Sony Canon Kodak Digital Camera Review

Sony Canon Kodak Fuji Nikon Olympus Digital Camera Review


Buying a new digital camera by Nick Stubbs


I feel, after visiting so many websites and reading so much advice, and also by frequently visiting photography forums, that I have to speak on this subject.

For the majority of the buying public, there are 2 categories that we fall into when getting started or upgrading in digital photography, the "Absolute Beginner" or the "Amateur" (or serious amateur sometimes labelled as semi pro).

Now for the beginner, or someone getting started in photography itself (not just digital), the choice of cameras nowadays is quite overwhelming! Everywhere you look there are cameras, not just in camera shops like the good old days. You even get given a cheap digital camera as a gift for buying something else in some places. There are reasonably powerful digital cameras in the more expensive mobile phones now and they come in all shapes and sizes.

So where do you possibly start and how do you make that choice for buying a camera for yourself or someone else. Really it is quite simple and there are 3 criteria you should look at:

1.Quality - If you want the camera to last at least a few years and not get bothered by a bit of bashing about, go for quality. A titanium body, not plastic, something that is fairly heavy and robust in your hands, you can feel quality!

2.Features - Do you want quality video capabilities? How big do you want to print the pictures that come from the cameras files (how many mega pixels)? Do you want to have at least some manual features so you can get a bit creative? Or do you just want a "Point-and-shoot" digital camera?

3.Price - You will have a budget in mind of how much you want to spend. Get the best camera and memory you can for your budget, worry about extras later! Don't be cheap; if you want reasonably good quality prints, by spending too little on a very cheap camera, you will waste paper, printer ink and/or good money at your local lab. Get a good make and model of digital camera now and it will outlast a cheapie 4 or 5 times.

DO NOT be swayed by digital cameras that have "Non-Photographic" features, gadgets and gizmos. Any of these unnecessary features added means that some quality has been sacrificed elsewhere. Buy a camera to be a camera, and nothing else. I would also suggest buying one of the top brands such as Canon, Nikon, Konica-Minolta, Olympus etc., they may cost a little more, but the difference in quality is worth it. They all make cheaper end cameras too.

Look for decent features such as a good optical zoom, NOT digital zoom. Digital zoom is an unnecessary marketing tool; it is the same as zooming in on the photo once you get it onto your PC. 10-20X digital zoom is acceptable but I have seen video cameras with 1000X digital zoom, have you ever tried holding the camera steady at these kind of magnifications, even with a tripod?!!

Basically, write down exactly what you want and need from the camera, go to a reputable dealer and buy a good branded camera that has what you need for your requirements and budget, don't be swayed by the salesperson into buying more than you need.

Now, the Amateur or Semi Pro. When you start to look at Semi professional Digital SLR's or Advanced digital compact cameras, the choice is a little less but no less confusing. The same advice goes here as in the previous section, think about what you need the camera for, how you think you may progress in this hobby and your budget.

The "prosumer" advanced digital compact cameras available today are steadily encroaching on the quality of the DSLR, although in my opinion, they will never catch them. The optical zooms are fantastic, the sensors, albeit smaller than the DSLR are powerful and produce stunning images, and some even have "built-in" image stabilisers…Great!

Again, my advice would be to go for quality. These cameras are more expensive anyway and you want one that will last and put up with a bit of knocking from your "getting creative in photography" moments! Once you have your advanced digital compact, don’t be swayed by the latest upgrades, updates or releases. Get to know what you have, learn how to use it effectively and learn the photography side of photography, not the technical side.

Once you are happy with your progression and feel that you want to move on, be more in control and maybe even start to earn from photography, only then should you splash out and upgrade to a Digital SLR.

The Semi Professional Digital SLR or consumer DSLR is a fantastic thing in photography. Many of the "die-hard" film photographers are seeing the light and going digital. Many aspects of film are still widely used and will do for some time, as large format film photography produces the absolute finest detail I have seen (at the time of writing. In 2020, who knows?).

However, the latest batch of Digital SLR's have now reached the point where they match or out perform 35mm film. It is predicted that next year (2006) will be "boom time" for the sales of DSLR's as the quality increases and the prices come down. There has never been a better or cheaper way to get into 35mm photography!

