Slashdot Mirror
Ultrawide Zoom in a Compact Camera
manavendra writes to tell us that Image-Resource has an interesting writeup on the recently released Kodak EasyShare V570 digital camera. The V570 is a dual lens camera that incorporates an ultra-wide angle lens and an optical zoom lens. The camera will feature 5 megapixel resolution, 5x optical zoom, in-camera panorama stitching, video recording, a 2.5 inch LCD screen, in-camera distortion correction, and picture blur alert.
Too perfect. Distortion correction? Stitching? So not only does the picture lack the qualities of film (such as grain) - now it even corrects my creativity! Pah, film is so much more fun. Digital? The digital race: well, how normal can we get?
Why doesn't slashdot post announcements on D-SLRs. The D200, D50, and Canon 5D have come out in the past year and not a single annoncement. I want to hear what slashdot users have to say about these cameras, not cutesy point and shoot cameras. Once you use a digital SLR you will never want to use a point and shoot again. There is no delay between pressing the button and the shutter firing. The manual control is nice as is changing lenses, but the zero delay is the best part of these cameras.
"brxref
"you are" or "you're".
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Buy Kodak film, not Kodak cameras. Kodak has always made cheap (in both senses), low-quality consumer oriented cameras, good consumer film, and great professional film.
If you want a good camera, get a Canon, Olympus, or Nikon, never Kodak, Sony, or HP.
Everyone should use cameras with fast lenses and fast shutters. It makes much nicer pictures. It irks me when I go to a camera shop and they describe the f3.5-4.5 kit zoom as a fast lens! argh! 1.4 is fast. 2.8 is fast for a 200mm lens. 3.5 is slow!
People look at me funny when I use my TLR on a monopod.
Don't get me wrong : you're perfectly entitled to be happy with your zoom ; but if you had a chance to compare your pictures with some of the same subject taken with a high end glass, then, you'd probably change your mind about them. And I'm quite an oly fan myself, btw. But I expect first from a glass to have straight lines being, well, straight on all the range, and I still have to see a 10x zoom achieving that.
Many times if you don't have 10x zoom, you just can't get the picture.
The more I look at pictures books and portfolios, the less weight I carry with me : most of the internationaly well known pictures were taken with a basic lens, generaly 35mm (24x36 eq.) or 50mm. Now I just take a 28 mm, a 50, and a 135. It just does the job. I admit that if I were shooting wildlife animals, I certainly would have a good 300, but big tele / zooms are nothing if you can't shoot indoors without a flash.
You can do it for a lot cheaper than that.
Just get two disposable cameras. Film is okay, if you count your frames, but now they've even got digital "disposables." Mount them horizontally on a flat piece of wood (I saw someone use what looked like a 1x2, but it's not like it matters) right next to each other. Depending on the kind of camera, they're small enough that placed next to each other the lenses are spaced almost the right distance apart. You can even space them wider apart if you want a more exaggerated 3-d effect.
Then just wind and shoot the cameras simultaneously. If you're taking pictures of anything moving, you have to be pretty lucky to catch the shutters at exactly the same time or else it'll look messed up. (But i've actually seen some pretty amazing stuff done this way of people on stage.) Also avoid using their flashes since they won't go off in sync and you may get strange shadows.
Then just get them developed and put on a CD, and make sure that the processor keeps them straight so you know afterwards which one is left and which one is right.
Then you can either print them and try to mount them in a stereoscope viewer, which is what I saw done with them (basically just two prints hung side by side with a divider in between that you put your nose up to), or you could probably produce a red/blue image in Photoshop. You need some tinkering to get the viewers right, but there are a lot of books on the subject.
There is also, if you want to blow a lot of money on such a project, there used to be a purpose-built Russian camera called the "FED" that used regular 35mm film and had two separate lenses. No idea if they're still making them or not.
I just did a little Googling and there is a Engadget tutorial available. It uses some assumedly PC-only software though, so I'm not too interested. Others might be, though.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You know, as cynical as that is, you're quite right.
Kodak isn't the only company that's doing this either; there are a lot of "entry level" digitals that are basically aiming for the group of people who are moving up (or over, one might say) from disposable film cameras. There are a ton of these people around. They honestly don't care about quality in the same way that even the most novice photography student does: if the image is recognizable, and doesn't have hideously obvious defects like big dust specks (and maybe not even then), they don't care. They've been buying, using, and throwing away plastic-lensed disposables that are nothing but some 400 or 800 speed film with a shutter and a strobe light -- probably not much better than a box with a hole in it -- for years, and they're happy with the results.
