.
The most important question...
Are you planning on printing the images?
If so, I don't suggest any camera below 2 megapixels. Most 2MP cameras can print up to 8x10 inches at photographic quality. These are the ones that can replace your point and shoot camera. If you aren't planning on printing the images, a 1.3MP camera will fit your needs and will look awesome on your 72dpi monitor.
What brand should you purchase?
I really don't like the Sony cameras because they take Sony's proprietary technology, the memory stick. (remember consumer level betamax?) The true standards for digital camera memory are the Compactflash card and the Smartmedia card. Smartmedia is the same memory type that most of the new portable MP3 players use. Olympus has some of the most advanced cameras available. The C2500L is an SLR (single lens reflex) which means that you are actually looking through the lens. Point and shoot style cameras can't compare since they use focusing zones rather than a continuous focus range. The C2500L also has some of the best glass ever used in it's lens. The lens on the C2500L has 100 lines of resolution even on the edges (Read as EXTREMELY SHARP). The Photographic Marketing Association voted the C2500L as digital camera of the year for 1999. Olympus also has point and shoot style cameras ranging from about $300 on up. Their C3030 is the current hot item with 3.3MP chip and video with sound capability. If you just want to e-mail some images to your family or post on auction sites, the D360L is probably a good choice for you. Nikon just came out with their Coolpix 990 which has 3.3MP and uses the Nikon Matrix Metering system (probably the most advanced metering system in the world) Since the 990 came out, you can pick up their 2.1MP Coolpix 950 for around $700. Both of these Nikon models work with their professional flash system so if you want to control your lighting, these are good choices. Canon's cameras, the S10 and S20, both take the IBM microdrives so they can have up to 340MB of memory. This is great if you plan on travelling with your camera and don't want to upload your images at the end of each day.
So my answer to, "what is the best digital camera?" is... There is no best digital camera. Only what is best for your needs and budget. I personally own the Olympus C2500L. My reasoning is that I want it to be my primary camera and it's probably the best thing available for under $4000.
There are so many more issues to discuss, but I think this is a good start.
Hope this has been helpful!
Lessee... 250 lines/mm * 25.4mm/in. == 6350 lines/in.
Take 'lines' to be 'dots' and y ou have 6350dpi....
Kodak T-Max 400 can resolve a max of 125 lines/mm at 400 ASA in T-Max RS developer. How do these compare to DPI...I don't know.
That's in the neighborhood of 3000dpi, taking the above calc as a reference.
It's not accurate to compare.
With some careful consideration, you can compare them. Just keep in mind the bigger picture. (ie. don't let the media soundbyte you on it) So the previous post was in the neighborhood; just keep in mind which neighborhood.
Your best bet is going to be to choose a camera from a company who started in film. The often understand how important optics are. PC makers just pack features in and who cares about color accuracy or image clarity.
I own a Canon A50Zoom and LOVE IT. I have worked extensivly with both Olympus (GREAT) and Casio (Awful) cameras in the past and would choose a Cannon again.
BTW: If you are looking for a good printer check out the HP PhotoSmart P1000. It prints images nice enough to frame and is far more film like than a color laser. It also has a compact flash AND smartmedia slot which it can print directly from or can be used to download the images to you pc.
Have you seen what a modern Epson or HP color printer output looks like, when the print is done on photo quality paper from a scanned (not digital camera) picture? I guess not, because I worked in a photo lab for five years, and the quality is indistinguishable from that of an 8 X 10 real honest-to-goodness chemical process photo lab print. My HP 722c has gorgeous photo quality output, but not when I print from a digital camera...
Now, the lifespan of said prints is a different story...*sigh*
Free music from Jack Merlot.
For those of us with limited camera experience, however, who would normally bring our film to Ritz Camera or Walgreens or 1-Hour Photos 'r Us, the output from many color printers these days rivals what we've grown to expect from normal, everyday 8X10s from normal, everyday 35mm cameras. That's all I was trying to say in my first comment.
I can't take professional pictures. No matter *how* much money I spend on a camera or film, I am just never going to be a great photographer, because I don't have the time, patience, natural gift, or years experience. (By the way, that's supposed to be a compliment to anyone who actually does know photography. Good work! =P)
However, I can learn to use a digital camera in a couple hours, and if I can import a picture into my computer I can usually get the Gimp or Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or Onlinephotolab.com to turn it into something better than I ever could have done with a film camera, Zebra or not. =P
And my printer, well, it does that type of work justice. And then some.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
I was about to buy the Nikon CoolPix 950, but the 990 came out, and it is far better (more resolution, USB connection and more).
That said, the 950 is a bargain these days with 100$US rebate (for those in the USA, here in Saudi Arabia, it just hit the shelf for 4,700 SR ~ 1,250$US for the older 950!).
The Sony DSC-F505 is also a super camera, with perhaps the best lens (Carl Zeiss) you can get for a ~ 1,000$ price range.
You can read extensive reviews of all the above at Phil Askey's wonderful Digital Photography Review web site. You will find a photo gallery of sample pictures for each camera.
Another way of doing it, if you also want a camcorder, is to get one of the new Digital Video camcorder (or Sony's Digital8 format) and a FireWire/IEEE1364 card. The quality is lower than the Nikon above, but still acceptable for most web publishing.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Sorry, but the newer pro-sumer digital cameras (e.g. Nikon CoolPix 990 and Sony DSC-F505) are very advanced and flexible in terms of exposure control, and all the things you talk about.
Also the web is much more prevalent these days than 3 years ago.
