Digital cameras

[model 70]

Not sure if thise goes here or not but I'm in the market for a new digital camera. I've noticed with some that the pics come out more clear and crisp than with others. My price range is betweem $300-400. Any suggestions?

[338winmag]

-

[multibeard]

I have a Fujifinepix 2650 that I bought a year ago at Best Buy. It was less than $200 bucks. It is only 2 pixels. The quality pictures I get out of the camera is surprizing. I didn't want an expensive camera getting beat around in my pocket in the field while fishing and hunting.

A friend was helping me clear a problem out of my computer a while back. I have a picture from this cheeeeep camera on the monitor. I asked him what he thought of the picture. He was amazed when he saw that it came from a 2pix camera. He always said you needed at least 4 pix to get good pictures.

I see now that prices on digital camras have come down a lot since I bought mine.

We had a get together for a Michigan website in Feb. One of the guys had his $5,000 digital camera get a bath in his fishing hole. Almost a total loss. This is the third time this year he has had damage to the camera. OUCH!!!!!

[DeGrush]

I have a Kodak Easy Share DX6490 camera it is a 4 megapixel. it has a 10xoptical zoom and is a real nice camera and it cost $297.It takes real nice pictures .

[model 70]

what ranges do they offer the megapixels in?

[mtmiller]

You should take a look at the Panasonic FZ10. This is a 4mp camera with a 12x zoom (36X digital). It takes great pics and zooms right in there. There is also a new FZ20 (5mp), but it may be ~$150 more than what yo want to pay.

I know you lose quality with digital, but I don't think this camera is too bad (it is a Leica lens).

These two pics were at 36X for the horned lark and 30X for the ground squirrel.



Obviously this not a very good pic, but I lasered the sheep at 276 yards. This picture was taken off-hand.


Same sheep at 70 yards at 36x zoom.


12x

36x


I guess it is all about what you want in a camera. I love the camera and really like it's durability. It is in my hunting pack everytime I hit the mountains.

Best of luck finding the camera that suits you best.

[Dale]

The clarity of the picture depends on the Megapixel of the camera and how the camera is set. If you have a 5 MP camera set to 1.3 MP it will not be as sharp as a 2.0 MP camera set to 2.0 MP. Also depends if you are just displaying on the monitor or printing and what size you are printing. If you print 8X10's and smaller the 3 MP cameras are fine. If you want to print an 8X10 and crop in on the subject and go back up to 8X10 go with a 4 or 5 MP. If you see a 4MP camera for $100.00 and a 4MP camera for $300.00 you can bet the latter will be sharper, due to a better lens, better chip, or something like that. The main things that control the price of the camera is the MegaPixel and the OPTICAL Zoom. I know Nikon, for example has a 4 MP with a 3X Optical Zoom for $200. Fuji has a 4 MP with a 10X Optical Zoom for $350. You might find a Nikon 4 MP for $200 and a Nikon
4 MP for $250-300. One differance is AA batteries or rechargable Lithium Ion battery. I would say go into a camera store where you can talk to some one who knows about cameras (not the guy who was stocking diapers yesterday and selling cameras today) and put them in your hands, turn them on, look at a 3X and a 10X and see what you need. Don't be fooled and think you have to have a kajillion MegaPixel to get good pictures.

My recomendations: If you want to take wildlife pics get a 10X optical Zoom. Fuji Fiepix 5100-4MP/10X
Kodak EasyShare 7590 (I think) 5MP/10X.
If you want small and light...Nikon 4600 4MP/3X...Canon A85 4MP/3X or A95 5MP/3X.

All of those should be in your price range. Expect to spend about another $100.00 on xtras. Get the biggest memory card you can afford. Get a quality bag to protect it in. If it runs on AA's consider rechargable batters and/or a USB card reader to save battery power.

Hope that helps some.

[Dale]

Megapixel ranges from 2.0 to 14 and higher. The Panasonic cameras do a nice job, but they will be bigger and heavier. If that does not concern you take a look at them. The FZ10 will be hard to find in a retail store. It has been discontinued for about a year now. The FZ20 runs about $500 retail. Ebay or online, you can probably find both cheaper, but I would put one in my hands before I ordered one sight unseen. The Panasonics have Leica glass as mt mentioned and have a 2.8 aperture even at 12X (translates to a brighter lens...better lowlight pics).

[model 70]

Thanks a ton. Those pics looked pretty clear to me. I forgot to mention i wanna get up real close with the zoom. would that mean i need a higher "x" when buying a camera? is it like buying a rifle scope?

[Dale]

Yes. You want a higher X or higher power. You want to look at Optical Zoom though. You want the highest Optical Zoom. It doesn't matter what the Digital Zoom is.

[Skinny Shooter]

Originally posted by model 70
Not sure if thise goes here or not but I'm in the market for a new digital camera. I've noticed with some that the pics come out more clear and crisp than with others. My price range is betweem $300-400. Any suggestions?