What they really want from a digital camera has nothing to do with quality, it's immediate gratification and the ability to share pictures. Why do you think that Kodak's digitals have HUGE displays on the back? Because that's what a lot of people care about: they want to take a picture and then be able to show it off to their friends. For some, they may not even really look at the photo once they take it off of the camera; it's something taken in that moment, for use the moment later. The next thing people want is to be able to share (via email) pictures, and perhaps print a few off here and there, so those are the next easiest functions to do.
The quality of the image -- once you get above a certain point, which I think is about 1024x768 pixels -- doesn't matter to a lot of people. The reason people buy multi-megapixel cameras (aside from the fact that they "want the best" without knowing why, which is probably the dominant reason) is so they can zoom in on things in the frame later. Megapixels are like megahertz were a few years ago: people have this dim understanding that they should be buying more, but no idea why. However they do it anyway.
Kodak's cheap digitals are perfectly designed for a certain kind of person. They let you take an image, show it off to people on the big built-in screen, shove it into a dock and email or save or print it. For 90% of the people who buy them, that's all they ever have to do. If you want more from a camera, don't buy one of the entry level models!
There was a time when the fact that a camera was digital implied that it was somewhat high-end. That era is over, and you can't blame Kodak's engineers (whether they were in-house or outsourced) for designing a camera that matches its target market.
I think that what will eventually spell the end of the true entry-level digital cameras is when cellphone digitals become easier to use. Right now they're too complex for most people. I know quite a few people who have cellphones with cameras, but don't use them because they don't want to figure out how. There isn't (on most phones I've seen anyway) just one button that you can press to take a picture. On mine, it takes four (Camera->Capture->Store->In Camera), and that's three too many. And getting the pictures off requires having Bluetooth working and manually selecting the files -- no iPhoto/Picasa integration. Once the phone manufacturers make it easy enough for a braindead person to use (and this includes the sharing end, not just the picture-taking end), I think the demand for cheap dedicated still cameras will decrease sharply.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I took photos just the other day of a large cat animal in Melbourne zoo. Moving around with some urgency, being behind thick security fence and not too well lit, all you'd get is the wire fence with something furry behind.
My D70s's manual focus mode made light work of the problem though, and the fact that what I see [through the viewfinder] is what I get [well given a quick enough shutter speed] was a massive benefit that let me take some good, sharp photos even in such difficult conditions.
My previous camera was a Nikon 990, and although great when I bought it I'm not going back to non-SLR again.
As for non fuss, the green, default auto mode really only gives you one option: Click & shoot. If you are able to ignore all the other buttons that are disabled in this mode, it could really not be too much easier.
ISO certified == THX certified
On the other hand, nobody who knows anything about photography will not be willing to put up with the lack of manual focus, lack of RAW format or no manual white balance adjustment.
People who know something about photography know that it is about making compromises; they often have multiple cameras and pick the best one for each job.
The V570 looks like an interesting camera; if image quality is at least decent, it will probably be quite popular, since you can't get a 23mm (equiv) lens in any package 5x the size and weight. Whether it has RAW, manual focus, or manual white balance doesn't matter.
All digital cameras aren't alike any more than film cameras are.
If you find your camera needs to much light to take a picture, then you need to get a camera with larger glass. More glass means more light taken in. More light taken in means better picture without jacking the ISO.
People think they can buy a pocketable digital camera and take pics with it they would have tried to take with a 35mm camera which is much larger.
I don't have a problem with image stabilization, but it's not going to take the place of larger glass. Why? Because image stabilization only works on non-moving objects. Yeah, you can take a picture at 1/15th of a second instead of 1/60th and still have it turn out, if the subject isn't moving. But if it is, it'll be blurred, and IS won't fix it.
But, larger glass would let you get the same number of photons in 1/60th of a second as the other (IS) camera does in 1/15th of a second. And that's effective for both moving and non-moving objects.
Additionally, the larger glass makes your flash more effective, but IS does not, as no matter how long you keep the shutter open, the flash is only on for 1/000th of a second or something.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95