[thelist] digital camera

Ben Henick persist1 at io.com
Tue Nov 20 12:38:16 CST 2001


On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, Erika Meyer wrote:

> What I need to do is take good pictures (mostly around campus) for
> the web. I need USB.  I need to be able to take indoors shots without
> having to use flash.  I want to be able to set it to take black &
> white.  I want zoom.  Maybe I want other stuff but I don't know
> enough to say.
>
> Basically, I would use the camera to make photos indoors (portraits &
> objects) and outdoors (buildings, people, vegetation) on campus.  I'd
> then edit them for the web site.  They would not be used for print.
>
> Suggestions for a good value?

The cameras I hear about most frequently these days are the ones in the
Nikon Coolpix series.  I've never used them - I'm quite happy with my Sony
- so the best I can do is suggest them as benchmarks.  The product I see
from them on the Web is good, but I don't know what's been done to any of
those photos before being placed on sites.  [Seems I'm the second person
to bring this up, at the least.]

If you make your purchase carefully, something you'll likely discover is
that the camera will take wonderful flashless shots in settings that would
be near-to-impossible to record with a conventional point and click
camera, flash or not.  I've got a couple of photos from Webvisions, taken
without a flash, that might serve as good points of reference, since you
were there.

Most cameras will record in greyscale and sepia-tone modes, in addition to
color (though one wonders why an experienced Photoshop user would care
*grin*).

When I went shopping last winter, I used c|net as my review source.  I
came up with lots of possibilities... and that was a year ago.  Doubtless
you are in a position to put my purchase to shame, while spending less
money in the process...

Take care as you shop to remember that simply having a USB camera will not
mitigate the expense of storage outright.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a CCD records the same number of
pixels regardless of the setting of your camera.  This can be
disconcerting when you're recording at smaller sizes, on account of the
fact that small photos will create a lag between the instant you click the
shutter and the instant the photo is recorded (e.g. resampling).  Learning
about this lag caused me an immense amount of grief.

The obvious solution is to get a camera with a lower resolution CCD, but
you can expect in that case to lose other features, such as (most
importantly) optics - since features tend to be all-or-nothing on
digicams...


-- 
Ben Henick
Web Author At-Large              Managing Editor
http://www.io.com/persist1/      http://www.digital-web.com/
persist1 at io.com                  bmh at digital-web.com
--
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so, Brain, but... (snort) no, no, it's too stupid."
"We will disguise ourselves as a cow."
"Oh!" (giggles) "That was it exactly!"






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