So you want a digital camera, huh? Your friends all have them, after all. These days, they outsell film cameras almost 2:1, and Kodak (for gosh’s sake) has announced it’s getting out of the film business. What more do you need to get you moving? Well, some insight might be nice. It’s possible to spend ten grand on digital cameras and have nothing much to show for it. Chances are, you don’t want that to happen. Picking the right camera will go a long way toward making you a competent digital photographer. Yes, it’s true that good equipment can’t make a good picture, but good equipment can make getting a good picture a lot more likely.
Digital camera selection starts with three primary questions:
1. What prior photographic experience do you have? If you’re used to a 35mm camera with interchangeable lenses, you’ll probably want to get a digital camera that has those same features. If all you’ve ever shot was a throw-away camera and you forgot to get those pictures developed before you threw it away, you’re probably not ready for too much digital sophistication.
2. What do you plan to do with the pictures? If all you want to do is email smiling family shots to friends and relatives, you can get by with a very modest camera. If you want to print snapshot-sized images, you’ll need only a little better than modest. If you want poster-sized prints in glowing color, expect to pay a healthy premium for a camera that will shoot that kind of stuff. Also consider whether you’ll be processing your photos digitally using something like Adobe’s Photoshop Elements or Corel PhotoPaint. If you plan on computer enhancement, there are some special issues in camera selection.
3. What kind of pictures will you be taking? Are you doing flash shots in your living room and family groups around the pool, or shooting the sunrise on the
Get the answers to these questions in your mind, and let’s get started.
More than anything else, your digital camera experiences will be determined by two principle things—is the camera a “point-and-shoot” or a digital SLR, and how many megapixels does it have.
Digital SLRs, or DSLRs, are the top of the digital food chain. These cameras are usually built by a major 35mm camera vendor or based on a popular 35mm camera frame. My Fuji S2 is built on the Nikon N80 body, for example. In general, you should not consider a DSLR unless you’ve used 35mm equipment before, because the whole thing of interchangeable lenses and precise camera control isn’t something you want to learn on a camera that costs a couple grand. OK, you may be a fast study and it’s your money, but I can’t recommend taking a dive into DSLR photography without having your 35mm water wings first. If you have this kind of experience, there’s a good chance that your best camera choice will be a DSLR from the same manufacturer who built your 35mm. If you have any left-over lenses, chances are good that they’ll work.
The megapixel thing is a little harder to deal with. As I mentioned in another tip, digital camera image quality is largely determined by resolution, which is a measure of the number of dots or pixels that the camera uses to capture an image. In a film camera, the lens projects the image on the film, which captures it. In a digital camera, the lens projects the image on something called a CCD, which converts the picture to a bunch of numbers representing color and lightness. The CCD consists of many small elements, and it’s these elements that do the converting. The more “elements” or pixels per CCD, the more detail can be captured. It takes a lot of pixels to create a good image, so it’s common to measure camera resolution in megapixels, or millions of pixels.
The problem is that it’s hard to get your arms around the question of just what “good” megapixel resolution would be. Here’s a table to help, based on how you answered the question on what you intended to do with your images:
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Megapixel Requirements for Digital Image Use: |
Print-OK |
Print Good |
Print-Best |
|
|
For email to others using dialup |
0.27 |
|||
|
For email to others using broadband |
0.41472 |
|||
|
For viewing in slide shows |
1.2288 |
|||
|
For printing at normal snapshot size |
0.54 |
0.96 |
2.16 |
|
|
For printing at 5x7 |
0.7875 |
1.4 |
3.15 |
|
|
For printing at 8x10 |
1.8 |
3.2 |
7.2 |
|
|
For printing at 9x12 |
2.43 |
4.32 |
9.72 |
|
|
For printing at 11x14 |
3.465 |
6.16 |
13.86 |
|
You can see from the table that if all you’re going to do is email something, you need less than one megapixel. It would be hard to find a camera that sleazy these days! If you want to view your picture on a computer screen, possibly as an element in a slide show, you’ll need a bit more than one megapixel, which is also less than most cameras these days would offer. It’s only when you get to the issue of printing that you have to worry about megapixels.