I used to own high end 35mm SLRs, and enjoyed it (I used to own a "pro" Nikon F2A, then a Minolta Maxxum), and I am thinking of doing only digital now. There are no processing cost, no time to wait, can retouche and manipulate as much as I like, can e-mail/publish on web, ...etc.
Maybe they will not totally replace file now, but they will eventually (soon!)
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
No one has mentioned this at all so far, and it has been overnight (overhere!).
A company called Silicon Film makes a digital back that fits many pro-ish SLRs. The resolution is not the best, but think about all the lenses and features that you can use on an SLR!
They sell an all in one package that consists of he back, a storage "container" and something that you can download the images to, while you are on the go! Very interesting.
Now make it the same resolution as the Nikon CoolPix 990 and you have a winner!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Both smartmedia and Compactflash have multiple ways of transferring photos. They can both be put into pcmcia adapters and usb readers (for desktops. Also, every camera comes with some kind of cable connection between it and the computer (either serial (PC/Mac or both) or USB). Between these three methods (I have used them all) you really don't need a floppy. Besides, doesn't anybody remember how unreliable and slow floppy disks are? How many times have we all had floppy disks fail on us? Face it: floppy disks are an outdated technology. Best stick with newer-and faster-technology that can work with nearly any computer, and arguably any computer that you'd actually want to do photo work on. The whole floppy disk argument is moot, IMHO.
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.
I read an article on the same camera the other day. I want that camera so bad. This thing can take 1500 pictures because it uses the SuperDisk which holds 120 megabytes. The camera is also an external drive for your computer through an USB interface. So just hook it up and transfer over the files. Also incase you cant afford a new disk or something it will read the good ol 1.44 floppies as well. It will do 1280x960 resolution. This thing will do a crapload more stuff including very very short videos made with Quicktime and still images that have 5 sec audio. Take a look at everything it will do on the website.
I paid 2.63 to develop and print 24exp of 35mm at Sams Club. 12 rolls of 24exp 35mm film (fuji) cost about $4 after the $8 fuji rebate.
So I pay, what, 18c a picture, printed 4"x6"
A sheet of high quality paper for an inkjet costs about a dollar. How much is the ink to print it - 25c? And the cost of the inkjet printer itself?
Then add the cost of losing or damaging (sitting on) one of the tiny memory sticks. Then there is the cost of batteries for the digital camera.. It uses a lot more than a manual SLR. The batteries are rechargable, you say.. Ok, how many people have rechargable stuff that won't hold a charge anymore? (no pushing now, you'll all get counted ;^) and getting new ones isn't cheap.
And the kicker.. You need a computer to even see the pictures you took last month. What? your system ate itself and you had no backup? Yes, I know you meant to burn them to CD but never had time since the baby came. And your baby pictures are now gone forever? Bummer!
I'm sure your SO will forgive you. [NOT] ;^)
Your wallet stays open. Our source remains closed. We are MSFT
I use it with the 360-L and it works pretty well. Sometimes the gPhoto will crash while creating thumbnails, but it works fine for saving the photos to a file.
Each and every camera stores images in jpeg. Jpeg is very space efficient, but is a lossy compression scheme which is unuseable to a professional photographer.
Except for one.
The Olympus C2500L captures not only in jpeg compressed format allowing for a large number of photos, but is also capable of capturing uncompressed images which are saved in TIF format. It will also capture a small amount of quicktime video.
The camera will capture images in resolutions up to 1712x1368 and is easily upgradeable to 96+MB of storage.
* SHQ-Tiff for uncompressed 1712 X 1368 pixel images--for true photo quality images
* SHQ-JPEG with low 1:2.3 compression 1712 X 1368 pixel images--for true photo quality images
* HQ-JPEG with low 1:8 compression 1712 X 1368 pixel images--ideal for high quality photo printing
* SQ-JPEG SVGA 1280 X 1024 pixel images--photo-realistic 8 X 10 inch prints from a photo-quality printer or high quality email photos
* SQ-JPEG VGA 640 X 512 pixel images--perfect for Internet use or to email friends and family.
The camera carries a weighty pricetag but for my purposes, there is no alternative. This camera sells for between $1300-$1500US. I often do photo editing/manipulations and uncompressed is the only way to go.
LW
I just ordered a D460 online. The D460 is a revision of the D450, which was a revision of the D400.
I hear that it is pretty good. We will see. I wish that I had the chance to see the outcome of all of these opinions before I bought it, but I already researched into it pretty heavily.
I will supply a first had account when it arrives, on Tuesday. Having played around with one in store before, I think that I will be happy. I also ordered a 64MB SmartMedia card. These higher capacity cards have become available in the last few months, but are almost impossible to find offline.
Another camera which is very similar to the D460 is the Kodak DC240.
But, if you have the money, I hear that you should go for the Kodak DC290. It does not have the uncompressed image mode, the LCD viewer is not as nice, it is a little bigger, but it is overall superior.
www.ibuyer.net is a good place to price compare.
This is in no way meant to be flamebait, but is a serious question:
If you are really interested in photography, why would you want to buy a digital camera? What advantages do digital cameras have over conventional cameras (aside from the cost of developing film -- though I'm not sure that even that is so great, i.e. a printer, paper, ink, computer, etc. might not outweigh the cost of a good camera and film -- depends on the printer, I suppose).
