Top 10 Digital Cameras on Flickr

zokiii writes "This list represents the top camera makes and models used to create photos uploaded to Flickr. The list is generated automatically by periodically sampling the EXIF data from the stream of recent uploads." This is actually an incredibly simple idea, but a really useful one when considering a new camera to buy. Score three points for scrapers.

Comments

Stats

[BWJones]

Beautiful use of statistics and just the sort of thing that the Flickr board of directors can take to their marketing meetings. Companies eat this stuff up as it is a real world reflection of specific markets using their products.

Interestingly, these statistics show that most of these cameras are solidly in the middle "pro-sumer" market and demonstrates that both Canon and Nikon did good when they went after a market that was primed to explode much like the 35mm market did in the late 70s and early 80s. Technology in both cases made it possible to build high quality cameras at affordable prices.

Of course this means good things for the consumer, but watch out for a new megapixel war much like what we saw with computers and the Mhz war. Of course just like the Mhz war, the MP war is going to be mostly hype as I've seen some damn fine images from 6 or 8 MP cameras that were far above the quality produced by some higher MP count cameras. The secret is going to be the size and quality of the individual imagers on the CCD, the quality of the image management chips (I tend to prefer Canon's DIGIC) and the quality of the lens.

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[capt.Hij]

Beautiful use of statistics and just the sort of thing...

They do not say if they are reporting the number of cameras by user or if they go by the number of pictures. For example, if they go by picture they are telling us who uploads the most pictures, if they go by user they are telling us how many cameras are used. They do not discuss the methodology.. They also do not provide numbers nor graphs. It is an awful way to communicate statistics.

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[Veetox]

I'd like to add to that by noting that the megapixel war is only a small factor in most photographers' minds, now. The war is really over how many options a camera offers for manipulating light and color reception before even taking the shot, and how easy the options are. Take a look at the controls on the top two cameras: you've got white balance, hue, and color palette, just to name a couple. Also, frame rate and intelligence of autofocus are of huge importance. ...and, right, the lens is arguably even more important than the camera, itself...

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[mmusson]

I've seen some damn fine images from 6 or 8 MP cameras that were far above the quality produced by some higher MP count cameras

That's because megapixel counts are misleading. You need to square the number of pixels to double the quality of the image. Jumps from 6 to 8 to 10 sound big but are negligible. I'll think about upgrading when the 36-64 megapixel cameras are out.

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[tygerstripes]

I fear you may be right about the MP war. Interestingly I saw (a few years ago) a program which did a direct comparison of Digi and 35mm SLR. They took two cameras of as close a spec as they could manage, same lens, etc - the Digital was 10MP.

They took a shot of a rather tasty presenter lass in a catsuit, and enlarged the images to cover the side of a multi-storey building in the centre of Birmingham.

There were slight differences in the appearance of the two unbelievably large posters, but resolution was not one of them.

This made me think that, save for extensvie enlargement and manipulation, maybe there's not much need for any resolution beyond 10MP. Okay, so it wasn't exactly a scientific study, and it's a simplified case, but if that was a few years ago then how much more development in resolution do cameras really need today - especially the point-an-shoot variety.

While the MHz war was a little futile and misleading, it did help to drive up the performance of home PCs in general. The MP war will probably, as you say, be a boring and inevitable one, but I can't see that it will be of any benefit to the consumer. There's no accounting for marketing...

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[From A Far Away Land]

There are some features that I think will rule more than MP count will. Things like stabilization, night shooting in different wavelengths (built in), or a camera that focuses fast enough for the instant-one-press novice that doesn't give the camera time to bring the subject into sharp focus. I don't know if those are all features available yet, but they are more important than going past 6MP until we get 40GB memory cards, and 500GB hard drives on every computer with 40GB cheap removable media to make backups of photo libraries.

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[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't think current digital cameras use CCDs, they are largely CMOS-based. That's still in a great many camcorders though.

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[Uncle Rummy]

Actually, they do discuss this, though indirectly. They apparently are counting the number of pictures uploaded:

Further, you will notice that the D-SLRs dominate the list. Perhaps this is due to the sheer volume that photo enthusiasts (amateur photographers and professionals) upload on their sites, which sometimes serve as their portfolios. They're likely the ones to have Pro accounts, too, which gives them unlimited upload capability. Casual users, on the other hand, might not be uploading so frequently, and would probably have free, limited accounts.

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[TheThiefMaster]

Not forgetting the compression settings and image format the camera stores the picture as. I've seen a few "8MP" images ruined by the photographer using the "smallest" compression setting and bluring out the whole photo. It's not too hard to imagine that some cameras' "best/largest" compression setting might not be lossless and/or produce a worse picture than a lower MP camera with a better compression chip, or that "higher-MP cameras" might default to a "smaller" compression because the tiny memory card they ship with could only hold one or two photos otherwise.

It's like making a supersonic car that can only be driven for 15 seconds before it needs to be refueled, so you reduce the power of the engine to 200MPH so that you can drive it from one end of the country to the other on one tank and then advertise it as both "supersonic" and "can drive the whole length of the country on one tank" even though it can't do both at once.

And not forgeting the manufacturers that multiply the optical and digital zooms together to get the "maximum zoom", when only idiots or the uninformed use digital zoom. Either zoom the photo yourself on the pc after (better quality this way, especially with cubic sub-sampling (or whatever it's called)), or just GET CLOSER TO WHAT YOU'RE TAKING THE PHOTO OF.

There, that's you told.

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[HatchedEggs]

I agree, it is an interesting use of statistics. As some others have pointed out, it is flawed in a few ways, but overall its a neat idea. I have a 6 megapixel Canon Powershot SD630 and it works great for me. The only downside I have heard from some users is that it gets rid of the traditional viewfinder all together and just goes with an LCD. However, I was just fine with getting rid of that. The only down side I found on it is that the hard cover they put over the LCD is reflective when you're trying to show somebody a pic on a videocamera, even if the room is dark. Of course, the easy answer to that is just to e-mail that family the pics instead of doing a show and tell. Either way, interesting list. For one it shows the popularity of certain cameras.. but it also shows to a degree the demographics of the people that are a part of Flickr. I haven't spent much time on it, perhaps I'll have to go represent the SD630 a bit more. btw, the pics on my blog have been edited and have a reduced quality to make them web friendly.

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[QuietLagoon]

Beautiful use of statistics and just the sort of thing that the Flickr board of directors can take to their marketing meetings.

In actuality, it is horrible use of statistics. The numbers are little more than a popularity contest, showing the more popular cameras, not necessarily the better cameras. If you want to use a camera that a lot of other people are using, then follow what the numbers show. However, that will not guarantee that you will get a camera that actually meets you needs.

To the point of your message, accuracy has never stood in the way of marketing in the past, no reason to change that now.

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[vsack]

This is great for targeted advertising towards their user base, but it's not clear that you can make many conclusions about the general market based on this data. After all, the user of Flickr are a self-selecting group. I don't think you'll find as many Canon 1Ds-Mk II cameras on there, as they're a ~$6800 body and the owners of those cameras are more likely to use them professionaly and have dedicated sites for their photos, rather than relying on Flickr to host.

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[shellbeach]

I don't think current digital cameras use CCDs, they are largely CMOS-based. That's still in a great many camcorders though.

Then you'd think wrong. The only digital cameras using CMOS are the Canon digital SLRs (and very fine CMOSes they are, too, giving arguably the best image quality of the 35mm or smaller format options).

All the rest, including Canon's non-SLR digitals, use CCDs (mostly manufactured by Sony, although Fuji has long been showing Sony how much better CCDs can be if you make them in a hexagonal pattern, and Panasonic's long been demonstrating just how bad CCDs can be if you don't buy them from Sony and don't have the smarts of Fuji :)

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[Name Anonymous]

Also to add to the question of MP count vs Quality is the size of the sensor.

(Roughly speaking:)

A larger 6 MP sensor will in general give a better image than a smaller 6 MP sensor.

Given two sensors that are the same size, the sensor with a larger pixel count has smaller pixels. A smaller pixel gets less light to sample. So at some point more pixels won't get you a better image at a given sensor size.

Over time the technology is impoving so a sensor of a given size and pixel count can be in general designed better over time.

Digital SLRs use large sensors than compact digital cameras, so in general an SLR wil give a better picture. (Ignoring all the other factors like the person handling the camera, quality of the lens (some campact cameras have lenses that are better than the least expensive SLR lenses).

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[Lumpy]

It already is hype.

I have a 3MP camera that kicks the crap out of most everything else. Fuji S1 It even takes better photos than a Canon Digital Rebel.

I have an advantage though.... I have a $1500.00 lens, the rebel comes with a $22.95 (quality wise) lens. If the rebel used the same quality lens it would be pretty much spot on but still lacks my color saturation because of the different design of the CCD. but then my camera cost way more than the Rebel did.

Lens is 90% of your picture. Camera quality the next 8% and megapixels make up the last 2%

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[tobybuk]

This Mega Pixel label drives me mad. Time and time again I am asked what mega-pixel camera a friend should buy. It seem to be the only metric that people use when buying a camera.

Case in point. A friend went a bought a 4 Mega Pixel camera over the 3.2 one I recommended, because 'it was better 'coz it has more pixels'. Firstly why f**king ask me if you don't follow my advice. Second, if you are tempted by a different model at least come back and ask before buying it! Well guess what the next question was? "Why do my pictures look crap when printed?" "I'll tell you why: You bought a camera with no optical zoom, only ditigal zoom and you're now understanding why I told you to ignore digital zoom - you got what you deserved."

When I look at cameras I look firstly at the Lens and the quality of some sample pictures. More often than not its the Lens which determines if a camera is any good or not. Thats why I use a Canon 350D with 3 different lens. People are blown away by the quality of my pictures.

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[CxDoo]

You don't need to square, you need to multiply by 4.

MP count = width * height

(2 * width) * (2 * height) = 4 MP counts

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[DudeTheMath]

WTF? To double the "quality" in two dimensions requires a two-fold increase in each dimension, i.e., two squared: four. Try upgrading when it hits 24Mpx.

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[JanneM]

They are also doing the (somewhat understandable) mistake of counting the Canon "Rebel XT" and Canon "350D" as two separate models, though the only single difference is the name. Had flickr been popular here in Japan, you'd have found a "Kiss Digital N" on the list as well.

And it looks a little lazy not to factor in the number of pictures; they have all the data after all.

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[Gr8Apes]

You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!

It's not the time saved, but driving as I wish. You may actually use 0.2 more gallons @ 65 over 75 mph. Is it really worth going 65?

(you should check out gas mileage numbers sometimes. It turns out that 55 is actually one of the more wasteful speeds for some cars)

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[Wordsmith]

There's easily a use, even on the consumer side, for far above 10 MP. But the optics of the camera needs to provide enough detail themselves for that resolution to show you something beyond a lower-res shot. In your example, that presumably wasn't the case. Also, what method were they using for blowing up the 35MM shot? If they were enlarging a scan, what was the resolution on the scan? If the original image was of high enough quality, they SHOULD have been able to generate a much better image with a super-duper-high-res scan of it.