The chart shows three levels of print quality. The “OK” level will give you acceptable prints but not something that will make your eyes pop. The “Good” level will let you generate something that would almost match what film could provide, and the “Best” would be equal to or better than film. The number in each block tells you how many megapixels you’d need assuming the print quality and size shown. The area shaded in green indicates that the megapixel requirements are within the normal range for consumer digital cameras. The yellow zone means that the resolution is available only on high-end models, and the rose-colored range is the range of size and quality that’s for pro equipment only. To give you a price idea, the green stuff will cost you three hundred or less, the yellow up to about seven hundred dollars, and the rose will run one to five thousand bucks.
One more thing; this assumes that you’ll be making a print or emailing an image that’s the entire picture, as shot. If you wanted to crop or trim down to just a piece of that larger image, you’d need higher resolution. The resolution requirements to support cropping get big in a hurry because they work as the square of the dimension. If you wanted a full-sized print from half the image you shot, you’d need four times the resolution to get the same quality level!
Once you know roughly how many megapixels you need, you can move on to the next set of issues. These relate to the features of the camera, and how they relate to the subjects you intend to photograph.
If you look at a digital camera ad, you’ll probably find it mentions two things—megapixels and zoom. The “zoom” part is usually expressed as “…with a 10x optical and 40x digital zoom” or something similar. There’s a TV commercial that shows a digital camera zooming across a couple quadrangles of a nice upscale college to focus on a (you guessed it) attractive young woman. Great commercial, but there’s not a camera on earth that could duplicate the feat. In fact, saying a camera has “10x” zoom or whatever doesn’t even tell you much about how far away from a subject you could really be to get a shot.
The “zoom” of a digital camera (or camcorder) is just the ratio of the maximum telephoto range of the lens to the widest of the wide-angle settings. If you’re technical, it’s the ratio between the longest and shortest focal length of the lens. A 10x zoom will give you a range of apparent image sizes between largest and smallest of 10:1. But how much of that range is created because the camera supports a very powerful telephoto lens and how much because it supports a very wide-angle setting? You can’t tell, and you need to know.
If you’re lucky, your digital camera vendor will tell you what the 35mm equivalent focal length of the lens will be. It might say, for example, that the lens is equivalent to a 400-40mm range in 35mm. If that’s the case, you can get an idea of how the lens will perform by dividing 50 into each of the numbers. A 400mm lens is 400/50 or 8x magnification, which is about what standard binoculars will give you. A 40mm lens is .8 magnification, or a slight wide angle setting.
If you can’t get this kind of data, you still have an option. Look in your camera specifications for the size of the CCD, which is usually measured in millimeters. If there’s one number only, remember it. If there’s two (12x8mm), you’ll need to do a bit of trigonometry. Multiply each by itself (12x12 and 8x8 in our example) and add the results (144+64 or 208). Take the square root of this (use a calculator if you can’t do it in your head like all us computer geeks) and you’ll end up with something just a tad over 14 (in our example). Now divide that number into the focal length of the lens that the camera spec provides (using this number instead of the 50 I used in my example of 35mm equivalent focal length). That will give you the magnifying power and wide-angle range of the lens.
Now what do you do with them? Well, if you’re interested in taking wildlife shots, you will want at least a 4x telephoto capability, preferably 8x. If you want nice broad vistas in your scenery shots, or if you have to take pictures indoors where you can’t stand far back from your subject, you’d like a minimum of a .5 magnification. If a camera had both, it would have a range of 8x-.5x or 16 times zoom, but remember that it’s not the ratio that counts but what the magnification is at either end.
The next point is image capture. Your camera will save its pictures on some kind of memory card or stick. When it saves the images, they’re saved in a particular format and will have a particular size. All of this will impact how useful a given camera will be to you.
There are three basic formats for image storage; TIF, JPG, and RAW. Most consumer digital cameras save only in JPEG (shortened to JPG) form. This format, an acronym for “Joint Photography Expert Group”, is based on what is called “lossy compression”, meaning that the image will be compressed so it takes up less space, and in the process some detail will be lost. If you want to do a lot of computer editing and fixing of your image, you won’t want to use lossy compression, so it’s good to have a camera that will save in one of the other formats.
