O/T - Digital Cameras

[.mark]

Yea - I know guys but the warning was in the title. And I figured with such a diverse group here someone must know something!
Ted, apologies for this, how about an O/T forum!

I'm looking at buying a digital camera and think I have chosen but am a little worried about picture quality. Now I'm no David Bailey (who's she?) and if I want to printed pictures I'll use a 'proper' camera, but, to mess around with I've seen this Sony Mavica FD75.
Pros:- 10x Optical Zoom, saves pictures onto a floppy drive, not too sure how many but quite a few I know.
Cons:- Only 640x480 resolution.

My question is, if you are going to maninly view the pictures via a PC how important is the resolution and if I was to print how big could I expect to get with out loosing definition?

Any photographers out there?

[adamb]

Ive got a Sony DSC 75 which is 1600 by 1200 (I think) 3.3 Mega Pixels. That is OK for full sreen viewing *2.5 and up to 8 by 10 printed.

Sorry, I'm no photographer so can't offer any in depth advice. Digital cameras are slow though. I can take a second or so from pushing the button to getting the snap, kind of interesting when shooting track days.

[marki]

Hi

have you had a look at the canon ixus , very neat small little camera only 2.1 m but it can take mpeg video clips ,great little tool

[kevinday]

I use two high quality 35mm cameras with lens options from 24mm to 600mm. Then I scan the print to put in the PC. My reasoning is that the 'new' digital cameras still do not have the quality and range of lens that I have with my 10 - 15 year old 35mm cameras. I am an amateur and photograph wildlife and cars (of course). My next upgrade will be a new scanner for better resolution.

[.mark]

Kevin,
I too use the scanner option, but I have yet to find software that will compress the files to a decent size, most are over 3Mb! Perhaps I am expecting too much?

Guys,
I have looked at other types of camera but the 10x OpticalZoom really sells it for me, that's 35mm equivalent to something like 35-380mm zoom function, the best the others offer are 2/3x zoom.
Thanks for the replies though keep 'em coming!

[PetrolTed]

It depends what your criteria are. Printing/scanning in is ok unless you want to do it frequently when it becomes a pain.

As for scanned files being too big, you need to lower the resolution to something like 72dpi when scanning in for web use.

10x optical zoom is a major selling point. 1 floppy disc and the relatively low resolution of the pictures isn't so great though.

For the pics here I use an Olympus 960? which only has 3x optical zoom. That's why the only decent motorsport shots I get are when I can get right next to the track.

It takes pictures of 1280x960 which then gives me a bit of leeway for cropping. The pictures I post up here are 750 pixels wide.

As for the delay, it's a fraction of a second although not ideal for motorsport, it is possible if you can get close enough. I'll be posting up some pics later that I took yesterday on the pit wall at Donington.

I think they model I have retails for about £250.

[Roadrunner]

We use digital cameras at work (design consultants) for getting the images on computer very quickly, ready for meetings. This is all they're really good at. The photographers we commision all used decent film based cameras as the resolution is in another league. One of the guys we use does have a good digital camera as well (£5k) but you still have problems with getting very sharp focus. The 2 second delay between pressing the button and taking the shot will be a pain on moving objects. It's hard enough getting them in focus on still life shots.

[PetrolTed]

Two second delay!? I presume you're talking about after you've taken the shot and before you can take another?

Take a look next time you're at a race meeting. Most professionals are now using digital cameras and emailing their pictures straight away. As you say, they do cost £5K upwards but they are in common use now.

[CarZee]

On most Digital Cameras you can minimise the delay between pressing the shutter button and the shot being taken by switching to manual focus and exposure-lock - my Fujifilm 6900 takes an age with auto-focus when I'm zoomed out to x6, but with motorsport etc, manual focus generally makes sense anyway..

[Leithen]

I've been restraining my gadget obssesion for six months now on this question - the object of my desires - the Canon D30 - same SLR body as the rest of the EOS range which means that if you already have one of these you can interchange lenses.....

Only catch is that it's £1700....

[kevinday]

With regard to the scanned images, if you use GIF or JPG type images they are much smaller than BMP. For example a 1.1MB BMP comes out at about 90KB in JPG. To do the conversion I use Paint Shop Pro software. This also allows cropping, rotation, resizing etc so you can improve the image as well.

[JSG]

I also use a Sony DSC 75, its fine for both PC and printed photos - I was told that for clear pictures the pixel rating is the thing to watch for, 3.3M is plenty. Also it helps to have a good quality lens.