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[Aladrin]

I'll admit that within a certain range this might be right, but if I have an OLD super-high-quality 1 megapixel camera with the world's best lens, vs a brand new el-cheapo $200 8 megapixel camera, I know which one will look better.

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[rgmoore]

A bigger problem is that upping the pixel count won't help unless it was the limiting factor in picture quality before. Taking advantage of increased pixel counts requires good lenses and good technique. Even on a 6 MP camera you can easily get pictures where the limiting factor in quality is a bad lens, poor choice of aperture, or inability to control camera shake. Adding pixels in those cases just enlarges the blur. If the problem was camera shake, adding pixels will often make it worse by reducing sensitivity and giving an even slower shutter speed.

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[cowbutt]

Lens is 90% of your picture. Camera quality the next 8% and megapixels make up the last 2%

On a digicam, I'd say that the preset JPEG quality settings make up at least 50%, reducing the lens' importance to ~40%. If you can shoot raw or TIFF, that's an option, but it'll dramatically increase the cost of storage, and, in the case of raw, the time and effort it takes to get usable pictures. One of the things I look for is a demo shot that includes a leafy tree, to see whether the "best quality" JPEG settings over-compress the image, reducing the leaves to a blotchy green mess.

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[RDW]

It's also worth noting that there are very few individual dSLR models currently in use (even counting those badged differently depending on region and minor upgrades like the D70s), but many barely distinguishable short-lived P&S cameras - i.e., the choice in this market is so large and rapidly evolving that any single P&S model may not rank very highly, even if most users shoot this type of camera. I wonder what proportion of flickr users actually shoot dSLRs in general?

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[Mister Whirly]

So how fast would I have to drive to save 5 minutes?? I suck at math, but would like to arrive early more often...

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[singularity]

The MP war will probably, as you say, be a boring and inevitable one, but I can't see that it will be of any benefit to the consumer. There's no accounting for marketing...

I beg to differ. In 60 years, my 2 GHz machine will be long in the landfill (or recycled, or...) In any event, the machine will be gone.

The photos I am taking with my digital camera, though, will still be around. Maybe I will be showing them to my grandchildren.

Digital cameras are one place where hardware and the quality of the data created are linked. Creating a Word document is the same on a 400MHz machine as it is on a 3GHz machine (well, the end result, at least). Sure, the hardware will be long gone in 100 years, but not the data. The data needs to last as long as possible.

I have not idea what technologies will exist in 60 years when it comes to image manipulation and viewing. Sure, blowing up to building size is one thing, but are you sure that in 100 years that is the ultimate test of an image?

I realize that image quality is limited by a great number of things, including CCD size, lens quality, and so on. But if I am looking at two nearly identical digital cameras, and one is 11MP and the other is 13MP, I am going to spend the little extra money on the 13MP camera, even if right here, right now I cannot tell a difference.

information may want to be free, but I also want it to live as long as it can.

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[killmenow]

It depends. That top o' the line 1MP camera from days gone by would likely snap a picture that looks just as good as today's $200 8MP cameras ... when viewed on a 128x128 cell phone LCD. Possibly even when printed out at standard wallet size prints. But print the two images out as 8x10 photos and I guarantee you the 8MP wins.

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[asynchronous13]

It is an awful way to communicate statistics.

Which is precisely why its perfect for the pointy haired bosses.....

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[tygerstripes]

Honestly, I don't remember the details of their methods for enlargement (it really was a few years ago), but they did take a close look at the shots when they were enlarged and even at that close inspection, there wasn't a lot in it. Both were pretty sharp (black cat-suit, white background - decent edge on it) so I'm assuming the enlargement process was as good as they could manage, although there was a slight granularity in the digital shot.

You've raised an interesting point though: at what point does the cost of high-spec optics become prohibitive enough to make a squillion megapixels pointless? Obviously that'll depend on the cost you're prepared to stomach for your quality camera, but surely your everyday consumer won't stretch too far...? Mostly they would only pay so much for a 35mm camera, however good, and in both digital and 35mm it's the lens quality (the significant contributor to cost, at the high end) that becomes the limiting factor. Isn't it?

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[dodobh]

For point and click/portraits, no. For stuff like landscapes, low light shots, fine artwork, the more the merrier. Of course, these also need a corresponding investment in lenses, which means that a lot of stuff is going to the higher end of things rather than the lower end of prosumer cameras.

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[locofungus]

There's easily a use, even on the consumer side, for far above 10 MP. But the optics of the camera needs to provide enough detail themselves for that resolution to show you something beyond a lower-res shot.

It's not so much the lens system as the sensor size. As the pixels get smaller the integration time has to increase in order to catch enough photons or the noise gets worse. And if you increase the sensor size you need to increase the aperture size as well which has a disproportionate effect on the cost of the lens system if you want to maintain integration times.

Astronomers abandoned film for CCD years ago. But they don't care too much about their sensor size (and they can cool the CCD) and usually have much more leeway on integration times.

But home (and pro) cameras ideally need a sensor that can fit in a 35mm body (especially if you want to use the same lenses).

18Mpixel (6M per separation) would give you similar quality[1] to 100ASA 35mm film if integration times and sensor size aren't an issue. Of course, most sensors don't use a 1:1:1 color separation because for most real world uses a 1:2:1 ratio gives better results.

So for the right sort of image a 10Mpixel camera should be very close to 100ASA 35mm film.

Tim.

[1] To an extent this is going to be subjective because film has random grain and CCD has regular pixels.

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[hackstraw]

OK, the MP and MHz wars are similar but there are differences. For one thing, consumers don't know how to interpret tech specs that well, and for computers there are bunches of them, and I realized the MHz war was silly when the first pentiums came out. But even synthetic and/or "real world" benchmarks are not that good, and different computer systems can score differently on differnet tasks. That will always be the case. There also is the "good enough" factor, and today just about any computer is now good enough for most every user's needs.

Now with MP, the difference is that to achieve 35mm resolution you need between 12 and 25 MP depending on how you look at it to get the same quality, and people who care know this. There is also larger formats like 70mm or exotic ones that would take HUGE MP cameras to reproduce. The difference, like MP3s, is cost, porability, instant gratification, and all that and quality is second to those other factors. For most people, 2-4 MP is more than sufficient.

Personally, I'm about to buy a Canon EOS 30D which is about 8.2MP, but I'm more picky than most snapshot people, but then again this camera is like $1,200, and then the computer, monitor, and software to make this happen costs too. One thing I really like about the higher MP stuff is that you can zoom in and crop to get cool looking abstract stuff that you simply cannot do on a lower MP camera. In all actuality, an 8.2MP picture is too high of a resolution for most purposes. A screen is typically around 2MP. A web browser window is often much less than that, especially if text or other images are on the page. I'm also interested in shooting in RAW, which is not a mainstream desire either. JPEG, like MP3 is OK for most people, even many professionals are OK with JPEG, but again I want the extra quality and control that comes with the RAW image, and then I will convert it to JPEG or PNG as a final product.

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[badasscat]

Mostly they would only pay so much for a 35mm camera, however good, and in both digital and 35mm it's the lens quality (the significant contributor to cost, at the high end) that becomes the limiting factor. Isn't it?

It depends. Certainly you can't just stick any lens on an 8mp camera and expect it'll give you the full resolution that the sensor is capable of.

But even most cheap (and I do mean cheap, sub-$100) zoom lenses are capable of maxing out the resolution of an APS-C-sized 8mp sensor at least at the sweet spot of their focal length. Prime lenses are almost universally capable of resolving far more detail than even 35mm film can provide. You have to remember that the optics used on DSLR's were initially developed for 35mm film, and had to be good enough for professionals that were blowing images up to poster size. Not all consumer-level lenses are capable of such detail, but the technology did trickle down.

The bottom line is that lenses are generally not the limiting factor in resolution on DSLR cameras. They are often part of the problem in cheaper pocket cams, but when you're buying a camera from a company that made their names in 35mm, and sticking a lens on it designed for 35mm (or adapted from 35mm, as Canon's and Nikon's digital lenses are) with technology that has been perfected over many years, then it is a rare case when the lens does not outperform the sensor.

I'll also say that while there are some differences in the optics between the pro-level and consumer-level lenses made by Canon, Nikon, Sigma, and other major lens manufacturers, most of the difference is in construction quality and features, not necessarily in the quality of the glass. Canon's 50mm 1.8 prime lens, for example, is a sub-$100 lens that can resolve upwards of 125 lp/mm - higher than some of their professional L-series lenses at that focal length. (Though that number alone won't tell you much about overall lens performance, but it does serve as an example of how good the glass *can* be in a cheap lens, and often is.)

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[Anonymous Coward]

i'd take a 6 mp camera with good depth of focus over a 50 mp camera with the standard crappy depth of focus.

but that's just me.

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[Amouth]

I am wondering why this is news.. i mean realy... did anyone not thing the Rebel TX would be #1

$ for $ it is the best one out there..

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[Amouth]

Your right some compact cameras have good lenses .. i had a Vivatar - the lens was wonderful on it.. it took pictures i never thought a 2.1 mp camera could. but then it died on me so i got a rebel tx.. spent weeks finding a lens i liked for it.. got a sigma 18-125.. ho so much better.

the sensor size makes alot of diffrence but when you get to the dSLR's that realy isn't the worrie as all of them have good sensors.. the worrie is the lens... while i like my sigma i some times use a friends canon lens.. it is a night and day diffrence.. but he paid 600$ where i paid 200$ for the lens..

personaly i am waiting for that lens that uses micro lens' so that you can do the focusing in software. http://graphics.stanford.edu/~renng/

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[ceoyoyo]

Fortunately for digital after a certain point the bigger the picture gets the farther away you are when you look at it, so resolution doesn't really make the slightest bit of difference. I found six megapixels to be more than enough to enlarge a picture to any size you care to. I have two hanging on my wall that are 45" across -- the biggest the printer could print, and they look great. I've done the same with film and, if it's good, high quality film, it might look a bit better from close up... but nobody looks at it close up.

Now, if you're cropping then it's nice to have some disposable resolution. As you pointed out though, to actually get that kind of resolution you start to require large, heavy, expensive lenses.

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[ceoyoyo]

That's mostly true of you're going around shooting at f8 all the time, but consumers in particular don't do that. Cheap lenses resolving power drops off very quickly as you start to get into less than ideal shooting situations (ie reality). The 50 1.8 is kind of an anomaly too -- which is why you'll find that most advanced amateurs have one.

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[Anonymous Coward]

As the pixels get smaller the integration time has to increase in order to catch enough photons or the noise gets worse. And if you increase the sensor size you need to increase the aperture size as well which has a disproportionate effect on the cost of the lens system if you want to maintain integration times.