At any rate, I have been into photography since I was rather young. All my life I have used my mother's camera (which she finally gave to me before I went to college). It is an old Minolta X-370. I have many lenses, including a fish eye, a telephoto, some magnifying lenses and a couple of 50-70 mm lenses. I feel that with the Minolta, I have the ability to control thousands of variables, like apature size, exposure time, and which lens I use. Correct me if I am wrong, but I have never seen a digital camera that allows you to change lenses.
Also (and this may just be my anti-technology streak shining through), I think that photographs taken with a conventional camera, printed on photo paper in the way they should be just look better. No blurred ink, no weird colors, just the photo as it should be.
Granted, if all you want to do is take snap shots on vacation, it really does not matter what kind of camera you use, but if you are really into taking good picture, I think you should invest in a good camera and a couple of lenses and fork over the dengi to develop the film.
Just my two cents, and feel free to flame me into oblivion.
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Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
First off: Digital cameras *are not* replacements for a good 'ol film based.
With that out of the way, it looks like the question really should be:
Based on my requirements below, should I get a digital camera, and which one should I get?
* Price/Affordability (digitals are expensive)
* Image quality (1.3 megapixels != photo quality)
* Optical zoom (lens features)
* image development time (digital = immediate response, assuming some serial/usb connection)
* digital print? (will this go on the web or a meatspace binder somewhere?)
I bought an olympus 320D before going to europe (15 min before going to the airport) just so I could send my pics over the internet within a day of taking them. It served my purposes well, but I lost a lot of good photo opportunities to the fact that the light processing in the digital just can't be hacked like film (exposure time, aperature width, etc). My dig is great for taking pics of ppl, and parties, etc. Not for scenery or anything requiring zoom (320D does not have optical zoom).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I work at a large newspaper, and can remember that 10 years ago, the testing with digital photograhpy started. It is still not acceptable for every day use. And have _the_ best cameras.
The cameras are modified Canon EOS 1's. I think the type is Canon EOS 1 D-P (Digital, press edition.) They are fitted with a SCSI interface and a HDD. And they are expensive. Really expensive. The paper bought some for approx. 150 000 NOK, about 18 750 USD. But the reuslt is very impressive, although for enlargements, the 35 mm is superior (Even to APS and Advantix) and will remain so for quite a time.
I have been using this camera now for about 2 years and I am extremely satisfied with it. It has excellent default resolution (1280 x 960) and a synthetic 1600x1200 mode. It also has all the things you would expect in a normal camera, like 3x zoom, macro mode, red-eye reduction flash, black&white mode, and a familiar form factor. I suggest that you also get a 32M card to get 100 pictures at the default resolution and a USB card reader to pull the pictures off the camera quickly. As long as you don't use the LCD monitor your battery life will be extremely long as well. Along that front I suggest you invest in NiMH rechargable batteries. They work great in this camera and are a lot cheaper than using disposable batteries.
"If I can see farther it is because I am surrounded by dwarves." -- Murray Gell-Mann
I've got the D-450 Zoom, and I agree: the menuing system will drive you nuts, especially if you put it down for a couple weeks... as you tend to forget. I also got sick of waiting for pictures coming over the serial line, so went back and bought the Flashpath adapter... this is way cool.
I learned of the 460 yesterday. I wish I had waited a few months, but oh well. What I can't tell, is how much different *is* the menuing? Olympus' site doesn't give a diagram or anything, and nobody else has details. I guess I'll have to drop by the store someday and check one out.
The images are good though, and printing them out on photo paper on a Deskjet 880 series printer at the best settings yields a useable picture... even if it's not as good as a traditional camera.
My wife and I are happy with it.
--
*kerchunk* *beep* "...Operator."
You might find better answers (from a photographer's point of view) on Phil Greenspun's photo.net.
Film is still the way to go for even the moderately serious photographer. Even if you only take 1 roll of photos per week, you'll end up paying more for digital when you factor in the cost of the camera, printer, ink, paper, etc... Plus the resolution is not even close. Buy a good 35mm SLR and a film scanner if you want both quality prints and a digital archive. Buy a cheap-o digital if you're only publishing on the web. And if you are only publishing on the web, you don't need those 3 mega-pixel cameras - no one wants to download a .jpg bigger than 640x480 except in the most extreme circumstances.
:)
Just because the technology is newer doesn't mean its better
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http://gammatron.weblogger.com
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
In fact, the one big argument against digital that will ring true with most people is the one you didn't even mention. Durability. 'We' have photos from the American Civil War, 140 years ago. The last time we visited my parents, my kids looked at some photos of their grandpa when he was their age.
Digital media don't age as well. Even if there's still legible data on your old 8" floppies, good luck finding a machine that can read them. And that's only twenty years or so. Similarly, you probably can't find a program that understands the propietary format your hand scanner used ten years ago. Unless you transfer your snapshots from machine to machine and format to format every decade or so, they're just not going to be there for your great-grandchildren. Unlike the photos my Dad had sitting in a box on a shelf for decades.
is that it should support your platform. Most cameras don't support one or more of the following: BeOS, Mac OS Classic, Mac OS 10, FreeBSD, NetBSD, GNU/Linux, and Solaris. If you're on a Unix-like system, check the gPhoto compatibility list before you buy.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I wouldn't travel the world with 5 ten-packs of 3.5" disks though :) But it's good if you have a laptop with you.
