Digital Cameras

[grahamdaubney]

I went to my local dealer this weekend to enquire about digital cameras and he advised me that for quality I'd be better off sticking with my SLR and getting a negative scanner and continue with 35mm film.Could anyone give me any advice on this,and which is a good digital camera to buy.

[Jim Roper]

grahamdaubney:

I went to my local dealer this weekend to enquire about digital cameras and he advised me that for quality I'd be better off sticking with my SLR and getting a negative scanner and continue with 35mm film.Could anyone give me any advice on this,and which is a good digital camera to buy.

I've allways been told that images from a digital camera are nowhere near as good as those from a traditional camera, so the scanning option (at high resolution) may be your best way of getting them onto digital media.

 

Last winter Helmut Swarovski, the chap whose firm makes the fancy telescopic sights and binoculars and all the world's road cats-eyes, got me to take a picture of his group with a dear little digital camera, but for the life of me I cannot remember the name of it. Perhaps it was a Swarovski, but I can't find one on their site!!!

 

Jim Roper

 

http://www.march-info.org

http://www.swarovskioptik.com

[phonebush]

I read somewhere a standard SLR was 3.2 mega pixtils. You can now buy digital with higher resolution than that.

Does anyone know for sure. I too am interested in the answer. A bag lady stole my new Digital before I even got it out of the box.

Phone

[Steve Burke]

I'm no expert on this but have found that unless you want big enlargements like 10x8" I can't in practice tell the difference between a 35mm and a good digital.

 

My digital is the tiny Kodak DC3800 which has 2.1 megapixels. It takes excellent photos and is especially useful for extreme close ups. Putting images onto the net takes a matter of seconds as it comes complete with a card reader.

 

However, for slide photos, which give the highest quality you'll of course need a conventional camera. This means that when I go fishing I now take my baby digital plus a 35mm compact loaded with slide film. The slides I then use for books, articles and talks. However, I can check within seconds that I've got the picture with the digital and that I haven't cut the fish's head off or whatever!

 

The other downside of digitals is the up front cost, which is a lot more than a film camera with the same spec. This really adds up if you want a complete outfit including telephoto and wide angle lenses. Running costs are lower, but not as low as is sometimes claimed as the batteries on my Kodak need replacing VERY frequently. The answer is to splash out more money on a rechargeable pack.

 

If anyone's interested Peggy and I have got a top of the range 35mm Olympus compact plus 2 Pentax and 1 Practica SLR complete outfits for sale.

[Chris Playle]

I was recently looking for a camera to buy. I looked at both Digital and SLR camera's. I weighed up the pro's and cons of both compared to what I wanted in a camera.

 

In brief, I found that the digital camera's are good little sharp shooters if you want a point and click. But, let's face it, the high end digital camera's with SLR functionality are out of most people's price bracket and more tailored toward the professional market. If you want a camera that will allow you a little bit of creativity in your images then get an SLR.

 

If you want to be printing out your digital photo's at home you also have to invest in a good quality photo printer and good quality photo inkjet paper (which incidentally can run to £30.00 for 15 sheets - mistakes and reprints/resizes etc included, this can get quite costly). On the plus side, most photo processing labs will let you provide images on a CDROM and will print them for you these days also.

 

If you want to have more control over the image you create (i.e. keeping control of depth of field and shutter speed) then you simply can't beat an 35mm film SLR. So called "digital SLRs" do exactly the same job but to get a good quality Digital SLR you are looking at BIG prices.

 

I ended up with a Minolta Dynax 404 Si SLR which I am quite happy with. It's a good beginners SLR which is exactly what I needed. It set me back £180 in the Jan sales but, personnally speaking, it was worth the money. I already had a good quality scanner so I could scan images in from prints and negatives.

 

One other thing to concider is that it's much more fun passing photos round of your prize catches and scenic photos than having everyone huddle round a laptop or monitor while you scroll though you JPEG collection on you computer.

 

Tight lines.

 

Chris

[Guest NickInTheNorth]

Hi Graham

 

If you want to have very high quality prints larger than 8x6 then stick to film. If you can accept slightly lesser quality in a large print (larger than 8x6), or only want smaller prints, then go digital.

 

The reason most dealers are very keen to get people to keep buying film cameras is that that way you keep needing to buy and process films. That is good business.

 

In the last year with my digital cameras I have taken and kept well over 4000 pictures. I have probably discarded 3 times that amount. Don't know what a film and processing costs these days, but there is no way I would have taken so many pictures if I was buying and processing film all the time.

 

If you go digital you can then either just keep them on your pc, or print them yourself (very good quailty with the right printer) or there are several companies that will produce real photographic prints of exactly the pictures you want for very little cost (about 50p for an 8x6).

 

In terms of what to buy, you want at least 2.1 mega pixels, assuming that you have a USB port on your pc get a camera with USB cable, by far the easiest way of transferring images. Buy one with an optical zoom capability (not just digital zoom). Tripod thread and a remote control, allows you to take pictures of yourself with that fish of a lifetime. Make sure it uses standard AA batteries and buy re-chargeables.