Here we go again. Myths and mysteries of digital camera systems. Given a pinhole camera, the number of photons captured by a sensor is not proportional to the sensor size, only to the angle of view and to the percentage of active sensor area in that angle of view. Real cameras aren't pinhole cameras, of course, so the aperture has some influence on the number of photons that reach the sensor. The aperture is usually given in relation to sensor size. A camera with 1:2.8 and a small sensor has a much smaller hole through which the photons must fall onto the sensor than a camera with the same 1:2.8 aperture and a bigger sensor because 1:2.8 is "focal length":"aperture diameter", normalized to a focal length of 1. At the same angle of view, a bigger sensor requires a longer focal length, so the same numerical aperture actually is a wider hole. That's why a 1:2.8 camera with 35mm (so called full frame) sensor "needs less light" than a 1:2.8 camera with an APS-C sized sensor (roughly two thirds of the diagonal of a full frame sensor). There are other differences though: The larger absolute aperture results in a smaller depth of focus (the range of distances at which objects are in focus). This is often a desired effect in portrait photography, but other kinds of photography tend to require great depth of focus. The camera with the bigger sensor has to be stopped down to a bigger "f-value" to achieve the same depth of focus, and when you do that, you get the exact same low light behaviour of the smaller sensor camera.

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[ceoyoyo]

Be careful... the higher the resolution the higher the noise as well (barring other factors). Canon has been very good about keeping the resolution of their dSLRs down until they can produce a higher resolution sensor that has similar or better noise characteristics.

Once you get to a certain level of resolution noise becomes MUCH more noticeable than a difference of a few megapixels.

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[mmusson]

Yeah you are right. Thanks for correcting my mistake. Serves me right for trying to make a post before first coffee.

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[blahtree]

Actually, I think the MP war is fading. The main difference between this and the MHz war is that the MP war is moderated by the need to store the pictures somewhere. The bigger the files get, the fewer pictures you can store on the same card. Consumers don't like this, I'm sure.

There was a huge race at the beginning to get up to 4MP, but past there, progress has been relatively slowly trickling upwards.

There are many other characteristics that consumers use to compare cameras: price, size/weight, LCD size, ease of use, zoom range, flash performance, etc.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"focal length":"aperture diameter"

Scratch that. Aperture diameter equals "focal length":x. Same focal length, bigger x -> smaller aperture. Longer focal length, same x -> bigger aperture.

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[ColdWetDog]

Yeah, talking about a megapixel war and Flikr at the same timne invokes some cognitive dissonance. If you are uploading at 800 x 600, you don't need 10 megapixels to get the image - even if you do some heavy cropping.

I don't think you will see even prosumer cameras much above 10 megapixels. Above that level, cameras become a bit harder to handle because you have to control for camera movement much better and you have to have at least middle of the road lenses to get the full impact of the capture size. Digital camera makers need to work on dynamic range and low light capabilities more than just size - something that impacts every photographer on a regular basis.

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[hullabalucination]

Interestingly, these statistics show that most of these cameras are solidly in the middle "pro-sumer" market...

I was very, very surprised to not see any members of the Nikon Coolpix or Fuji Finepix consumer lines show up, as these seem to be quite popular among my acquaintances and small business clients. There's also a Kodak line (name escapes me now) that folks seem to be taking a liking to. The Finepix line in particular has been popular with my clients in real estate.

We can argue that the prosumer cameras are much more popular among the general population than I realized, or that Flickr "skews" to an audience that takes its photography much more seriously and has the bucks to scratch that itch. So, which is it?

* * * * *

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
--Mark Twain

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[IAmTheDave]

Pro users - the ones that update and use Flickr as they describe - a portfolio of sorts - if they are anything like me, started out with a P&S and quickly upgraded to a prosumer level DSLR for fine-tuning their art.

P&S are awesome for capturing memories of vacations, birthdays, new additions to the family, etc. I love that they are small and thin enough that I can carry a 6mp one in my pocket almost always.

But P&S leads to a desire to start capturing better shots - from ominous storms on the horizon to sunsets to raw human imagry... and that leads us to want a DSLR. I have #6, the NIKON D70s (as, apparently, do many people) and f-in love it. My P&S is responsible for the majority of my pictures, but the D70s is responsible for the majority of my pictures on Flickr.

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[kaizenfury7]

But what if people wish to choose cameras based on what other people are using? And it's not that their stupid, but they simply don't wish to spend the time to choose a camera. But knowing that it'd be dumb to just randomly pick one, they decide to base their decision on the judgement of the masses (right or wrong). This may not be the type of decision-making that yields the better camera for a person, but can yield a camera that's 'good enough', or even if not, there will be thousands and millions of others people who suffered the same fate and will diminish the 'feeling like a fool' if the camera is a dud.

Personally, I spent a few days doing my research, but I can see someone who doesn't have time to make the effort because all they want is to just get a picture of their kids to their grandmas.

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[daviddennis]

I have a Canon EOS D30, which was the first sort of affordable digital SLR. It cost me about $3,300 when I bought it in 2001.

I would like to replace it with a new model eventually, because I'd like a camera that "warmed up" faster. With a modern DSLRs like your 30D, you can take a picture microseconds after you flip the on/off switch. My D30 takes about a minute, and during that minute it has to warm up, a lot of pictures I really wanted to take have been lost.

The D30 is otherwise a great camera and I would have no real desire to replace it with one of today's modern cameras if it weren't for the speed issue. Its 3.5 megapixels have been more than adequate for my needs, and I like the fact that the smaller photos take less disk space. I have saved every photo I've ever taken with the camera and they're all set up nice and easy in iPhoto.

People are not impressed by my camera's megapixel rating, but they are with my pictures. And in the end, that's what matters.

D

Re:Stats

[DudeTheMath]

So normally you'd go 65 mph over 8 miles; that's 8 / 65 hours, times 60 to get it in minutes, is 7.385. To save five minutes, you want to do those 8 miles in 2.385 minutes, so that's 8 / 2.385, times 60 to get it in mph, is 201.3.

Call me before you get on the road, will you? I'll stay home.

Seriously, I picked these numbers to "save" less than a minute in the example (I'm a recovering math teacher, we like to make our problems come out to a round figure).

I have two personal cases that reflect the usefulness of this philosophy.

The first is an 11 mile freeway trip with a 55 mph limit on most of it (about a mile has a 50 mph limit). I kept wanting to do 70, which the Troopers frown on, and so I decided to find out the difference between doing 62 (which I can get away with) and 70 on that trip. I came up with a difference of about 72 seconds. Since the light at the bottom of the ramp on my homebound journey has a two-minute cycle, I had only a 60% chance of getting an earlier light by going 70, but at the cost of raising my chance of a ticket from effectively 0 to something unknown but definitely positive. I'd have to average 76 mph to guarantee getting the previous light; that would also about guarantee a ticket if there was a trooper anywhere on the route.

The other is rural two-lane U.S. highway with towns averaging every ten miles. The highway is marked 55 mph, with occasional marked passing areas, but the towns are marked 35 or 30, and usually four-lane allowing easy passing inside town limits. I'd like to go 65 on the highway, but I'd frequently come up behind someone going slower (sometimes as low as 45). I got pretty good at estimating in my head how much time I'd save by passing the "slowpoke" on the highway rather than waiting for the next town. Most of the time, it was less than a minute. If it was 90 seconds or more, I'd usually start looking for a chance to pass; but it was never more than about three minutes, which is almost negligible on a trip of about two hours.

Knowing I'm only "losing" a couple of minutes by following patiently instead of gnashing my teeth because I can't get a break in oncoming traffic does wonders for my blood pressure.

Re:Stats

[93 Escort Wagon]

"That's because megapixel counts are misleading. You need to square the number of pixels to double the quality of the image. Jumps from 6 to 8 to 10 sound big but are negligible. I'll think about upgrading when the 36-64 megapixel cameras are out."

Actually even 8-10 megapixels is more than most people will really need because the lenses they buy are not sharp enough to match that level of resolution. I was reading a discussion where a few pros were trying out the Nikon D200 - a "prosumer" camera with 12.8 megapixel resolution. The lens some people buy with it, a rather nice $750 18-200mm zoom, didn't quite make the grade (from a pro standpoint) at the extremes of magnification - and this was with a lens that, from a consumer standpoint, is higher-end than most.

I'm not sure why people forget that the glass is the most important part of the camera, regardless of whether it's digital or film.

Re:Stats

[Lumpy]

with 4GB CF/SD cards costing $79.99 I don't thing it drastically increases the cost of storage. now older cameras can not take advantage of the faster write/read times. My Fuji S1 takes forever to store a uncompressed TIFF compared to a RAW on my digital rebel... but cost of storage is not a concern with everything dirt cheap now days.

Now, getting a SLR camera system with the benefits of really high end lenses... that is very important. Canon has upwards of $60,000.00US lenses while Nikon does not. Reason being that all pros use canon for the really insane high end stuff... so the digicams get to use the same technology.

My only beef is that I have to buy a 12megapixel camera soon, Magazines are now requireing 12=24 megapixel images for publication.

Re:Stats

[Gr8Apes]

To save five minutes...in mph, is 201.3.
Call me before you get on the road, will you? I'll stay home.

Unless you're on the Autobahn in a less populated area. :)

Seriously though, your argument is valid, except for the 2 hour trip. There it becomes an issue of the frequency of the slow-pokes and their speed vs the ability to pass safely - ie, oncoming traffic frequency. That becomes a quite complicated scenario. Becoming frustrated about it though, helps no one.

Re:Stats

[rgmoore]

I don't think you will see even prosumer cameras much above 10 megapixels. Above that level, cameras become a bit harder to handle because you have to control for camera movement much better and you have to have at least middle of the road lenses to get the full impact of the capture size.

It's easy to exaggerate how hard it is to take sharp pictures with today's cameras. Yes, you won't take full advantage of a 10 MP sensor if you're taking casual snapshots, but it's not rocket science. If you have a good tripod and use your lens at something close to its optimum aperture, you can get sharp pictures even with cheap consumer-grade zooms. If you have a reasonably fast prime and good light you can challenge your sensor hand-held.

I think that you could probably get away with doubling today's pixel counts on APS-C sensors before things got completely out of hand. You'd definitely need good technique to take full advantage of those sensors, but it would certainly be possible with a good tripod, remote release, and a lens that was either a good prime or a zoom that was high-end consumer or pro quality. I think that the biggest worry would be that you'd start to see diffraction effects just past f/8, so most lenses- even good ones- would have a very limited range of useful apertures. I think that there would still be a good sized market for a camera like that, though. There are plenty of serious amateurs who already have gear that could take advantage of a ~20 MP sensor and would love the larger file sizes.

Digital camera makers need to work on dynamic range and low light capabilities more than just size - something that impacts every photographer on a regular basis.

I think that both concerns are overblown. Current sensors already have substantially better dynamic range than typical output media, either paper or screen. They have nasty characteristics when you blow out highlights, but that just means that you should expose to protect the highlights and use the DR to recover the rest of the scene. As for low-light ability, current generation DSLRs knock the daylights out of anything that film ever managed, and despite the complaints of pixel peepers, increased pixel counts aren't going to hurt in that area. It's true that smaller pixel sizes increase per-pixel noise, but the increased pixel count means that the resulting noise is finer grained. If you print at the same size, there's no obvious difference in noise levels. OTOH, the increased detail from the higher resolution sensor is apparent in prints when you aren't pushing the sensitivity. I'll take the resolution any day.