The BIGGEST thing to consider when buying a DSLR kit is to choose your brand loyalty. Look at Canon, Nikon, Konica-Minolta, Olympus, Kodak etc., and make your choice, why? As you progress and become more enthusiastic or serious, you will want to add more lenses to your kit. Wide angle, telephoto, zoom, macro, standard….there is a massive choice.

With the way technology is going, you are much more likely to upgrade your camera than you are your lenses and it will be a lot cheaper to do so once you really get into this hobby, believe me! One decent lens in my kit cost €2,000 (£1400) alone. A decent lens will, with care, last you a lifetime. There is only a certain level of quality of the glass you can obtain with optics so remember this point when buying your camera.

My choice? Canon. I used to work for Nikon and had a preference towards them, but nowadays all my kit is Canon. I feel they are one step ahead with technology and the lenses (especially the nice white ones) are amazing! Just look at the next major sporting event on TV, how many "White" lenses you see. Only Canon makes white lenses.

Again, once you have made your choice, BUY the camera, ENJOY it and LEARN from it! If the sensor (i.e. 8MP or bigger) produces LARGE, high quality prints, why be swayed by the newer, latest upgrades? Photography is about "learning" and enjoyment, DO NOT be intimidated by technological gobbeldy gook, as long as your camera has the features that you need, quality to match and you build a nice set of lenses over time, who cares if the latest model has 0.1% better white balance control, or flashing lights?

If you are new to Digital SLR's, I have a section on my website that explains all the bits and buttons…

Digital SLR Newbie?

All the best and enjoy yourselves!

Nick Stubbs
All Things Photography




About the Author
Professional photographer with more than 20 years experience. Started at 13 by building own darkroom, progressed to become an apprentice at 16 and have not looked back since.



Digital camera printers by Jakob Jelling


The digital camera is not meant only for capturing images and storing them on the computer memory disks. The real effect comes from the hard copy of those fantastic images taken by the users, that is the printed photographs! In order to get the printer copy of the images a very important device necessary is the printer. The digital image printing requires a few numbers of components that comprises the total process of printing. This discussion is thus primarily focused towards analyzing and understanding this whole experience of digital camera printers.

Scrutinizing in some more detail, it can be observed that in digital photography some really good and fantastic one-trick-pony printers have filled up the market that are exclusively designed for the sake of printing digital camera photos. These printers are not for the purpose of printing everyday documents, simply because their cartridges and photo paper, that are sold together in single boxes, are not cheap and thereby economic for such purposes. Thus they are solely for the reason of getting the images into physical paper with a high degree of perfection and elevated quality. In these printers the ink and paper are by and large sold together in single boxes, and the average print costs to around 30 to 70 cents. However the biggest advantage remains that these printers themselves are inexpensive.

Looking at the advantages of these digital camera printers, the very first and the most significant one is that these printers do not require a computer for their functioning. They have the ability of printing directly from the digital camera, which enables the users to take and use them on the road too! A few examples of such great printers are Canon's Selphy DS700 and CP330; the Olympus P-10; Sony's FP30 and EX50; Epson's Picture Mate; and Hewlett-Packard's Photo smart 375. Some digital cameras nowadays enable the users to connect them directly to a PictBridge printer using a standard USB cable. And then obtain the printed photographs. Another loom is to include memory-card slots right on the printer as a result the users do not run down the camera's battery while printing.

The above discussion reveals almost all the rudimentary yet important information regarding the digital camera printers and it is expected that more and more users of the digital cameras would appreciate this fantastic device!



About the Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.com. Visit his digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictures with your digicam.




How to Buy Digital Camera Lenses
by Gary Hendricks


With new technology comes new opportunity. This statement is particularly true in the case of digital cameras, and more importantly, as the title of this article suggests, in the case of digital camera lenses.

There are so many different lenses with varying specifications available that it can be quite overwhelming to find exactly what it is that you require from a lens, but that is where we step in to help.

This article acts as a guide to explain the jargon and to allow you make a better-informed purchase the next time you are shopping for a new digital camera lens.


Choosing a Suitable Focal Length
Focal length is probably the most important factor that should be considered when choosing a lens, and for good reason: focal lengths determine the field-of-view of the photos you will be able to take successfully with your camera.

The two main types of focal length are telephoto and wide-angle, and while telephoto lenses have a narrow field-of-view and are best suited for close-up shots and portraits, wide-angle lenses have a wider field-of-view which is perfect for indoor photography and landscapes.