 

Canon Nikon Fuji and Olympus are probably good brands to look at. Cost somewhere between £200 and £300.

 

HTH

 

Having now looked at your profile and seen that you are into photography you may want to take a look at these more serious cameras. The S2 is awesome - but so is the price. Image quality is better than any SLR.

 

[ 29 July 2002, 10:25 AM: Message edited by: NickInTheNorth ]

[StuMac]

A mate of mine who's an astrophysisist (and therefor spends a lot of time looking at digital images of stars) told me that he thought that the best possible equipment (i.e. in the thousands of pounds bracket) would produce an image on 35 mm film that would be equivalent to about 10 megapixels. He recond that most decent SLRs could manage about 6 megapixels. This seems to be about right, as my Camedia has 3.3 mega pixels, and I've made prints up to A4 size, which just look like regular photos. If you start making selective enlargements, you can start to see the difference between an SLR so you really have to put a bit more thought into composing the image before you take it.

 

Even though they're not *quite* as good as as SLR, I really find that digital cameras have re-kindled my interest in photography and that I now take a lot more photos. Depends how into computers you are, but it really is good to be able to e-mail photos of fishing trips to your mates. I almost always do it first thing the next morning.

 

Printing photos is good to, and this quality really is quite stunning. However, it can get adictive, and it then becomes expensive!

 

Don't know where people get the idea that you need high quality images to print photos in magazines. The image quality in even a really flash glossy magazine is a lot lower than in a photographic print. These days, all the magazine would do with a slide would be to scan it and manipulate the image electronically. If the image is sharp and properly exposed a file is just as good.

[StuMac]

A mate of mine who's an astrophysisist (and therefor spends a lot of time looking at digital images of stars) told me that he thought that the best possible equipment (i.e. in the thousands of pounds bracket) would produce an image on 35 mm film that would be equivalent to about 10 megapixels. He recond that most decent SLRs could manage about 6 megapixels. This seems to be about right, as my Camedia has 3.3 mega pixels, and I've made prints up to A4 size, which just look like regular photos. If you start making selective enlargements, you can start to see the difference between an SLR so you really have to put a bit more thought into composing the image before you take it.

 

Even though they're not *quite* as good as as SLR, I really find that digital cameras have re-kindled my interest in photography and that I now take a lot more photos. Depends how into computers you are, but it really is good to be able to e-mail photos of fishing trips to your mates. I almost always do it first thing the next morning.

 

Printing photos is good to, and this quality really is quite stunning. However, it can get adictive, and it then becomes expensive!

 

Don't know where people get the idea that you need high quality images to print photos in magazines. The image quality in even a really flash glossy magazine is a lot lower than in a photographic print. These days, all the magazine would do with a slide would be to scan it and manipulate the image electronically. If the image is sharp and properly exposed a file is just as good.

[poledark]

Not a complex subject at all. Almost all digis will give you a good quality print on photo paper and using a reasonable inkjet printer.

 

Quality of print is not an issue when the resolution is over 2 mpx, and if only printing up to 6x4 then almost any cheap digi will do.

 

Any good digi will come with editing software so you can trim/edit/enhance etc, I crop almost all my pics.

 

As an example...I took a series of pictures with a Sony Mavica with a resolution of only.5mpx, I then printed them on to good quality satin white paper as part of a calendar, printing was on a basic inkjet printer. The pics were all 5x4.

 

I took this lot to a printers to have them bound up and he was so impressed that he asked if he could use them for his self. I hasten to add that he wanted the pics, not the calendar contents which were personal to each of my family.

 

There are some drawbacks with the slight delay between pressing the shutter and getting the pic, this can affect moving images. I do not know if this is common to all digis so it would be worth checking.

As Steve says, attachments are expensive and in many cases non existent.

 

I now only use digital, my Pentax's and wide angle/ zoom/ tele lenses are are tucked away in a cupboard and will probably never be used again.

 

Go for it, go for the very best you can afford and you will not be dissapointed.

 

As a postcript to this, I went into a famous photo store near where I live and asked if they sold any attachment rings for my Olympus 3000z, I was hoping to be able to use some of my other lenses. The manager treated me with scorn,saying I should get a proper camera, could you have gone to the same store?

 

Den

[Ken L]

I'm not expert on this subject but as I've been travelling through some of the most technology obsessed part of the planet recently, I may as well stick my oar in.

Anything above 3Mp will give excellent results.

The image quality on a 6Mp digital camera is simply awsome - if you're a good enough photographer to make the most of it.

 

So, did I rush out and buy a new digi ? - erm...no.

The reason is simple. I would use it largely for fishing and travelling and there are just not enough places arround the world that will let you dump you pictures to a CD yet and I came across

a little jem from Casio that is waterproof and shock proof and would be the ideal fishing camera were it not limited to only 1.2 MP.

 

Me, I'll stick with the 35mm for now and slash out on next years model from Casio when it hits the shops - provided it has decent memory and at least 2.5 Mp resolution.