Re:Stats

[johnsmit90210]

"They do not discuss the methodology.. They also do not provide numbers nor graphs. It is an awful way to communicate statistics."

I'm not going for points on this. But in reply I'll say: Use a little common sense and understand that they want to relate general data to the public (for various reasons, including the PR and yay for consumers feedback they just received) and you can bet your last dollar that the companies purchasing this information will get a goddamned detailed report on what it is people are and aren't using. Statistics like this are gold to fortune companies and you're looking for a point by point? Think like a drone not a person! :)

Re:Stats

[Eivind]

I agree. A minute is simply unacceptable.

My old digital camera needed 10-15 seconds, and I personally found even this very annoying on a number of occasions.

The 350D i use today is instant. It isn't *really* instant, the manual claims it needs 0.1 seconds from poweron to first shutter-release, but that is quick enough that if you flick the switch with your thumb, hold the camera to your eye, point and shoot, the camera will be ready before you are.

That's just the first single photo though, the camera needs another 2-3 seconds to fully boot. If you hold the shutter down (which should give you like 3 shots/second what you get is:

• 0.1 second wait.
• Single shot.
• 2-3 second wait.
• single shot.
• 0.3 second wait.
• single shot.
• etc (until the buffer fills, at which point the speed drops to that of your memory-card)

Re:Stats

[daviddennis]

It's probably more like 30 seconds, but it sure has FELT like a minute at times.

0.1 seconds is probably not going to hurt. I don't think the human mind can even comprehend that little time.

But often my camera timed out, I had it to my head and I was trying to take a picture, and THEN it started warming up. That was poison for pictures :-(.

D

Quantity versus quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously asking: how does knowing what brand and model cameras are popular translate to knowing what brand and model to buy for oneself? There are a lot of Hondas on the road, but everyone knows there's more to the buying decision.

I know you could theoretically compare brand/model trends to the "best" pictures but that still boils down to a subjective and operator-skill determination. I am a photographer by trade, so my using a disposable camera would not necessarily preclude my photos being superior to a novice using a 999 megapixel digital monster.

Re:Quantity versus quality

[goombah99]

Yes, and web statistics show most people use Internet Explorer so that must be the best Browser.

Re:Quantity versus quality

[Ecks]

Yes but most people default to using Internet Explorer because it's what's installed when they turn on their computer. People are choosing these digital cameras on merit, not because it's the equipment that comes by default.

-- Chris

Re:Quantity versus quality

[bcattwoo]

And I am going to go download the top ten most popular tunes off of iTunes right now! I'm sure I'll love them!

Small error

[KokorHekkus]

Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL and Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL are the same camera AFAIK, just differnent names for different markets. It's called 350D in Europe, Digital Rebel in the US... rest of the world I don't know.

Guess it says something about the demography of the posters though.

Re:Small error

[xanthines-R-yummy]

I concur.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos350d/

Re:Small error

[jcarkeys]

The 350D is the same as the Digital Rebel XT. The 300D is the same as the Digital Rebel. In Japan, they called the original the Kiss Digital and the 350D the Kiss n Digital. Now they'll have the 400D/Rebel XTi/Kiss X joining the list in a bit.

Re:Small error

[Xiph]

Actually not entirely true, the digital rebel is the EOS 300d, not the 350d, the 350d is the digital rebel xt.

There's a fast comparison of those two at dcresource
Basically 350 has a few improvements, it has more internal memory (hence 14 instead of shot bursts), it has usb 2.0 instead of 1.1, its just under 15% lighter and has a better battery, iaacte (i am a camera test engineer (at Phase One))

Re:Small error

[CrazyJim1]

So you're trying to infer from the data that Europe knows how to take better pictures than people in the US? They both got the same equipment, but just one is better at usin it? Nudge nudge, know what I mean? Do you like photography, eh?

Re:Small error

[Hijacked Public]

This list shows the Digital Rebel XT and the 350D, respectively American and European model designations for the same camera. The Digital Rebel (no. 10 on the list) is actually a 300D.

I'm just amazed to see so many digital SLRs on the list. These things aren't cheap, and they typically require some minor knowledge of a) photography in general, and b) digital post processing, to get decent pictures out of.

Funny...the captcha for this post is 'sharpen'.

Re:Small error

[savala]

Almost, but not quite. 350D and Digital Rebel XT (so positions 1 and 3) are the same.
Digital Rebel is the 300D, while Digital Rebel XTi is the 400D.

Also, here's the original (much more extensive) source, which is way more useful than just some stupid blog linking to it. Also good to see is this (month old) graph of the relative movement over time.

Re:Small error

[Savage-Rabbit]

...Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL...

Well it sure sounds like a product name crafted for the US market. I keep waiting for some USian with a mean sense of humor to suggests the name 'Canyonero' to Ford's marketing people as the name for their next SUV. I bet the thing would stand a good chance of hitting the market before they figured the gag out.

Re:Small error

[Xiph]

grr. lack of editing capabilities... (adding the number 3) Actually not entirely true, the digital rebel is the EOS 300d, not the 350d, the 350d is the digital rebel xt. There's a fast comparison of those two at dcresource Basically 350 has a few improvements, it has more internal memory (hence 14 instead 3 of shot bursts), it has usb 2.0 instead of 1.1, its just under 15% lighter and has a better battery, iaacte (i am a camera test engineer (at Phase One)). oh well, my own bloody fault for not reading the preview thoroughly

Re:Small error

[clickclickdrone]

With names like the Kiss Digital or Digital Rebel on offer, thank $Diety I live in Europe and get a sensible name like 350D, well, 300D in my case.

Re:Small error

[Neon Spiral Injector]

The Japanese names for these cameras are: 300D = Kiss Digital, 350D = Kiss Digital N, 400D = Kiss Digital X.

Re:Small error

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the stats say "number of photos", not "number of users". This will skew the results towards the more expensive cameras: enthousiasts who spend the money on a dSLR are likely to be more active with it. It would be interesting to see a list op number of users per camera. The combination gives an indication of how user friendly each model is.

And yes, the list is impressive. Canone 350D, Digital Rebel XT, Nikon 50/70, or even more expensive: note that both the Canon 20D and its successor 30D are both in the list as well -- Canon has a large chunk of the active market, given these numbers.

Re:Small error

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes yes yes... but does it run Linux?

Re:Small error

[AK Marc]

I'm just amazed to see so many digital SLRs on the list. These things aren't cheap, and they typically require some minor knowledge of a) photography in general, and b) digital post processing, to get decent pictures out of.

With about 30 seconds of training ("here's how you set it to full automatic and here's the zoom") I taught my mother (flashing 12:00 on the VCR and calls me about every other time she tries to play a DVD) how to take photos with my digital SLR. It's no harder than any other camera, other than the size. Of course, with the settings like that, it's not going to be much better. It's only when you are trying for some effect where they start to get complicated. However, all other things being equal, the DSLRs will beat most cameras because of the choice of lenses (if you drop $1000+ for a camera, what's another $200+ for a zoom lens) and the higher pixel count. A good DSLR is no harder to use than a regular point-and-click camera at its fully automatic settings.

Re:Small error

[EvanED]

The improvements from the Rebel to the Rebel XT (300 to 350) are definitely non-trivial, and that site doesn't do it justice really. dpreview has a better list. The DIGIC II is a huge upgrade, Canon unlocked a number of "custom functions" like mirror lockup (even if it was more a negative in the Rebel instead of an improvement in the XT), the faster operation is a huge advantage, etc.

The changes between the Rebel and XT seem a lot more defined and important than the improvements from the XT to the new XTi.

Re:Small error

[Xiph]

you're absolutely right, the reason i might be a bit biased and make it sound trivial (i tried not to) is that i'm used to working with high end medium format cameras, due to the fact that i work as a test engineer at Phase One (we make 40.000 digital backs), but as part of the software test suites, i cameras from other vendors as well. (i'm basically writing this to shout out "I have fun with pricey toys for a living")

Anyway, most of the companies listed on flickr will have new cameras coming out within the next couple of months (like the eos 400), so if you're looking to buy a new camera, just hold your horses, since the current models will all drop in price by christmas :).
 
  yes i know they do constantly, but it's a new version drop, not the current steady price decline.

Re:Small error

[Anonymous Coward]

its all about Andre Agassi... you know, The Rebel.

Re:Small error

[Hijacked Public]

Actually the problem is that nearly all DSLRs produce soft photos straight out of the camera, even with good lenses. With out of the box settings the photos from my P&S Fuji S5200 are sharper than my 30D with L glass attached. Even if I max out the 30D's sharpening they aren't all that much better. The same is true for color saturation. And that is if I shoot in JPG instead of RAW. The image data processing in most P&S cameras is geared toward people who take their memory cards straight from the camera to the printer. They apply a lot of in camera sharpening and usually oversatuate color. In camera processing in a DSLR, at least Nikons and Canons, is geared toward leaving some room for more capable PC based lab work. Of course, anyone shooting with a $200 zoom probably isn't all that critical of image quality. Not that that is bad, the camera is just capable of much more.

Re:Small error

[AK Marc]

Of course, anyone shooting with a $200 zoom probably isn't all that critical of image quality. Not that that is bad, the camera is just capable of much more.

Exactly my point. They are perfectly fine for mindless point and click operation. However, they are capable of much more. Aside from the size, they are the best of both worlds. Oh, and if someone does snap photos with them and wants some image correction, most places that print photos will gladly screw up the sharpness or oversaturate the colors for you. Even the automated kiosks have such features.

Fairly high end cameras

[binaryDigit]

Most of the cameras are all relatively high end stuff:

1. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
2. NIKON D50
3. Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL
4. Canon EOS 20D
5. NIKON D70
6. NIKON D70s
7. Canon PowerShot S2 IS
8. Canon EOS 30D
9. Sony CYBERSHOT
10. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL

Don't know if this is really useful for the "average" consumer, but does give an interesting view of who posts on Flickr. It would be interesting to compare this with other sites like pbase and see how the camera distribution changes as the demographics of the users (and the intended audience of the site) changes.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[LiquidCoooled]

Do all digital cameras produce exif information?
I have had a few digital cameras now over the years which are just basic common models and have never had any need to examine the exif info.

Anyone know of the simplest way I can check for exif information on my historical images? (from Windows)

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[BadAnalogyGuy]

In Explorer (the shell), right-click the image file and select Properties. Select the right-most tab and click on the Image Details button about halfway down the dialog. It will show you the EXIF data for that image.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Itsacon]

I still use a 35mm camera, and scan the negatives with a film scanner. Never checked what kind of EXIF data would come out of that, but I suspect the scanner tags the images itself. Imagine if that got into that list, would be nice if people went into a camera store asking for a "Nikon CoolScan" for their holiday snaps, and were handed a 3kg scanner :-P

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[mgblst]

Sony cybershot? Well, wow, lets not get too specific. Is it the 2 megapixel model released 5 years ago, or the 10 megapixel released this week? Or one of the ones in between.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[bwave]

7. Canon PowerShot S2 IS
I have this camera and can tell you it sucks.

(I also own the PowerShot S80, **MUCH** better camera, and was alot cheaper)
I prefer the Fuji's I've owned the best, I bought into the hype that Canon was awesome, I won't buy another one.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[eggoeater]

Wow! Sony only has 1 camera on the list. This is both surprising considering how many different models they market and their ubiquity around the world, and at the same time not surprising since their reputation is in the tank.