As a camera geek as well as a computer geek, I can say that I rather have film over most ditigal solutions at this point. The only digial solution that I have even considered is a digital back for my Mamiya 645, which would shoot 128mb images right to a 10gig HD. This setup would / could easily cost more than my car. It's image resolution, and film as someone else put it, near 1000 LPI, which on a 35mm (3.5cm / 2.54 = 1.377 inches) offers 1377 lines of image resolution. The best 35mm solution is the Nikon N90 with Kodak's digital back which costs nearly $18,000 new. I have yet to see one of these machines listed used. Stick with either Kodak's Royal Gold 100 & 400, or Fuji's 100 & 400, play with Kodak's CM-41 for BW photography (very nice, & have the red lens filter for outdoors!) and you will rarely go wrong. Use photo.net to learn, and shop at B&H Photo for your equipment.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I've seen a fuji digital camera. The weak point was the software which had you have to doubleclick on every image you want to download from the camera to the computer. You can't just download all the stuff in one go. You could do that with a Hewlett Packard at least. If you don't have a USB port, you'll have to use a serial cable, and unless you get a port switcher to work, you'll have to remove your mouse and (1) find a mouse for your COM2: port, or (2) get some way to move the pointer using the keyboard (MouseKeys perhaps) since the HP software's weak point is that it does not have keyboard shortcuts and does not allow keyboard use.
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
You're still talking $US1300 for it, though, and it's got no USB or SCSI data transfer (serial only), so you'll need a Flash/SmartMedia card reader as well.
That review, again :-), is here.
I needed to photograph some musical instruments for a website, and occasional snaps of folks while travelling, as well as some close-up how-to photos -- all for the web. ZDNet had an article showing pix made by different cameras, and of all the pix there, I thought the Kodak DC280 looked crisp and good color tone. (Admittedly, this may relate a lot to the flash and other factors, but it's all I had to go on.) So I bought one for $599, and along with some lights and experimentation, it's done fine for the web. It does *not* even compare in total quality to my old Minolta 35mm, and I'd like the DC280 better if it gave me more control over aperature/speed, and a spot-focus -- but it is adequate for the task. Kodak has come out with a slightly more expensive DC290 which appears to have more features, but whether it takes better pix, I don't know.
== buddha is as buddha does ==
The best thing about them though is that they store pictures on 3.5" floppy disks (it has a 4x drive so it's pretty fast).
kwsNI
For years the print industry has been using the following formula:
lines per inch * 1.5 = dots per inch
So according to print professionals, an image taken with film that can do 6350 lpi would lose resolution at any value below 9520 dpi.
I'm guessing that a negative is about an inch wide so we're looking at a horizontal res of 9520 pixels for a CCD that's going to compete with that kind of film.
Not too big a deal. At the rate the technology is advancing, CCDs should be able to match that res in a few years. And considering that a mini-DV cartridge can hold well over a gig in the space the size of a zipo, storage isn't really an issue. (A single 9520x4750 RGB uncompressed TIFF file is about 13 megs.)
you're right, sorry about that number. ~130 megs is more like it for an uncompressed tiff.
Depending on the shutter speed a camera taking pictures of this quality is going to need to write to ram at speeds from 1 to 3.9 gigaBYTES a second.
Of course, simple jpeg compression (no optimization at highest quality) can bring that image down to 30 megs easy. A neural array of compression chips should be able to do this.
That would allow the image to be written to a ram buffer before it is transfered to a 3 gig mini drive. When the drive is full the pictures can be saved onto a magnetic tape.
Expensive stuff today, but we'll see it in a few years.
I find your "jockstrap" comment amusing. You know what they say about a big camera as a substitute for something else...
I own an Olympus D340-R, and I chose it for the following reasons:
I take lots of pictures of my daughter with it, and it's fantastic getting them up on our family website right away.
The only downside found so far is that the camera doesn't pass the drop test. It hit our hardwood floor last week and was broken both mechanically and electrically. But Olympus fixes the camera for a flat $106 rate, so I'm pretty pleased about that.
For $299 retail and a bit less than that from camera stores in NY, it's a great film camera replacement. Pictures printed onto real film at Eframes looked excellent up to 4x6. I only use the 1280x960 mode, so even 5x7 looks pretty good
- Leomania
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
I'm a fan of the Kodak DC290, which uses compact flash cards for image storage (which I can also swap into my handheld PC). I own a DC265, which is 1.5 years old, takes 1536 x 1024 images, and its output has been fine for print publications (except glossy stuff). The camera came with a 16MB card, which takes about 40 photos at max quality. I bought a 40 meg card and get about 100 photos, which gives me all the storage I need, with no need to carry around 140 floppy disks! (Plus, the average user doesn't need max quality, for web or screen output. I could easily take hundreds of photos at lower quality.)
Kodak owners should join the digita mailing list which is excellent for peer technical support. The DC220, 260, 265, and 290 cameras run the Digita operating system, which allows you to write custom configuration scripts (for example, quickly set your camera for certain lighting conditions you encounter frequently). The only major drawback with the Kodak (and most digitial cameras) is that it cannot go fully manual like the Mavica and has only the standard 3X zoom. But, I gladly trade that for Kodak's many other merits (and I'll buy a zoom lens if it ever becomes really important). Its auto settings and white balancing make it really easy for me to hand this camera to my mom or other helpless person and still get nice photos. The DC290 is currently selling in the $680 range at shopper.com. (dang, my DC265 originally cost $800!)
Now, if you want more, go for the optics.
I have an Olympus DL-500. I liked the zoom, but I picked te 500 instead of the 600 because of the price difference (back in 97) and that the 500 had a faster ASA (film speed) since with real film I usually use ASA 400 film.