Keep in mind that the performance of lenses can differ from camera to camera, with the magnification power behind a lens generally being greater on a digital camera than on a 35mm film-based camera.


The Need For Speed
When you hear about fast and slow lenses, reference is being made to a lens's maximum aperture, which is the maximum amount of light that a lens can let in. A simple rule of thumb is that a fast lens lets in a lot of light, while a slow lens lets in less light, which defines how your photos will look.

Maximum apertures are measured in f/stop numbers, which are actually a ratio of the size of the lens aperture and focal length. The smaller the f/number, the more light is let in. An increment in the f/stop number doubles the amount of light let in, so f/2.0 lets in twice as much light as f/1.4.

This may seem quite confusing at first, so the easiest way to make sense of it is to remember the following: fast lenses are best suited towards successful photography in darker lighting conditions, and slow lenses are targeted towards photography in lighter conditions.


The Ins and Outs of a Zoom Lens
Unlike a fixed-focal-length lens, a zoom lens often gives you the diversity of a range of focal lengths all rolled into a single adjustable lens. This can be great if you often have to switch between various lenses for different shots, but it is important to remember that not all zoom lenses have a constant maximum aperture, and those that do are often larger and more expensive.

Although the maximum aperture may be reduced as you zoom in using a lens with a variable maximum aperture, this may not be as important to some photographers as the reduced cost and size of such lenses. Keep this in mind when purchasing a zoom lens.


Add-on Lenses
Add-on or accessory lenses are targeted towards compact digital cameras, and allow owners of such models to significantly lengthen or reduce the camera's built-in focal length while at the same time being able to automate camera functions including f/stop settings and focusing.

These lenses can be an excellent low-cost add-on to your digital camera, with telephoto add-on lenses being able to increase focal lengths by up to 300%, and wide-angle versions allowing for reduction in focal lengths of up to 30%.


Final Considerations
There are several other terms to take into consideration when buying a digital camera lens to make sure you are making the best purchase. If your lens utilizes aspheric lens elements, then you can rest happily with the knowledge that your lens will help produce sharper photographs and help keep lens weight to a minimum.

Lenses using internal and automatic focusing also keep lens weight down thanks to less moving parts, and of course allow for faster focusing. Low-dispersion glass leaves photos looking less hazy or fuzzy, while stabilization systems help to keep images sharp when taken using slow shutter speeds.


Conclusion
Hopefully this article has helped you to better understand what to look for in a digital camera lens. There are a lot of terms to remember here - so before shopping for your new lens it may be a good idea to take the time to make a list of what you want to do with your camera. Then you can double check your requirements against the features of different lenses. If you are still unsure if a lens will cater for your needs then by all means try to test it so that you can see some results before you buy!


About the Author
Gary Hendricks runs a hobby site on digital photography. Visit his website at http://www.basic-digital-photography.com for tips and tricks on buying digital cameras, as well as shooting great photos.

Digital Imaging Explained by Warren Lynch


Digital Imaging Explained

By Warren Lynch www.wlynch.com

Digital Imaging is a process where an electronic photograph, scanned document, or image is converted into a series of electronic dots called pixels. Pixels is an acronym for "picture elements".

After the image is converted, or digitized, it is stored on a memory storage device which may be a hard drive or some sort of electronic storage device such as a memory stick. The pixels are stored in a compressed format to save storage space.

As each pixel is being created it is assigned a color value, called a tonal value, of black, white, shades of grey, or an actual color. These pixels must be processed by a piece of software in order for them to be called up and viewed as an actual image later.

Traditional cameras capture images onto film while digital cameras use an electronic chip known as a Charged Coupling Device (CCD). The CCD is actually a grid of miniature
light-sensitive diodes. These diodes convert photons (light) that strikes them into electrons (electrical impulses). The technical name for these diodes is 'photosite'. The brighter the light is that hits the photosite the stronger the electrical charge is that's produced.

After converting the photons into electrons, a mini-computer, located inside of the camera, reads the stored electrical value in each photograph. Then a built-in analog-to-digital converter turns the stored electrical value into a digital value. These digital values are then stored on the cameras memory storage device. When these digital values are recalled by software, and displayed on a screen, they reproduce the
image that was originally captured by the camera or digital input device.

The digital image that is created by the CCD is huge. It's far too big to be easily stored in the relatively little amount of storage space that's available to a digital camera. Accordingly, the camera's computer compresses the image to make it smaller.