A friend of mine had a Sony camera a couple years ago. The LCD stopped working and it was still under warranty. They told him that only the parts were under warranty and it would cost $180(US) in labor to fix it.
He tossed the camera and vowed never to buy anything from Sony ever again.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[LiquidCoooled]

Excellent, thank you - I now know that my current and previous camera produce the information, but my first one doesn't.

Incidentally, after discovering this I found out I can add the Camera model as a column in the Details view of explorer.
To do this, click "View" and select "Details".
Then once it lists the details, right click one of the column headers and put a tick in "Camera model" (if its not shown, select "More" and it will give a dialog showing more available columns).
The camera model will then be listed for all images in that folder.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Hijacked Public]

The Fuji S5000 and its successors are astoundingly good point & shoots for their price. Full manual controls, good high ISO performance, excellent metering, SLR style body, image quality better than P&Ss costing twice as much.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[dreemkill]

relatively high end? the only "high end" cameras in that least is the D70s and the 30D.....both of which are lower-end/midrange/prosumer DSLRs.

all this list shows a scale of how cheap cameras were, and became.. Rebel XT (cheap, and a piece of shit) D50 (cheap, largely better than the Rebel XT tho) 350D (another digital rebel.. around 500 bucks) the 20D is nice, now we're going up in cost..

D70 is decent, but also around 500 bucks for the body.. D70s around 700 for a body..30D is great.. beautiful camera, for around 1200 bucks (body) and finally the digital rebel, also cheap.

this just shows that people ran out to buy cheap DSLRs to join the crowd.. doesn't prove anything valuable to me.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[CallistoLion]

Most of the cameras are all relatively high end stuff:

Certainly DSLR's are the high end when compared to point and shoots, but the top 3 positions on the list are the makers' low end models. You can buy 8 D50's for 1 D2X, or 11 DRebels for one 1D Mark II.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[thelost]

The top 4 cameras are sub $1000 cameras. I realize everyone isn't prepared to pay $800 for a camera, but they aren't professional. I would but them in the high end consumer, amateur photographer category, so yeah I would say it's useful. I own a 350D myself. It's my first Digital SLR camera and I am very happy with it. A list like this would have influenced me.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[sim82]

It could also be the case that dslr owners (all cameras on the list but the powershot and cybershot are dslrs) upload their photos more often without post processing. I'm not sure how many programs keep the EXIF info (I don't think gimp saves the EXIF info from the original photo). I own a nikon d50 and generally the photos straight out of the cam (unlike the ones from my sony cybershot) look fine without postprocessing.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Neon Spiral Injector]

The Rebel XT is the same camera as the 350D. Rebel is just the US name for it. Most of the rest of the world calls it the 350D, and it is known as the "EOS Kiss Digital N" in Japan.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[slick_rick]

They did the same thing to me on a brand new $800 video camera back in the late 90s. I vowed to never buy anything Sony ever again, and so far I haven't.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[shellbeach]

A list like this would have influenced me.

Really??? You'd base your choice of an $800+ camera on a list that doesn't give any indication of photo quality or camera usability, but simply indicates the mass volume of pictures taken?

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Katchina'404]

As far as I know :

- Nikon D70s is a barely upgraded D70
- Canon 30D is a barely upgraded 20D
- Canon Digital Rebel XT is the US name of Canon EOS 350D

Yeah, I'd have to agree with you on the 350D and D50 being "cheap" consumer-level cameras, although they do produce great images, using pretty much the same sensors than the mid-range 20D/30D and D70/D70s. Most differences are in the control interface (better ergonomics for manual or semi-auto modes on the mid-range models than on the consumer ones, slower shutter). Given the same lens and ordinary conditions, however, I believe a D50 will yield pretty much the same results as a D70s.

Now don't take me wrong here, the extra ergonomics on the mid-range models (and on the pro models as well) can probably be of a great help while shooting in difficult conditions. For example, the distinct aperture and speed dials as well as the LCD-backlight on my D70 would be sorely missed if I were to use a D50. And I certainly miss the lack of a D200-like selector on my D70 to switch from AF-S to AF-C (although I can switch, I have to browser 2 or 3 levels in the menu, a real pain).

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[thelost]

well why don't we look at what this list potentially says.

A great deal of the users on flickr are amateur photographers, I have recently become interested myself. From my experience of flickr the people on their know their kit. So if a great many flickr users are using entry level canons then that is enough to at least recommend them to me.

From there I go to a place like dpreview.com, check out their review of the canon eos 350D and see that it is both a good camera and reasonably priced (within my budget).

So, to recap:

* a great many people on flickr use the canon eos 350D
* websites that give extensive useful reviews like the eos 350D
* the price is within my budget as an amateur photographer, to get me started with my first digital SLR

does that answer your question?

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[cbreaker]

I think it might seem surprising to someone that's not into photography that Canon completely ownes the market. Nikon makes decent stuff, but 6/10 of those cameras listed are Canon, and for good reason. They make good cameras.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Doctor Memory]

I would guess that most of them do. I bought a bottom-of-the-line Panasonic four years ago, and it had it. My Apitek "pen-cam", however...

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Hijacked Public]

The word you missed was 'relatively'. Relative to the entire digital camera market the D50 is high end. Relatively speaking a 1D is 'low end' compared with a Hasselblad H2D-39, or a Leica with a Summicron, or the camera that takes the photos on Google Maps....

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[cbreaker]

Wow, you seem a bit angry. I think you should chill out.

The Rebel XT is a very nice consumer DSLR. Canon packed in almost all the features you find on the very expensive professional models, to lesser degrees (Less RAM for rapid-fire shots, no ISO 3200, etc.) It uses a Canon sensor and it's a very good one - the photos you see from the Rebel XT are really quite something, and when you compare it to even the most expensive Nikons, the Rebel usually produces a better image.

I haven't found anything on the camera to be a "peice of shit." It's sturdy as hell. I'm banged the shit out of mine and it still looks like now (although, I got the Black one, so no silver paint chipping off to make it look bad.)

In fact, if you say the Rebel XT is a "peice of shit" then you're saying the entire Canon line of DSLR's is also a peice of shit. The XT is made side-by-side to all their more expensive models. The original Rebel used the same sensor as their "pro" 10D. The Rebel XT shares many of the same charactistics as the 20D.

It's a consumer camera that puts out images like the big boys. If you're pissed off that the average enthusiast now has this ability with a low cost DSLR, then get over yourself.

Let me ask you a question: Do you really think people went out and purchased $800 cameras to "join the crowd" with big, heavy DSLR cameras that you can't take everywhere, or do you think that the reason people are buying DSLR's now is because they're affordable, offer excelent performance, and have interchangable lenses? I'm thinking the latter.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think gimp saves the EXIF info from the original photo

I just checked GIMP 2.0, and it does save EXIF info from the original photo, by default. There is an option not to save it, though.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[radish]

The 20D isn't really sub-$1000, for example J&R still have it listed at $1100, and B&H have it at $990. These figures are before tax & shipping.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[OldeTimeGeek]

Or maybe it just shows that Flickr users aren't representative of digital camera users as a whole. The three top selling camera producers are Canon, Sony and Kodak. Sony shows up in the list once and Kodak not at all. Sony really hasn't had anything in the high-end space, so naturally they wouldn't show up. Kodak's high-end cameras are very expensive ($10,000+) so naturally wouldn't be there either. Nikon's presence on the list is far higher than you would expect based upon their sales figures (which is fine with me, because I have a Nikon), which tends to support the list being non-representative.

As was pointed out earlier, the list tends toward higher-end cameras, so unless you are looking for a DSLR, you probably shouldn't be using it to figure out what camera that you should buy.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Fred_A]

7. Canon PowerShot S2 IS
I have this camera and can tell you it sucks.

Thank you for that argumented and informative comment :)

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Cid Highwind]

Sony's repair service sucks, but it's the sensor noise that's really turned me off their digital cameras. Photos taken in anything less than daylight look like a poorly tuned analog TV. Ick. Next time I'm getting a Canon...

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Moofie]

It's a useful data point, nothing more and nothing less.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Moofie]

"this just shows that people ran out to buy cheap DSLRs to join the crowd.. doesn't prove anything valuable to me."

Wow. You sound like an audiophile. I'm sure they didn't buy cheap DSLRs in order to learn how to take pictures, because everybody knows that you can only take good pictures with a zillion dollar camera.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA...Sony's cameras don't specify the model number in the EXIF information, so they all get lumped into the same group.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[curunir]

Wow! Sony only has 1 camera on the list.

The article addresses this point. Sony's cybershot cameras don't save the specific model number in the EXIF information, so whoever created this list wasn't able to separate them out into individual groups.

But this makes the observation about Sony's failure to get market penetration in this space even more astute since the combined grouping of all cybershot cameras still only placed 9th. It's therefore unlikely that any one of their cameras even cracked the top ten. I think this shows how important a history of camera making is when it comes to making a quality digital camera. Companies like Canon and Nikon who have 30+ years of experience making quality lenses for their SLR lines are thoroughly beating Sony and other companies like it that only have a history of making consumer electronics.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Tuzanor]

Befor the advent of digital, Nikon ruled the high end photography market. However, with the advent of digital, canon tool it's background in sensors (scanners, etc) and an already established photography market and just plain pulled ahead. They have better image stabalization, lower noise, and more advanced lenses. Next time you're at a sporting event, you'll see red rings around the edges of most of the leses. These are Canon's L series lenses, which are their "luxury" or high end lenses. There's a reason they're used extensivley.

Now that being said, the Nikons are still fine cameras/lenses and their IS isn't shitty or the cameras aren't extremely noisey. If you had a pile of Nikon lenses already and were looking to make the switch to digital, there's nothing wrong with continueing with a nikon camera. If you were starting fresh now, I'd go with Canon.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[cbreaker]

I definately agree with you. I've used a few Nikon cameras and they're really a nice cameras. Like you said, Canon's sensors are among the best that anyone makes, and it shows in the images - but you do have to be a bit picky to seriously notice any quality differences between the Canon and the Nikon images. Mostly, it's noticable at higher ISO settings, which you don't normally use unless it's very dark and flashes aren't going to work for you.

You do have to make a descision if you're already into photography - do you forgo your investment in Nikon or X brand lenses, just to get a little better performance, or do you stick with your brand, knowing that eventually Nikon will produce something that rivals the best Canon?

It does remind me of an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit - we, as a society, are obsessed with The Best. Usually, you don't need the best, and you'll be very happy without it.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[jrumney]

Really??? You'd base your choice of an $800+ camera on a list that doesn't give any indication of photo quality or camera usability, but simply indicates the mass volume of pictures taken?

It should be a fairly good indicator. People who take a lot of photos are likely to put a lot of research into choosing their camera. And people who have user-friendly cameras that take good quality pictures are likely to take more photos and post them publically. Both these factors would lead to good cameras being well represented in the stats.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[jrumney]

I think this shows how important a history of camera making is when it comes to making a quality digital camera.