Most of the pics, done in 1996) on my website were done with an Epson Photo PC. I didn't like the the fact that you needed a computer to 'reload' the 'film'. The Mavica using floppy does make it universal, but I like the size and power use (non-use) of the smart-media cards).
Fight Spammers!
I have had experience with many digital camera over the past 3-4 years. They started out as a toy, but I have found them very useful for my business as a web designer as well.
I currently own a Olympus 620L. It's resolution is a bit low by today's standards, but it has a number of imporovemnets over the 500L and 600L that preceded it. Namely a "fast" buffer, so you can quickly snap 5 pictures. This is a must feature for me since I have a young toddler, and getting him to hold still is darn near impossible. it also works well for action shots of my ferrets. The flash is not as fast, so when you use burst mode you need a lot of light (best outside on a sunny day).
Over all I really like the quality, with the new epson photo printers I have prints that are instinguishable from photo lab prints even using a magnifying glass. (at about 4x6" size. I have had good experience with prints up to 8x10") the lower resolution (compared to newer models) comes into play after that (1280x1024). Though the vast majority of the pictures I take end up on the web, and I often use the lowest resultion for those (640x517).
I also have an older ricoh 2E (I think, its on lone to a friend.) It doesn't have a flash so It kinda stinks for indoors or action shots. It does however do much better than any camera on close up shots. (it does not have any type of zoom, but it works well for fishtank shots, and for textures. It aso supports direct output to television, and can act as a limited video camera, which makes it fun at parties, or even presentations, because you can upload jpg "sides" and show them on any TV with a RCA input.
All in all the best camera is one that suits your needs the best. Try out as many as you can first, if you are going to use it for prints, make sure you test that (Walgreens has photo print kiosks that you can use to print straight from a floppy for about $7 if you don't have a printer, the quality is great!).
Good Luck,
-MS2k
For instance, check out the Lexmark 5770 which can print images off of flash cards from most digital cameras. Also, take a look at the Kodak PM100 which can print pics from the following cameras.
OK, end of troll. To be fair, both these printers are sold by Lexmark, and I am an employee thereof. On the other hand, I'm also a 5770 owner, and it really performs. I quit using film the day I hooked it up.
and, o'course, the fact that you can buy a cd to allow the 5770 to run on Solaris never hurts :)
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
Are there any worth getting in the $200 dollar range? Doesn't have to be great, just usable.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Quality of the unit is above average, MUCH better that the Sony (floppy disk) camera that I've used at work.
It comes with a proprietary 8 meg Smart Media card, but generic cards work without the "Panorama" feature. I also bought a generic 32 meg Smart Card and a generic PCMCIA adapter. A bonus is that I can use the Smart Media card for my Rio MP3 player.
I can also stick the adapter into any computer with a PCMICA slot and have a quick and easy way to grab files. Windows 95,98, and NT all auto detect the adapter and Smart Media as a standard hard disk drive. I'm not sure if it works with Linux but I know that the cards use standard Windows style FAT, so Linux should be able to see it....
It's been said for the last 3 years that digital cameras are replacing "film" cameras. I don't think that's happening.
Oh no, we can't let it happen yet - think about all the precious resources that go into the making of celluloid! Must waste them all first before we change *G*
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Now this IS a troll, by any and all means.
No, it's a humorous remark.
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If you're serious, this is still the way to go. Digital cameras get better every few months, just like computers. Unlike computers, the argument that "If you keep waiting for the better product, you will never buy anything" doesn't wash here because there is an existing product - film - which is already better in most respects.
The right course is to shoot on film and scan until the digicam comes out that meets your needs. The cost of your film and scanning will possibly be less than the depreciation on your digital camera while you wait for the one with the resolution you want.
A good 35mm frame has as many as 20 million 42 bit pixels. The best digicams have 3 million 8 bit pixels. A $90 Olympus Stylus Epic will shoot pictures far beyond any Digicam. You can get develop and scan for $8.50 a roll of 36 at dalelabs.com, for example.
Of course you don't get the instant feedback. And instant feedback is worth a lot. But is it worth giving up resolution?
Only you can decide. But don't think just because you don't need the resolution today that you don't need it. Never throw away information. If you shoot that one precious photo on digital, you won't be able to go back in time and get it again in high res. You will be able to do that if you shoot on film. Today our monitors are only 1600x200. Tomorrow we will look at that as clunky -- this is always the way. The digicams of just 2 years ago now look clunky to us.
How many rolls will you shoot a year? If it's less than 50, then $500 on 3000x2000 scanning will be about the same as the depreciation on a top of the line digicam today.
Don't get me wrong, I will go to digicams soon, when they get to more than 8 bits/pixel and around 2500 pixels wide. It's not far away. But they are changing to fast to pick them quite yet if you are serious about your pictures.
Serious photogrpahers shoot a lot of shots to get that one great shot. When they get that great shot, they want it in as much resolution as possible. If you can afford it even if you shoot 100 rolls/year, the only way to get that great shot in hi res is on film.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
On the pure digital side, I recently got to play with a Nikon D1 (based on the F5 body, and accepting all standard Nikon lenses) for a few hours. It pretty much spoiled me for lesser digitals. It's only around 3 megapixel though. When one of these comes out that lets me use all my Nikon lenses and is in the 6 megapixel or higher range, I'm first in line to pick one up!
kiku wa ittoki no haji kikanu wa matsudai no haji
thanks for posting this - I'm looking at the 2020 and 2500. I've used Olympus Stylus (various models) for years - my original Olympus Stylus Zoom had the best lens I'd ever seen in a "cheap snapshot" camera. Latest is a (Olympus) APS; I like the convenience, but I'd go back to 35mm in an eyeblink... Didn't want to spend the money for a top-quality digital yet, and I couldn't live with a cheapie... A friend just got a great deal on a 2500L - it's biggish for a "toss-around handy snapshot" (for me it's mostly family photos) but much lighter than I expected. I'll probably go the 2020 though...