Cheers,
JSG.

[JoePhandango]

I'm a graphic designer working in pre-press. I see this happening all the time. Bottom line: If quality is paramount, get a half decent scanner (£600+ at least) and use it to scan your prints (not 35mm slides !!!) from a decent SLR camera.
If you absolutely insist on a digital camera, you won't beat a Fuji S1 Pro (£4000 ish). If this is out of your reach then for around the £800 mark, the Fuji FinePix 6900Z has nearly the same resolution and a heap of other really useful features. It takes 6 million pixel resolution shots and will even take uncompressed 17meg TIFF files (much better quality than JPEG). This is the best digital camera I've come across for the money, so good I bought one for meself and one for me Da. If this one is still too steep, the entry level Fujis are way ahead of the competition. No, I don't work for Fuji

[nubbin]

Gotta agree with the last comment. My Finepix 6900 takes incredible pictures at highest resolution, but 18Mb files are a nuisance when the camera uses storage cards, and is not compatible with IBM Microdrives. But the photos are of stunning quality. The next resolution down, is still very good, with a mere 2.5Mb file size.

It also has a 35-300 optical zoom, a pretend SLR electronic viewfinder, and is small, lightweight and robust. I don't work for Fuji, either!!

>> Edited by nubbin on Tuesday 19th February 18:11

[grantberkeley]

quote:
the object of my desires - the Canon D30 -
Only catch is that it's £1700....

Had the same idea as I already have an EOS5 with all the lenses/gadgets - in the end plumped for the Nikon CoolPix995 for £430 in Hong Kong last year. Photo quality is excellent up to A3 size using an HP DeskJet 1220c.(IMHO better results than usual dev +print) Also memory cards are now getting very cheap @ 7dayshop.com 64mb for £18!

[CarZee]

Yep - mentioned my 6900Z earlier - paid £649 (mailorder) for it last year so expect it to be cheaper now..

My essential additions were a 1.5x Zoom Adapter giving me 9x zoom (about 450mm 35mm equiv), a battery charger and a 128Mb storage card.

The picture quality at 3MP is superb for my requirements - I think the way the camera handles variable lighting is great - even the missus can use it in 'auto' mode.. and then I can get it back off her, change the ISO setting, switch to shutter speed mode & manual focus and hey - proper camera..

Absolutely the best on the market for the money - I was torn between that and the Nikon Coolpix 900 (?) as they were comparable in quality and price, but the freakish 'articulated' body of the Nikon put me off as I wanted something feeling at least vaguely like a 35mm SLR.

[WalterU]

I'm a great fan of and believer in the Sony Mavicas. The concept makes me independent of cables, drivers etc., I can just snap away. Being a Linux user, I hate needing drivers - you always only get them for Windoze.

Rgds, WalterU

[.mark]

Walter,
Which model do you have? What resolution is it?

[WalterU]

quote:
Walter,
Which model do you have? What resolution is it?

I have a Mavica FD 91, which is now totally outdated, but still hits the spot so hard I don't yet want to change. It has max. 1024 x 768, which is ample, because I email most photos. You can print a perfect 4x6 photo off it, anything above 6 x 12 and you start pushing it.

Go for the the CD-RW Mavica (forgotten the model name) or wait for JPEG 2000. When that comes out a hi-res floppy Disk Mavica may come out again.

Mavicas mean:

cheap media
media runs on any computer
no having to "free" memory cards when traveling
no fiddling with cables
very good zoom lenses and ratios (mine does 38-500)
they're expensive

I still think that all told they're the only sensible digital camera for highish volume quality photography without buying something like a Nikon D camera - others will disagree. If you want advice, theres a forum where you can post.

Rgds, WalterU

[MikeyT]

quote:
With regard to the scanned images, if you use GIF or JPG type images they are much smaller than BMP. For example a 1.1MB BMP comes out at about 90KB in JPG. To do the conversion I use Paint Shop Pro software. This also allows cropping, rotation, resizing etc so you can improve the image as well.

Yeah, jpegs are commonly used for emailing pics – I use tiffs and eps's tho' for hi end print work.

And there's no better pic retouching software abvailable on this planet than the Daddy ... Adobe Photoshop 6 ... mind you, we do make a living out of it. Been putting a pic of my green Chim through the mill colourwise and have seen it in blue, purple etc and stillprefer the green. Good job really.

Mike