I had a Sony cybershot 7 years ago (until it was stolen from my hotel room with 2 months worth of travel photos on it). Back then, Sony had the best CCDs due to their video experience, and were putting decent lenses on their cameras too. The low-light performance was fantastic, I've never seen another digital compact come anywhere near it. The traditional camera manufacturers were still way behind on the electronics side, Canon I think got its head start around this time since it was the only company that had been in both the video and still camera market. More recently, Sony have cut their manufacturing costs now that digital cameras are just another consumer electronics item, and their reputation is in the pits, but I'd still rank theirs above some of the Nikon and Kodak cameras at the low end of the market.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[NMerriam]

Rebel XT (cheap, and a piece of shit)

whaa? You sound like comic book guy. The Rebels are fantastic cameras any pro photographer would have killed for 20 years ago. That they are available now to regular consumers is fantastic.

Pair an older rebel with a 50/1.8 and an amateur photographer could put together a kit for $500 that is capable of shooting professional glossy magazine covers.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[shellbeach]

People who take a lot of photos are likely to put a lot of research into choosing their camera.

Well, except that from TFA, the "Sony CYBERSHOT" listing most probably reflected photos taken with Sony camera phones. Don't really think they rate with an EOS 350D somehow ...

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, as funny as it would be, it couldn't happen. The scanner doesn't generate jpegs like the camera does, it just pumps the raw image data to your scanning program, which creates the EXIF.

But then, that could lead to the even funnier situation of people going to the camera shop and asking for a GiMP...

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[The Cydonian]

Not just that, I specifically strip all EXIF information from my photos at Flickr (there's a setting on Flickr to do just this), see no absolutely no reason as to why the rest of the world needs to know details about the equipment I use, specifically when I'm not discussing cameras with anyone out there. I know a couple of other people who also do just that.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[dreemkill]

i got rid of my D50 and went bck to the D100. yeah yeah, people say its an older sensor, etc. etc., which is true....but the fact i had to page through 3 pages of menus just to change from matrix to center weighted metering really started getting on my nerves.

as for the D70/s, the D70s is the same as the D70, but with a larger display.
the differences with the canon i am not /too/ sure, because i shoot nikon and haven't owned a canon.. a good friend of mine shoots canon, and i know they are quality cameras.... but the 20d is in the end a consumer level camera.. the 30d is an upgrade to that (its a really nice camera, my friend sold his 5D and uses the 30d now because of vignetting issues w/ the full frame sensor)

the D50 is *terrific* image quality, very sharp, great colors, but functionally i had issues with it. (no vertical release grip for example) and the lack of a light on the D50 was also a let down. now the D200 is nice, but for that money, i'd MUCH quicker get the new D80, and a decent lens, or an SB-800 or something. two command dials, also important, especially for those of us who dont use the pre-set shooting modes.

looks like we're pretty much on the same page about the D50.

Re:Fairly high end cameras

[commanderfoxtrot]

Yes, all "proper" cameras (even phones) will put EXIF in the JPEG header.

It's very handy, as it allows an easy way to de-dupe photos and also to check the exact time they were taken.

I wrote some C a long time ago to update EXIF data as well when I was working with Hugin on panoramas so the CCD size reported on my Olympus C750uz was correct...

As the other poster said, Windows will give you a summary of the EXIF info. You can also use "identify" from ImageMagick to script it, or "exifinfo" which is better.

Are these Skewed?

[amulder]

They mention that stats might be skewed, by the sheer volume of photos uploaded by photo enthusiasts. The implication is that they're simply totalling up all the pictures.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to generate stats by user? (ie: x% of flickr users have camera Y)

Re:Are these Skewed?

[teslar]

Some users might have more than one camera, or be borrowing other people's cameras so that would be inaccurate too.
But you could normalise the data instead...

Re:Are these Skewed?

[TCQuad]

It might be more accurate, but less useful. People who share a lot of photos are using their camera often and are obviously happy with it. If you're trying to figure out what camera to buy, their opinion should be weighted more heavily than those who take one or two photos here and there.

Re:Are these Skewed?

[Bryansix]

Exactly. This information tells you who takes all the photos. These are the consumers to watch because they generally pay close attention to the details before they purchase a camera since they will be using it so often.

but a really useful one when considering a new cam

[Silver Sloth]

Well, err...
It tells you what other people are using. By this logic I should be driving a Ford Mondeo (and using Windows on my PC!)

digital camers?!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is a "digital camers"

Re:digital camers?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, at first I thought it was "digital gamers" missepelet.

Re:digital camers?!

[AKAImBatman]

I'm trying to figure out if it's an actual typo, or an attempt at a clever play on the name 'Flickr'.

or see FlagrantDisregards top 100 models / makes

[joejoejoejoe]

http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/topcameras.php

John has this for flickr too, and shows the top 100 makes and models. I think he uses the Flickr-API, ie not a scrapper. He says on the page "The lists are generated automatically by periodically sampling the EXIF data from the stream of recent uploads." and I think he hits that stream via the API...

In other pathetic news..

[Anonymous Coward]

FlickR executives use ...

the 'Delux Silk' of toilet roll

*Applause* of Delux Silk executive wankers

Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better to have several such lists, say 3. One list for the highest-rated photos, one for medium photos and one for the poorest photos :-)

They have a rating system right?

Flawed in more than one way

[El Cabri]

The article mentions that Sony cameras don't specify the exact model in the EXIF. Cyber-Shot is pretty vague since most digital cameras sold by Sony in the last five or six years is named like that.

On the other hand, in the top 10, there is both one entry for the Digital Rebel XT, and one entry for the 350D, which are actually the same camera, the first being the name under which it is sold in North America, the second the name under which it is sold in Europe.

Re:Flawed in more than one way

[smitty97]

the battery must have caught on fire before it got its full name out

Erm no?

[OverlordQ]

This is actually an incredibly simple idea, but a really useful one when considering a new camera to buy.

So if everybody started using Ford Pinto's you should too? Dont mistake most common with best, much less best for you.

Re:Erm no?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, too right. Those fools who bought VHS are still rueing the day....

If only Slashdot would give us computer info

[Anonymous Coward]

...I could find out what computers to avoid.

  / Ah, I see now, Dell's get you modded -1 Flamebait.

Re:If only Slashdot would give us computer info

[dfghjk]

That was just what I was thinking.

Flickr users are likely to be creative enthusists. /. users are likely to be juvenile amateurs.

In both cases the popular equipment isn't necessarily the best. In photography it's not necessary to have the finest equipment to do the finest work (especially on the web) and those who have a true need for the best gear aren't likely to participate on a public website. As for /. you'd figure Apple had 80% marketshare.

Re:Small error again

[pahles]

It's Digital Rebel _XT_ in the US, the Digital Rebel is the 300D...

Photos, not users

[Lev13than]

Interesting idea, but there is a problem with the methodology. The app samples about 9,600 pictures per day. Since multiple photos from the same user are included, it will skew more heavily towards users who take & store (vs. take & delete) and those who are pro users (since they can upload more). This behaviour is more likely found in someone who fits the 'prosumer' profile, hence the abundance of these type of cameras on the list.
For version 2 of the stats, it would be really useful to have it ignore multiple camera models from the same user. It would also be neat to see it compare post-processing apps and general camera 'categories' (i.e. cell phone vs. p&s vs. slr).

Popular != good

[DrXym]

Just because people using Flickr use certain camera types doesn't mean they're the best cameras. They might be, but then again it might be that people who've just spent a fortune on a digital camera are far more likley to upload pictures than casual users. It would even be easy to skew the results simply by dumping a load of pictures up on the site from a certain brand and make it appear that it is more popular than it is.

Re:Popular != good

[savala]

It would even be easy to skew the results simply by dumping a load of pictures up on the site from a certain brand and make it appear that it is more popular than it is.

Flickr gets over a million new pictures uploaded on a good day. I really don't think skewing the results is that easy (assuming the 'periodical' sampling is not predictable).

I also think that people who spend a fortune on a digital camera are the pros buying a D2Xs or a 1D Mark II, and those are much less likely to upload pictures. Low-end DSLRs definitely count as "casual" in my book.

Re:Popular != good

[DrXym]

Let me ask you - who is more inclined to upload pictures, me who takes may be 2 or 3 snaps a week, or some amateur photographer decked out with a new SLR camera? The answer is far more likely to be the latter. Not only that, but as cameras cost more there are less models to choose from. Thus the great unwashed masses who upload 750,000 pics a day may do so from 300 different models. Whereas the other 250,000 come from a far smaller pool of (say) 50 expensive models that skew the results in their favour. Therefore it is no surprise that a Canon Digital Rebel comes out on top when it is patently obvious that only a small number of all users actually have one; not least because SLRs are hugely impractical cameras for casual photography. On top of that manufacturers could (and I'm not saying they did) skew results even further simply by uploading pics or encouraging their users to upload pics through the bundled software or other means.

Re:Popular != good

[Tsiangkun]

is this exif data carried through image conversions ?

As a freeloader, I have a limit on the number of bytes i can transfer per month. I edit a copy of my images before uploading to save bits, and crop off needless part of the picture.

is it possible that only people who pay for the site are sending all of the camera information with their images ?

Re:Popular != good

[BandwidthHog]

Preservation of EXIF data depends on the software you use and on its settings. In Photoshop, for instance, if you do Save As to create a JPEG you’ll preserve EXIF; but if you do Save For Web, that and everything else non-essential will be stripped out.

I don’t know of any circumstance where Flickr would prevent you from keeping that data in your photos.

Re:Popular != good

[neax]

A lot of people may also buy cameras on price, not because it is the best. could this also skew the results? just becuase a lot of people own a type of camera does not mean that it is good...but i guess it would be an indication that it was at least an 'average' camera, as anything less does not make good sales.

Stop the spamblogging

[Anonymous Coward]

Astroturfing, viral marketing and spamblogging are really annoying and not at all subtle. If you have a list of the top ten cameras on Flickr, do it right and don't tie ads to such a simple nugget of information. You know that the Canon 350d and the Canon Rebel XT are the same camera, right? And guess what, d is for digital, you don't have to spell it out... How serious can reviews be that are written by people who put the same camera in spot 1 and 3 of a top ten list? Here's the list. There is no other worthwhile information on that site.

1. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
2. NIKON D50
3. Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL
4. Canon EOS 20D
5. NIKON D70
6. NIKON D70s
7. Canon PowerShot S2 IS
8. Canon EOS 30D
9. Sony CYBERSHOT
10. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL

Pbase also has a nice camera database

[sdo1]

Pbase is another photo-hosting site. They're geared a bit more toward the serious photograper (not to say there isn't a mix, but sites like flickr seem to more "snapshot" type photos). They have a very nice camera database that is very helpful when looking at new cameras. The nice thing about it is that you can see random example photos throughout their database that were taken with each camera. It also tracks lenses too, though for the most part it's up to the user to enter the lens data when the upload the pictures (they make it easy to do, so most people do it).