This cammera is the C|Net editor's choice and for a good reason. It also has a 99% approval rating on their site. Anybody wanting some great resources for picking a digital camera should go here: http://cnet.com/shopping/0-1427343-7-1436443.html? tag=st.cn.1.sptlt.1427343-7-1436443.
Thanks to them, I got the Olympus D-360L for about $250 and I am incredibly happy with the purchase. It has everything I want and although I have not tested it their site says it has full Linux support. I strongly recomend this.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I just picked up an Olympus D-460. It's just like the 450, which was getting rave reviews, but it's got a better menuing system, and some other small improvements. I'm really happy with it, but I will admit that although I got it for a little over 500, which I could afford, I was immediately unhappy with the serial support that it came with, and bought a flashpath floppy adapter for the flash card, which cost another 100. If I'm done spending, I'm happy. If not, I guess I'm a bit weirded out
Hows about 6.1 million pixels?
e neric&ContentId=2245&UserTypeId=4&page type=FocusLevelTwo
Here's an SLR with Nikon lens compatibility, octagonal shaped pixels in a honeycomb pattern, takes both CompactFlash and SmartMedia cards, And comes with a 2 inch LCD.
This camera is the Sh17. And only $4k before buying lenses.
Obviously this camera is not for everyone. It is a specialized professional tool. However it is also a very useful tool for many people.
More and more pros are moving to digital because they don't have to mess with developing and can get to press faster. With these resolutions, digital is quickly approaching the usability of 35mm for enlargement. Art photographers find the convenience of going straight into photoshop or gimp very useful
http://www.fujifilm.com/tcm.html?x-tempest-op=g
pending committee review
I've seen lots of bad digital photos at dimly lit night and wedding settings. 400 speed film with a decent flash is so much better.
2-3 years before digital cameras get really big (40-50 % of cameras) with simple printers and good storage.
Why's everyone so hell-bent on turning trees into paper, anyway? Hemp would've been the standard paper product if it weren't for government intervention on the sake of the children, who might get hooked on smoking rope. Hemp is farmable, doesn't take eighty years to reach a reasonable size, and lasts longer than normal paper. I've got books from when I was in third grade that's paper has degraded to worse than the Declaration of Independence, which was printed on hemp paper.
I have the Olympus 450Z and I can attest that it is a great camera. I was lucky enough to get it when Value America was having that wacky $150-off promotion, so it ended up being about $390 all told...
It has good exposure controls -- not pro level, but a cut above cheap digicams. This was important to me. I think it should be important to you too, because if all the metering is automatic there will be some shots you *can't* get. For example, a shot of someone in the shadows where the background is bright. You need to switch to spot metering for that, not average.
It has a good lens and a 3x optical zoom. There is some barrel distortion, but most cameras in this price range suffer from that.
I got a 32MB SmartMedia card for mine. (it comes with an 8mb card.) In 640x480 mode I can store almost 500 photos. IMHO this mode stinks, the compression artifacts are obvious.
In "HQ" mode, you get about 140 1280x1024 photos. Good quality shots here, no glaring artifacts.
SHQ mode is even less compression, also at 1280x1024. About 70 shots here. This is what I use all the time.
There is also an uncompressed mode, but SHQ is good enough that I don't use it.
There is 1 use for 640x480 -- burst mode. You can shoot about 2 frames per second. Good for capturing some stuff and making it into animated gifs. (oh hell, I said gif. Now I am screwed...)
There is a panorama shot mode, which works very well. Pretty cool.
On the subject of adapters: I recently bought a SmartMedia to PCMCIA adapter. It's the BEST. No more of that lame, SLOW serial connection. Taking an hour to dump a full load of photos was getting annoying!
I got my SM to PCMCIA adapter at www.18004memory.com. They aren't the brightest crew over there, at first they sent me a CF to PCMCIA card and I had to RMA it. But I stuck with it because the SM adapter was $40 from them, which is the best price I have found in a year of looking. (was too cheap to buy one for $80-90)
I've been looking very closely at purchasing an Olympus 360-L, and until now hardly considered the possibility of being able to connect it to my primary Linux computer without a standard smartmedia reader. I checked gPhoto's website, and they had compatibility listed for almost every other camara by Olympus, including the predecessor of the 360-L the 340, but 360-L was not listed. I'd just like to know if anyone has tried to connect the Olympus 360-L and how did it go?
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Although most the audio world has gone to CD players and digital amplifiers, those who do serious work with audio still use turntables and analog amplifiers. Sound is warmer. We've grown so accustomed to the little imperfections that digital equipment sounds hollow and cold. I would never trade my 1978 Harman/Kardon for the digital surround sound mumbo jumbo. Although I have two CD players, my turntable gets at least as much work.
I also am into amateur photography, and have been ever since school. Beyond the drastic difference in photo quality, there's something nice about the irregularities of a camera. The lines are crisp and straight. Where there are grains, the grains are irregular, giving a warmer, more natural image. Along a similar note, I just recently purchased a new Macintosh Powerbook with, of course, an LCD screen. Although my LCD screen is almost as large as my tube monitor for my old Macintosh and the screen resolution is much higher, the picture quality on the tube monitor is far superior. Everything is cleaner.