There are two basic methods for achieving this compression. The first method takes advantage of repetitive patterns in the image. For example, if you are taking a picture of an airplane that is flying in the sky, a lot of the picture will be a chunk of blue sky. The camera recognizes that there are multiple parts of the image containing the same digital
information, so it only records a small piece of the sky. Then it simply creates a map to tell it where the rest of the sky belongs. When the picture is ultimately displayed the sky appears exactly the same as it did in the original image when it was first captured. The only difference is that the overall storage requirements were reduced thanks to the camera's clever mapping techniques.

The other method uses a procedure called irrelevancy. This methodology automatically removes digital information that is not visible to the human eye such an infra red light.

Digital imaging is amazing yet we have only started witnessing the revolutionary changes that are yet to come.




About the Author
Warren Lynch has been shooting commercial photography since the 70's. Visit his website at www.wlynch.com or just him a call at 1-502-587-7722 to quote on your next project. Get his
Bi-weekly Digital Photography Tips for FREE!. Subscribe to "The Daily Digital Dose" Now. www.photopheed.com


The Beginner Buyer's Guide To Digital Cameras, Or The Ins And Outs Of Megapixels." by Warren Lynch


The Beginners buyer's guide to digital cameras or The Ins and Outs of
Megapixels.

By Warren Lynch http://www.wlynch.com

The most important part of buying a digital camera is making sure that
the one you select meets all of your needs.

Digital Camera 101

Better digital cameras uses a chip called a "Charged Coupled Device"
(CCD) instead of film. Light enters the camera, through the open
shutter, and strikes the CCD where it is converted to digital data
before being stored in the camera's memory.

While that is the simple description, things can get pretty
complicated from there.

Megapixels & Resolution

Resolution is a measure of how many pixels are used to make a digital
copy of an image. Pixels are tiny dots of light that make up a digital
image.

The quality of a digital camera's image is usually measured in
'Megapixels' where each megapixel represents one million pixels.

Here's how to determine how many megapixels you'll need depending upon
the type of photos you will be taking and what you intend to do with
them.

1 megapixel

Almost obsolete, you might still find these in cell phones, PDAs, and
desktop "web" cameras. They're OK if you only intend to email pictures
to other people and those people aren't going to be printing them.

1.1 to 2 megapixels

Only slightly better than the 1.0, this resolution is OK for an average
4x6 snapshot, but it isn't going to be a production quality image.

2.1 to 3 megapixels

This is the beginning of the decent camera range. You get very good 4x6
images and reasonably good 5x7 images. These cameras are low cost and
provide a good platform for beginners.

3.1 to 4 megapixels

You are qualified to say that you have a "pretty good" camera. You get
professional quality 4x6 images, real good 5x7 and 6x9 shots, and
somewhat decent, but not great 8x10 images.

4.1 to 5 megapixels and up

People will be saying "Hey, great pictures!". You can count on
professional images all the way up to 8x10's. Of course, as the
megapixel count goes up, so does the price.

If you are only going to be viewing your pictures online, such as
posting them at a photo site or using them on your web pages, keep your
money in your pocket and pick yourself up something in the 1.5 megapixel
range.

If you will be shooting pictures that will be printed at a print house,
such as for brochures, postcards, etc, then you will need at least a 5
megapixel camera if not higher. Of course, you'll also need to have a
fat wallet or a lot of open to buy on your credit card because, even
thought prices are steadily falling, these puppies aren't cheap!

Once you've solved the megapixel puzzle, the rest of a digital camera's
features, such as lens types, storage capacity and shutter speed are
pretty routine and easy to understand. You shouldn't have a problem
deciding on those features.

Join Photopheed's Daily Digital Dose and see Warren's Tips.
Warren Lynch has been shooting commercial photography since 1979 in
Louisville, Kentucky. Clients include Makers Mark Bourbon, Heaven
Hill, Yum Brands, GE, Fruit of The Loom and many more highly
recognizable brands. Have him make your product more recognizable
too. Visit his website at www.wlynch.com or just him a call at
1-502-587-7722.




About the Author
Sign-up for Photopheed's Daily Syndicated Newsletter, the Daily Digital Dose and also receive Bi-Weekly Digital Photography Tips and Techniques from Warren Lynch an award-winning commercial photographer. http://www.photopheed.com