-S

Re:Pbase also has a nice camera database

[bobschneider8]

The nice thing about it is that you can see random example photos throughout their database that were taken with each camera. It also tracks lenses too, though for the most part it's up to the user to enter the lens data when the upload the pictures (they make it easy to do, so most people do it).

While I don't use Flickr or Pbase, I do know that the EXIF data from my Canon 30D, and my old Digital Rebel, both include the lens I used for the shot, as well as the effective focal length when I use a zoom. This readily turns up in my editing software. I didn't do anything to enable this data - I believe that this is normal behavior for most DSLRs. While P&S cameras may not include this info, it isn't relevant for such cameras anyway.

Re:Pbase also has a nice camera database

[cetan]

[[While P&S cameras may not include this info, it isn't relevant for such cameras anyway.]]

Most point and and shoots do include this info. Focal lenght is as relevant on a P&S as it is on a DSLR.

Camers?

[bigkahunafish]

I find it interesting no one pointed out the fact that the title was wrong in the first few comments... interesting how the brain fills in the missing letter...

spelling police...

[Lobster Quadrille]

How are there 27 comments already and nobody has mentioned a typo in the HEADLINE?

s/Camers/Cameras

I'm starting to lose faith in slashdot...

Re:spelling police...

[Lobster Quadrille]

ooh never mind. Big kahuna beat me by a hair.

Re:spelling police...

[garcia]

Lobster Quadrille (965591) says: "I'm starting to lose faith in slashdot..."

Wow, and you've only been here like two weeks!

Re:spelling police...

[clickety6]

.. and they misspelled "flicker" too !

Re:spelling police...

[metlin]

> .. and they misspelled "flicker" too !

Shouldn't that be "misspelt"? =)

Useful list? I think not.

[wfberg]

It's just a list of which cameras produced the most pictures uploaded to flickr. The article itself points out that it's likely skewed because enthusiasts that spring for expensive cameras are also more likely to spring for premium flickr accounts where they can upload an unlimited number of photos.

So what does this list tell us?
The people who spend a lot of money on their 'prosumer' cameras take a lot of pictures. Well, they would have to, otherwise they just wasted that money on their prosumer camera. And they're also more likely to spring for a premium flickr account. Well, they would have to, what with all the crappy pictures they have to take to legitimize buying an expensive camera.
Even looking at the individual users pictures tells you nothing about the quality of their camera. They might just be really good photographers, or they just throw out 9 out of 10 shots because the camera sucks.

These statistics are pretty much useless to anyone. They're only useful to flickr itself; they can now dream up new ways of advertising, like show ads for camera accesories based on EXIF info.

Now, if they had a list of camera models by number of users, that would be more interesting (probably more accurate portrayal of marketshare than the manufacturers themselves give off). Or of models that are used to post the fewest pictures before the users photos suddenly change to another brand (in other words; quickly abandoned crappy models). Models that are used most for dark scenes with/without flash. That sort of thing.

Re:Useful list? I think not.

[DingerX]

It's also skewed towards people who use flickr as a photo dumping ground. Some people put up on flickr every single picture that comes out of their camera; some just put up the shots they'd like others to see.

Oh, and:

Of course, the data may be skewed, since some users might unknowingly be stripping off EXIF data from their photos before uploading to Flickr (say, if the photos were resized using an editor that didn't save the EXIF along with the resized image). Also, notice that Sony cameras are marked by "CYBERSHOT," and not by exact model-likely, photos were taken with phone-cams.

What about those of us who intentionally strip off EXIF data?

Re:Useful list? I think not.

[jschrod]

Models that are used most for dark scenes with/without flash.

While I agree with you - what would that metrics tell? Inquiring mind wants to know.

Maybe I'm simply not in the know -- I usually do dark scenes without flash with my Nikon F2, Ilford film, a stativ, and a good lens. :-)

Re:Useful list? I think not.

[wfberg]

Models that are used most for dark scenes with/without flash.

While I agree with you - what would that metrics tell? Inquiring mind wants to know.

Maybe I'm simply not in the know -- I usually do dark scenes without flash with my Nikon F2, Ilford film, a stativ, and a good lens. :-)

it's just an example of a piece of statistics that would make a bit more sense.
For the lower end of the market (i.e. your NON-Canon EOS/Nikon F models) the performance in low light is particularly horrendous, what with the tiny lenses and superslow CCDs. On many review sites they only show pictures taken with a camera outside at noon in summer, and then complain about saturation (or lack thereof). Most consumers are more concerned with taking shots of social gatherings, which usually take place in the evening or at night, indoors. So, the relative performance on that kind of scene should be more interesting than the aggregate number of uploaded pics.

Re:Useful list? I think not.

[jschrod]

Thanks for your comment, that was insightful. I have to admit that I don't know much about low-level digital cameras; I'm still using film for most of my pictures.

I expect better from /.

[Mycroft_514]

To allow this totally BS use of statistics to actually MEAN something.

As one other photographer already mentioned part of.

1. Pro photographers are not going to store info on flicker
2. Pro photographers are going to be outnumbered by non pros, thus changing which is the best "camera"
3. It has been proven that a good photograper can take a better photo with a disposible camera than many consumers can with the "best" camera.
4. Others have noted that some cameras are lumped together, and others have multiple categories by the way the data is sampled.
5. No ratings of which photos are best are factored intot he sampling.

Sure, mod me down for this, but it doesn't change the fact that this story is totally BS.

Re:I expect better from /.

[rtaylor187]

Relax... This particular information is only about which cameras are being used to take pictures posted on Flickr. It has nothing to do with pro photographers, non-pro photographers, "best" cameras or or "best" photos. Please adjust your expectations.

Re:I expect better from /.

[foniksonik]

True they should have stated the obvious... these are the:

Top Ten Digital Cameras Used by People on Flickr

aka

10 most popular digital cameras on Flickr

Re:I expect better from /.

[Karma Farmer]

I expect better from /.

I think I found your problem right there...

Re:I expect better from /.

[nephridium]

I'm not sure, but didn't Flickr have some sort of API? A tool that listed the best rated pictures for any given camera model would indeed immensely help consumers deciding on a new cam.

Re:I expect better from /.

[Anonymous Coward]

True pro photographers also use traditional film cameras instead of the digital cameras. Even the most expensive prosumer digital fails in image quality to a disposible film camera. A high end film camera is much better and cheaper than the most expensive digital camera. The only reasons why anyone needs to use digital is they are no good at photography or they just need a quick photo where quality isn't that important.

Fairly high end choices.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well at least I know what to aim for camera-wise. Although it's a toss-up between a DV camcorder (I already have some of the other stuff for editing video), or a camera (it'll complement the scanner).

Same thing, but DVD players

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, if we could only do the same thing, but with DVD players- that would really tell you which DVD player is the best..... NOT!

Yea, they have statistics on what cameras are being used, but the ONLY thing you can take away from that is which cameras people happen to be buying- and not whether those cameras are the best or not. I'd like to think that people buy the best, but thats not the truth- people buy marketing hype. They are more likely to buy a camera based on its appearance than the quality of the photos it takes, and that is a fact.

Re:Same thing, but DVD players

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

$20 DVD players at Wal-Mart anyone?

Re:or see FlagrantDisregards top 100 models / make

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the useless "logicamera" blog that was linked to cites this very list as its source:

Flagrantdisregard.com has a running list of the top digital cameras being used on Flickr.

Uh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would this be a "really useful" when considering to buy a digital camera? In what way does knowing _what everyone else on Flickr use_ benefit you when you set out to purchase a camera, compared to searching for one that satisifies the specifications and requirements you want?

But, who knows - perhaps photography is more about mass fashion than chosing a tool that satisifies your demands... "so, what camera and film are you using? ok, then i'll purchase and use the same myself without thinking about what i actually need/want."

Re:but a really useful one when considering a new

[Klaidas]

True. If we consider that most of uploads made to flickr are useless and not made by pro/hobbyist photographers, it really doesn't tell me what camera to buy.

More stats, please...

[Stavr0]

I wonder what the top 5 popular F.stops are, the Average/StdDev exposure speed and so on.

(Yes this is sarcasm)

Re:More stats, please...

[clickclickdrone]

Sarcasm maybe but if they showed a large number of users of a particular camera routinely applying a stop or so of correction, it would be a pointer to dodgy metering quality and a camera to avoid.

Re:but a really useful one when considering a new

[Anonymous Coward]

HI,

> By this logic I should be driving a Ford Mondeo

In Europe, you would be driving a 3-series BMW, which massively outsold the F0RD Mondano.

Which, funnily enough, makes the F0RD the more exclusive car ;-)

Deviantart

[Jack Malmostoso]

Might be interesting to create the same sort of stats based on deviantart's users. Btw, is there some kind of API to Flickr, or has this guy gone through thousands of pictures manually? A little information on the method would be useful too!

I'd like to

[Klaidas]

I'd like to point out that it's not this super "Top 10" - it's just top 10 of *recently* uploaded, not top 10 of all photos.

List is most popular cameras

[nuggz]

The list is pretty much just the most popular higher end cameras by sales.
Within the high end all the cameras are really good.

The current DSLRs are all excellent, with comperable performance within each category.

It is interesting to the hobbyist

[Jeppe Salvesen]

If you want to take astounding pictures, a DSLR makes life a helluvalot easier. While you can take fairly good photographs with some of the upscale compacts, operating them as anything but a automated compact camera seems to be pretty awkward. (Setting ISO, setting aperture priority, modifying aperture, etc etc.). Oh - and RAW. RAW is king - those extra 4 bits per channel makes life much easier when you edit afterwards.

But I agree, to the "average" consumer, flickr top10 is not the place to look. It is much better to go to a good camera store and explain what you want to use the camera for. You may spend a few extra bucks compared to buying online, but you won't end up with something you're dissatisfied with.

Re:but a really useful one when considering a new

[dfghjk]

No, it would be far better to do more conventional research. I would never consider such a useless statistic.

Link to the original?

[MDMurphy]

The link is to a site who's main purpose it to regurgitate a few other site's text and surround it with ads ( yeah, like a lot of sites ). The original page: http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/topcameras.php has more details, week-to-week changes. The list is part of a larger collection of Fickr toys: http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/

wdposdsua

[dunc78]

wposdsua (why do people on slashdot define singly used acronyms)? There is no point in using an acronym if the only time it is used is when it is defined. Jar (Just a rant).

primary sources

[KatTran]

The beautiful thing about the Internet was now all of sudden you could get access to all sorts of primary sources of information you weren't able to access before. The second beautiful thing was that it enabled people to be publish primary source articles for which they were the primary source.

Now when Slashdot posts a story, that links to a blog, that links to a blog, it becomes "Unverifiable Sources for Nerds. Stuff that may be important but you can't tell."

When TFA has the same content as the blurb, please editors, don't post it or link to the primary source.

I don't want analysis, I want news!

Been there, done that (in June)

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out our blog article here: http://blog.ic-agency.com/en/2006/06/pictures_and_ th.html
We have also some cool graphs and a real market analysis ...

Don't forget about pbase!