Another note: Creating an accurate polarization with Photoshop was as simple as selecting a menu option and just as boring, but to see a really nice polarization in a print is just so much more special. Every once in a while I still get out the pinhole camera I built in school because you can do things with it that you could never consider doing with a point and click camera, let alone a digital one. There's something impressive in knowing exactly what is happening in a photo, and knowing that you are doing it actively.
It uses SmartMedia, which is a tiny plastic card with a smart chip on it. The camera only comes with an 8MB card, but I bought an additional 32MB card for less than $50. I also bought a USB SanDisk SmartMedia reader for $25.
All in all, you can't go wrong with this camera. It's small and light, and my Renewal rechargable batteries last for 100s of pictures. The price may be a bit high for some people, but I easily found some coupons for Accompany.com that gave me 20% off, lowering the price to under $500. A friend just recently bought the same camera from mobshop.com with a 20% off coupon. It also was under $500.
Olympus C2020 Zoom Page
C Net Review
My biggest gripe with the Kodak cameras (I have a DC260, but hear the same gripe about the 290) is the delay between pushing the button and the actual picture taking. It's on the order of a half second and takes getting used to. People who are using the camera for the first time invariably move it before the picture is captured. It also drains the batteries quickly if the LCD screen is used. It would also be nice if it had a macro capability for close up shots. That said, I haven't found a camera I like better. I particularly like the fact that it has a USB connector; it makes getting the pics out of the camera easy.
I was wondering when this topic would appear on
I did a lot of research into digital cameras last year. I didn't buy one, but here's some of the info I found . . .
How good of a camera you need (and how much you end up spending on one) depends on what you plan to do with the pictures.
If all you want to do is post pix on the web, any 1-megapixel (or less) camera should do a respectable job for you, since web pix are generally low res (640 x 480 or less). At 72 ppi screen res, that's 8.9 x 6.7 inches (pretty big).
What you need the extra pixels for is printing photos onto paper. There's a big controversy over the resolution photos should be printed at, with the general consensus being in the 150 to 300 ppi range. Generally, you should avoid printing at less than 200 ppi.
At 200ppi, you'll need a 1 mp camera to print a standard 4x6 shot, 1.5 mp to do a 5x7, 3.2 mp to do an 8x10, 6.2 mp to do an 11x14.
The highest res digicams available today for under US$1,000, are ~3 mp. Best 3 mp models currently include the Canon PowerShot S20, Nikon CoolPix 990. The 2 mp models of these cameras are the S10 and Coolpix 950. They are all great cameras, and 2 mp models just dropped in price with the introduction of the 3 mp models.
For reviews, visit:
http://www.imaging-resource.com
http://www.lonestardigital.com
http://www.steves-digicams.com/cameras.ht ml
Note that you can get good deals buying 2nd hand cameras. A lot of users sell their 1-yr-old cameras to buy the latest models. Also, you should buy a camera that's small. If it's too big to carry around, it won't get used. (The Canons are small, sturdy, and they look cool. Kodaks generally suck in this regard.)
So why didn't I buy a digicam?
I wanted to print really big pictures, and for that you still can't beat film. Film is cheap, and you can scan onto PhotoCD whatever individual frames you like. You get a 6 mp (!) image which you can print onto 11 x 17 paper.
- http://www.templetons.com/brad/pixels.html
I carry an Olympus Stylus Epic. It's small enough to fit in my pocket, takes great pictures, and it's cheap!http://photo.net/photo/point-and-shoot.ht ml
http://photo.net/photo/point-and-sho ot-tips.html
BTW, for a /.-style photo site, check out:
Edgar
If you do some research, you will find that the casio QV3000Plus is the BEST camera on the market. First, in terms of quality, it is a true 3.34 mega pixel camera(this means it will do 3.34 mega pixels NON INTERPOLATED) and will do these at a stunning resolution of 2048x1536. This already puts it in a catergory by itself. Well.....these pictures must take up a lot of space so what about storage? Well, it has 16mb of compact flash, like most cameras, which is kinda skimpy, BUT IT ALSO HAS A 340MB IBM MICRODRIVE BUILT IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THis is a total of 356mb of usable memory! Once again, this puts it in a category by itself. It also has all the extras of a high quality camera....a decent zoom, avi movie ability, great flash, etc, etc. It is very light weight and stylish. Upon looking into it, you will find that it is THE BEST camera money can buy
Lines are not dots, i.e. resolving power is not the same thing as the dpi resolution. Imagine taking the same test picture of lines with your 6350dpi digital camera. The picture you're gonna get digitaly depends on how the lines of the picture are aligned with the line of sensors. Good old aliasing will occur. So you have to have more (considerably more) than 6350dpi in your camera to resolve 250 lines per inch.
The end of the post with "Just keep in mind bigger picture...media soundbyte...neighbourhood" is remarkably annoying.
Hard to beleive! The camera has considerably more complicated commands than SLR Nikon's, very small sensitivity (ISO 50), and, the most annoying thing I've found is that has abnormaly large lag time (that is the time interval between the moment one presses the button and the picture has been actualy taken). For point'n'shoot photographers additional annoyance will be lack of red-eye reduction.
On the top of all this, for $900 one can buy a decent SLR with a decent film scanner and get much better digital output at the end.
Now this IS a troll, by any and all means.