The TIFF and RAW formats are both lossless, but very different. TIFF is a standard format (Tagged Image Format File, shortened to TIF) used by nearly all photo-editing packages. The problem is that TIFF is a big file. Each picture is stored as three bytes of data per pixel, so a 6 megapixel image is 18 million bytes. That’s where that memory card/stick comes in. Suppose you buy a digital camera that supports only memory sticks of up to 128 megabytes. That means you can store a grand total of seven TIFF images on it!
RAW format is usually between these extremes. Every camera manufacturer has its own proprietary RAW image format, so if you shoot and store in RAW format you’ll usually have to convert to another editable format using special software. Usually, this software gives you the maximum control over the image quality, so for the very best shots for large prints you’ll want to have a camera that offers RAW format. In my own view, TIFF is a waste and shouldn’t be bothered with. If you want optimum photo quality and editability of your image, get a digital camera that supports a RAW format.
Once you know the format you’ll be using, you can use camera specifications to determine what kind of memory you need to store the images. The Fuji S2 I have stores in TIFF, JPG, or RAW format. At the highest resolution, a JPG image is about 4.7 MB on my camera. A RAW image is about 13 MB, and the TIFF image about 35 MB. The point is that you’ll need to decide just what image type you want to store, and how much storage space you’ll need on the card. My own view is that you should plan to have a minimum of 100 images stored per card. That means that unless you’re shooting in JPG format, you’ll need really big cards (1GB or more) if you have a 6 megapixel camera. Microdrives, little tiny hard disks, are available in the Compact Flash (CF) format, so if you need a lot of storage capacity look for a camera that supports CF cards and buy a couple of microdrives. The only caveat with microdrives is that they have to be handled with care. Keep the spare in a padded case and try not to bump them when they’re turning.
An issue related to the format and image size is the write time. When you shoot, the image is usually stored in-camera in a buffer and written to the CF card when there's time. The problem is that in the heat of shooting something like sparring polar bears, you don't always get time. At some point, the camera runs out of buffer space and you have to stop till the writing catches up. That's usually when all the exciting things happen, of course. The moral is that you need a camera that writes fast if you want fast action. The high-end Nikon (D2 series) and Canons will write quickly. The D2X will write wonderfully fast in my experience. The Fuji S2 is very slow, and the S3 is in my view awful. If you expect to take a lot of fast shots, the write speed may be vital to you, so test it out.
The last issue we’ll cover in camera selection is the dreaded problem of “shutter lag”. A digital camera has to do stuff that a film camera doesn’t do when the shutter is snapped. The digital camera does a “white balance” to establish whether the lighting is going to render colors accurately, and the setup time can be several seconds. If you’re shooting a picture of a moving animal, the lag can kill you. Nobody much publishes their shutter lag intervals, so you’ll need to go to a website that has them for your camera. Start with www.dpreview.com and move on with searching. Lower is better, obviously, and in general the more expensive cameras have lower shutter lag figures.
Everybody has their favorites, so indulge me here. After all, this is my tip!
If you’re looking for a digital camera of 3.5 megapixels or less, you can probably pick out anything from one of the major camera brands and have a good chance of living happily ever after if you research the file formats, storage, and zoom as described above. There are a lot of nice products out there.
In the range from 3.5 to 6 megapixels in non-DSLR models, my own recommendation is to look very hard at a few key vendors like
One thing to consider when looking at a camera is whether you can get the results you want when processing the image. If you’re going to spend money on anything more than about 3.5 megapixel cameras, you should at least spring for Photoshop Elements by Adobe or Corel PhotoPaint. Get the package (borrow a friend’s computer if some of your camera choices will come with one of these products) and download one of the images from the cameras you’re looking at. Fiddle with the picture and see whether you like the result.
What would I buy if I were looking for a digital camera today? OK, here goes.
For DSLR, any of the Canon models in the $900 range, or any of the Nikon models from the D50 up are great. For those with more money, the D2X is my personal choice. I'm sorry to say that I don't like the Fuji S3 because the write speed to the CF card is way too slow.
For non DSLR users, you’re probably OK with most of the major brands. My own view is that you should not push to get more than 4 megapixels on this kind of camera. If you’re expecting to make big prints you need the pro tools. However, I've seen wonderful work from consumer digitals, and it's a matter of personal preference.