[Vaystrem]

As some other comments have already touched upon this listing of the top 10 isn't that useful by itself. Its just a measure of what's 'popular' on one photo site, and nothing more. Perhaps if you could use this list to browse shots taken by those cameras it would be useful... which brings me to http://www.pbase.com/. PBase lets you search by camera model and then view all the photos stored on that site taken by the camera model you have chosen. This is incredibly useful in evaluating the quality of the output of cameras you may be considering.

Additionally if one is looking for a 'better' way to narrow down digital cameras during their research process you would be better served relying on a high quality review site. Here are the two best review sites I know of for digital cameras.
http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.dcresource.com/

OMG they fixed a typo on slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

It just got a little colder down here in Hell.

DSLR != ProSumer

[perler]

sorry, but entry level DSLR are usually not called prosumer cameras. prosumer cameras are usually cameras with non-changeable lenses. PAT

Re:DSLR != ProSumer

[NMerriam]

Eh, you found one guy who says that, but in my experience it is in fact quite common for entry level (and midrange) DSLR camera bodies to be considered "prosumer". Go to the boards on dpreview or photo.net or fred miranda and ask if they consider a Canon 300/350/400D a prosumer camera and most will say yes. Ask if a D30 is a prosumer camera and you'll probably get a 50/50 split at worst.

Prosumer just means good enough for situational pro use and fancy enough for high end enthusiast use. I don't think a fixed lens vs interchangable lens would affect that equation much.

ISO, color and sensor size

[drgonzo59]

1. In general the 10MP=approx=35mm film might be true for B&W photos. For color the MP count would have to be larger, somewhere around 15 or 16.

2. Also with film it is possible to get ISO 50 film (Velvia for ex.) to match its resolution and color range it will take even more MPs.

3. When talking resolution MP are not the whole story, the sensor size is just as important. A small sensor with a lot of MPs is bad news since the images will be very noisy. People don't usually take this into consideration and only look at MPs. A lot of super-zoom and consumer models now have managed to fit a 10MP in their body but the images are nevertheless much worse than the same MP count images from a DSLR with a larger sensor.

I am assuming the lens is not a limiting factor.

Re:ISO, color and sensor size

[EggyToast]

That's actually become something very noticeable for me. A lot of my friends have very small cameras or brand new 7+mp cameras, yet their shots look worse than mine at 5. Hell, my wife's camera is a 3.2 and some of her shots are better than mine, mostly because her lens is a little better. Her camera is quite a bit larger than mine, though, and mine's small but still not as small as the super-thin ones. Yet my noise level is very low. Looking at some of my friend's shots, though, any black is covered in noise. Especially if they don't have a flash. If the light is questionable on my 5mp, the shot usually is OK. On the newer ones, it's not worth if it's just OK lighting.

To me, that just says it's not worth upgrading unless I want a really nice camera. Which is nice for my wallet, but probably not what the camera companies want to hear.

Re:ISO, color and sensor size

[The_Rook]

more to the point, getting the color accuracy of digital cameras to match film is probably going to take even longer. film manufacturers have had decades to perfect the color accuracy and expand the gamut of color film. digital cameras are, relatively speaking, a new technology. i've taken pictures of objects that were decidedly one color (such as purple) and when i took a digital photo, the same object came up as a bright royal blue.

try an experiment - take a clean white sheet of paper and a box of crayons and make nice big marks of each crayon color. take a picture of the crayon marks and compare the digital image with the original. now count how much time it's going to take to correct the colors.

Re:ISO, color and sensor size

[Cowclops]

Thats called "white balance." If the color of your digital photograph varies from what you'd "expect" its because you didn't adjust the camera to know what color of light was illuminating the image. I don't shoot film so this is approximate/a guess, but I'm pretty sure film is balanced for about 4500K or so. All you have to do is hold up anything that you know is white in front of the camera, use the "set white balance" function, and continue shooting. The color will always come out correct. If this is not news to you, I am not aware what your color reproduction problems are.

Re:ISO, color and sensor size

[drgonzo59]

I think it is easier to hold something that is a neutral gray instead of white. Therefore the graycards. Here is a white balancing graycard for sale http://shop.itccomp.nl/doorhof/E_frame.html?http:/ /shop.itccomp.nl/doorhof/E_grp_12-1.html

In general the white balance will calibrate your camera for the "0" -- the white point (I am making an analogy with traditional data acquisition equipment) but the problem with some digital cameras is that their color dynamic range (the gamut) is much smaller than that of color film. Therefore with film you might see more shades of, say, blue than you could with digital. Going back to the data acquisition world: you can have to 0-calibrated devices but one will be 8 bits while the other will be 16 bit. The second one will discern more values than the first (65536 vs. 256).

Again I am assuming that the lenses are the same and that one would use a good color film (say Velvia ) and a good digital sensor (say Sony's 10MP CCD sensor).

Camera not as important as the photographer

[AaronW]

Most cameras can take decent pictures. More megapixels doesn't mean better photographs either since there are so many factors involved. You can take great photos with almost any camera, assuming it has basic focusing control and a usable lens, which most do.

Where it becomes a challenge is when you're in situations with low light, where only the better cameras have low enough noise, or when you need a particular lens.

I have seen many excellent pictures taken by cheap consumer point and shoot cameras. I have also seen crappy photos taken by expensive SLRs. A good camera can't fix taking pictures of bad subject matter or someone who doesn't know how to properly use a camera for the situations they're shooting in.

A lot of people are buying high-MP cameras without fully understanding what they're buying. A 8MP camera won't make a huge difference over a 6MP camera, and a 6MP camera isn't twice as good as a 3MP camera. The differences are usually in things like how sensitive the sensor is and how low noise it is, and how good the lens is.

I see ads in the back of some of my magazines for a Bell and Howell 10MP* camera, but one will find very few reviews. The only thing I could find was that it was only a 3MP camera (* the small text says interpolated) and the resulting images, if it would take them at all, looked like someone was standing in front of a funhouse mirror.

I started off with a 3MP Canon Elph and took a lot of good pictures with it. After a couple years I finally broke down and bought a Nikon D70s, but by then I had totally outgrown the Canon, finding myself limited by the lack of control, the high amount of noise, limited flash capability and the shutter lag, among other issues. I also have spent more on lenses than the camera back. The main reason I went with Nikon over Canon was I already had Nikon film gear and was familiar with it and had some lenses for it. If I didn't already have Nikon I could have just as easily gone with Canon. Both take great pictures.

Some people argue between Canon and Nikon. It doesn't really make a whole lot of difference. Nice specs are one thing, but rather than arguing specs or shooting test charts go out and shoot some real pictures and have fun, whatever camera you use, even that little point-and-shoot.

Renaming Files Again....

[kidalimbo]

All those fun digital cameras and a few thousend pictures name pic1.jpg... Errr. Good thing I have batch rename .exe (http://www.stintercorp.com/br.php) - very helpful if you need more complex naming for your images.

Agreed

[severoon]

We must keep in mind that these stats are highly skewed, but useful if this defining context is taken into account. The people using flickr are: (1) fairly Internet savvy (most photographers aren't, particularly converts from film), (2) willing to publish their photos publicly (pros usually aren't). With an additional bit of info mentioned in the parent post (whether it's number of images of number of users), we could get some really good info about the camera market.

I suspect the flickr community is a fairly good representation of the digital camera population as a whole, but stats like this must be qualified in the larger scheme of things to have any value when interpreted. That's how we stay out of the "damned lies" territory. :-)

Interesting...

[GlobalMind]

..but not much of a surprise in that data. DSLRs mostly in the top 10. I am a 20D user myself.

K.

S2IS

[ShakaUVM]

Hmm, I used the S2IS for a while and actually liked it. The only real complaint I had was that it was just too large, too unwieldy.

I ended up buying the Powershot A620, which is an incredible camera. It offers just the right amount of customization without drowing you. I just got back from a trip to Banff, and took shots out on the glaciers. Took a total of three presses to get it set so that the exposure came out just right.

I'm not a professional photographer, but I've gotten really tired over the years with the "Auto" setting on digital cameras, as they almost universally screw up the exposure on a shot. I need a camera that lets me fiddle with the settings, and adjust how many things I need to fiddle with at one time.

flickr api

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.flickr.com/services/api/

Newspeak police

[blincoln]

It's also skewed towards people who use flickr as a photo dumping ground.

It's not a "photo dumping ground," it's a treasure trove of photographic imagery, with even the most obscure niche represented in abundance.

Re:but a really useful one when considering a new

[Shag]

Well, we all know that if you're going out for a drive and might encounter strong crosswinds, or have to drive behind a 747 at takeoff thrust, you're better off with a Mondeo than a 2CV!

(Love that video...)

better to weight scores by comments

[Anonymous Coward]

A more interesting table could be obtained by saving the list of uploaded photos for a week or so, then checking back on flickr to to score based on how many comments each of the photos had generated (even better if you parse the comments to figure out which are positive vs negative ... but that would be very hard to automate).

Most popular = cheapest or most marketted often

[SeaFox]

This is actually an incredibly simple idea, but a really useful one when considering a new camera to buy.

Yup, that's why I'm definitely getting a Windows computer for my next machine and using Internet Explorer for my web browser. After all the data shows they're the most popular, proving them to be superior to other OS/browser combos.

Cameras dont need more MP, they need better CCDs

[dave1g]

mega pixels in 100-300 cameras are already past the needs of the average consumer, but the quality of the sensors suck! I want to be able to take a picture at night, and get back the exact same image I see with my eyes, not just a black box with a bunch of noise in it. Digital cameras still pretty much suck for anything but outside full sunlight conditions.

Re:Cameras dont need more MP, they need better CCD

[amemily]

Learn how to use your camera.

You can take night shots that are equal to what you see, but you'll have to learn how to shoot manually instead of using the "auto mode". And low light lenses are your friend (i.e the Nikkor 50mm 1.8D), instead of the slow kit zooms.

Canon 400D/Rebel XTi

[akuzi]

> 1. Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
> 2. NIKON D50
> 3. Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL

> This is actually an incredibly simple idea, but a really useful one when considering a new camera to buy. Score three points for scrapers.

If you are considering buying a new camera, it might be useful to know that Canon
has just this month brought out an update to the Canon Rebel XT/EOD 350D called
Canon EOS 400D/Rebel XTi which has a 10 megapixel sensor, a larger LCD screen
and a new dust reduction system.

Re:Cameras dont need more MP, they need better CCD

[dave1g]

I know about all that, however you still would have to use a tripod to keep the camera still enough. Otherwise the exposure time would be so long that your hands will make the image blurred.

I want point and shoot in low light. If you get a sensor that is sensitive enough it can be done.

Why bother?

[mrraven]

Why bother? Someone with a good eye can take a great photo with a 20 dollar 20 year old Russian Holga. On the other hand if you suck at seeing the world the highest end Mamaya large format digital camera will still give you shitty results. See this article if you are confused by what I mean oh Equipment Measurbator.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm

Stupid link

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

Why is this not linked to flagrant disregard? ...a site that actually has some value. something smells.

free advertising through exif ?

[freaker_TuC]

So, basically, one could advertise his product on Flickr by just changing the EXIF fields in a few thousand pictures that get uploaded to viral-market that product ?