Even medium quality film scanner (say any with dynamic range 3.0 or better) has much better performances than the most expensive digital camera. So you tell me how much batteries and film processing can you get for $10000?
So let's look at those "awesome specs" of Nikon CoolPix 990: 2,048 x 1,536 pixels image compared to $430 film scanner sitting here on my computer (which is by all means old technology in film scanners) that gives me 3409 x 2288 pixels image from 35mm negative or positive, B/W or color. Now, I can go further, and specs don't even tell me the lag time that realy bothered me with my friend's CoolPix I've used (which is the one that got all those "best cheap digital camera" awards and doesn't have red-eye reduction (good for point'n'shooters that they've fixed that)). Why don't you give me one feature of 950 that will beat similarly priced configuration of a SLR and film scanner.
I'm very happy with our Sony Mavicas as well, but it really depends on what you do and who will use the camera-every camera will tradeoff certain features so the best fit depends for every use:
We bought Mavicas because want wanted students to use them for projects: A CF or SmartMedia camera would be impossible to implement. Floppies are great because every student has them.
They're also large, unattractive and have really long lasting batteries which fit perfectly for institutional use. On the downside, they cost three times more than most 1Kx7 cameras and the image quality isn't as great as other comparable models.
But it's a perfect fit for us. So before you go off talking about what's the best camera recommendation, ask what camera fits for your application...
I picked up a Kodak DC-290 after whittling it down to the Olympus C-2020, Nikon 950 and the Kodak. The resaon was that they all took real clear, color correct pictures. The Nikon has some interesting features like ebing able to capture a 360 panorama in (2) shots with a fisheye lense, and the Olympus feels like a 'real' SLR type camera, but lacks USB. I finally grabbed the Kodak since it produced great shots, nd it is fully scriptable with a scripting language called Digita allowing you full access to all camera parameters and settings, very very cool...
GNU is not apple cobbler.
I have had this camera for a while right now. If you are looking for very high quality pictures, this is the one to buy right now. I think that the price dropped down a lot since I bought it (a year ago): it should be around $500 if you go to PriceWatch. The only thing I can say about it is that it is EX-CEL-LENT.
The best, recent review of high resolution digital cameras that I've seen was in a recent edition of Popular Science. It has pictures, resolutions, prices, and features for each camera. You can access it here: http://www.popsci.com /electronics/features/cameras/index.html
This article covers most of the new megapixel cameras from Olympus, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, etc... The article also briefly discusses things like Film vs Digital and the reasons for poor quality in earlier cameras. It also has some cool side articles on the Sony Mavica and the different adapters for Smartmedia and CompactFlash.
There's also a review on a digital adapter that fits inside a 35mm camera. It looks a little pricy, but you'd get the high quality optics of a film camera with the benifits of digital capture.
in Fry's ad today... Olympus D-600L refurbished for $397. this is a 1.4 Meg pixel w/1280 x 1024 res, 4 Meg media card 1.8" LCD and aspherical GLASS lens. this cam WAS like $999 not too long ago...i'd check it out. "Remember, your best buys always get Fried, guarenteed"...heheheh
Does anyone have comments about the Agfa camera that uses Iomega Clik disks for storage? This seems to me to be a very good option, the disks hold 40 MB and cost $10 or less when bought in larger packs, certainly MUCH MUCH less than a flash memory. There also exist PCMCIA drives for the disks, and now just recently a USB docking station for the drives so that you can use them with your desktop computer.
In my opinion, this seems to be as close to a "roll of film" as we can get at the moment - the storage is cheap and not volatile, just keep the pictures on the disks, no need to clutter up your hard drive.
Well, first of all, you don't use alkalines with any digital camera - they will eat it up like they were candies. NiMH batteries are very highly recommended. As for the different accessories included - the US package does not include a serial cable (you have to request for that) unlike the European version. It does include batteries and charger, though. I bet that the HK package is far cheaper than the US and European versions. Oh, there is no power cable in the US and European packages as well. It is available as an option. The Serial Connectivity Kit for Win95 and NT was a major issue but was already resolved. That being said, you should have used the USB connection with your Linux setup - provided that you have USB, of course. Corrupt CF cards are usually caused by insufficient power, taking the cards out whilst the LED lights (CF slot) are blinking and problems with the card itself. I have been using a Sandisk CF card along with the Kodak (made by Sandisk) Picture Cards with my 260 and now with my 290 without any problems. Other brands do exhibit some problems, though - but not Sandisk or Lexar. AS for longer picture taking, I don't see why it takes longer - perhaps it is because of the CF cards that you are having problems with. Have you tried using other cards? With DigitaPost, you will no longer have to bring your laptop with you - that is, of course, if you have enough money to pay for the mobile phone link to transfer your photos. =) Cheers!
As for overexposures - the Kodak DC290 can do as long as 16 seconds long time exposure with little noise.
You can produce images from 2.5x3 to 4x6 to as large as you want. Of course, digital images, as you have stated, lose its quality if enlarged. However, 3.3M pixel prosumer cameras can produce prints up to 11x14 without any trace of pixels. You can use software, such as Genuine Fractals, to boost it further with little or no quality degradation. Problem with negatives, the more you produce prints, the more the quality of the negative degrades due to exposure to the chemicals. With digital, the first one almost always looks like the next hundred copies.
You don't need 16000x12000 to produce crisp prints unless they are 36x24 prints.
Digital prints can last 100 years if properly handled. It may not last as long as chemically processed prints if they are exposure to direct sunlight 24/7, though.
FYI, some digital cameras have red-eye reduction built-in.