As some have already pointed out, megapixels can and will affect clarity of the image. But, some cameras have "in-camera processing" enabled which can enhance the photo automatically when viewing on the monitor.
Those options could be sharpening, contrast (or levels) and other settings. I prefer to disable those settings before I take any photos and will process the images myself in accompanying photo software. Most digi images need some kind of "bumping" or enhancement. Which is why I think the new inkjet printers that accept film cards directly into the printer are a gimmick.
For the price range you are looking at I don't think you will get all that you are asking for. Check out this site: http://www.dpreview.com/ and check out the different camera reviews there. They also have discussion forums for almost every camera manufacturer and you can ask detailed questions there.

Originally posted by model 70
Thanks a ton. Those pics looked pretty clear to me. I forgot to mention i wanna get up real close with the zoom. would that mean i need a higher "x" when buying a camera? is it like buying a rifle scope?

Getting close with the zoom could mean a couple of things. Did you mean like this with the zooms macro setting?



Or did you want to fill the image frame with wildlife? If that is the case I'd suggest getting yourself a Digital SLR which will accept interchangeable lenses.
We use these two in our studio:
The Kodak 760 6megapixel. $6500 for the body

We also use the Nikon D70 6megapixel for our school sports photos. $1000 for the body.


When you look at a digicam's zoom you might see the words "optical" and "digital" zoom.
I'll say it like this:
Optical good.
Digital bad.

The optical zoom is much like the zoom on a variable powered rifle scope. Digicams and interchangeable zoom lenses list their settings as "mm" (millimeters). Fixed focal length lenses such as a standard "normal" lens (50mm) will also use the "mm" terminology.
A 300mm telephoto would be a great lens for wildlife and some shooters consider it a minimum when used for spooky game.
When you can't get close enough to a subject to fill the frame and are maxed out on the Opti' zoom, the digital zoom takes over by throwing away a portion of the original digital file (image) and interpolating that smaller file with less pixels and color info back up to the size of the original. Now you don't have to use the digital zoom but camera manufacturers try to hype that feature as being a benefit.
Another way to look at the issue. Ever see pantyhose on someone that is 4 sizes too small. Similiar principle. The pixels get just as stretched and distorted and and some things just should not be...
Mtmiller's example of the doe is also a good illustration but not as extreme. At first glance the bottom image looks sharp but on my LCD monitor I can see a slight softening of the 36x image. Compared to the top image then you can see the difference in sharpening.
Good photos btw. Love the color.
Couple other things.
Always take pictures with the highest resolution setting that you can. You never know what the end use will be and you can always re-size down. You can interpolate up a little but eventually it'll come back to bite ya.
If your new camera has a "RAW" setting, use that for all photos unless you absolutely know that you will never need more than a Jpeg of that particualr image. Which is a good reason to get the largest film card you can as Dale said.
1Gig film cards are coming down in price and are affordable. We use two IBM 1gig microdrives for our needs. Stay away from mechanical drives though when you're knocking about in the out of doors. That is one more thing to break down on you.
Computer monitors see pixels at approx 72ppi which is pixels per inch. You will see the term DPI used (which means dots per inch) for printing purposes. A good digicam may take a high resolution image rated at 250ppi or 300ppi.
That's good.
Our 760 captures a RAW 6 megabyte file and after being processed in Kodak Photo Desk software, it is converted into an 8"x12" 18 megabyte Tiff file at 250ppi. We use Tiffs for ALL of our printing purposes. Once the Tiffs come out of Photo Desk, they are then imported into Adobe Photoshop. There I adjust Curves or Levels and Unsharp Mask. Then the images are ready for printing. We use Burrell Colour Lab in Indiana and also have an Epson 9600 wide-format printer in-house which will print 44" wide. We use that Epson for all of our display photos now and it runs with Ultrachrome inks.

With Pshop, I've cropped and interpolated my 8x12 files up to 24x30 without too much issue. But that also depends on the image being good to start with.
This is what Photoshop and the right "plug-in can help you create:


Good luck.
Btw, the bullet photos were taken with a 3mp Coolpix digicam.
We are also considering the new Fuji S3 DSLR. It is alleged to be 12 megapixels which is hotly debated due to it's new sensor technology. The images I have seen from it though are phenomal and for around $2500, it's a deal.

[sniperp1]

model 70, you might want to look at the New Konica Minolta Dimage Z5 5MP 12X Optical Zoom 4X Digital Zoom, It will do VGA quality video w/sound, takes 4 AA's & uses SD memory card. I'm getting one here in about 2-3 weeks or so. I was going to get the Z3 but, waited to see what else would become available. The Z5 can be had from $400-$500. here is a review of the Z5, http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/mi...ew/index.shtml Good luck, I hope that whatever you buy makes you happy.
Later, Phil B.
________
Buy Extreme Q Vaporizer

[338winmag]

-

[Skinny Shooter]

Originally posted by 338winmag
[B]In my opinion megapixle have no influence how clear your picture will be.
As more megapixle you have on your camera, as bigger you can enlarge your pictures.
Its quality of your lense which decide if you get clear picture or not.

model 70, don't meant to hijack your thread but just want to clarify a couple of things.
I'll have to disagree a little bit on camera MP rating.
Good glass is important but is only one of the variables affecting image quality. And most current cameras already have that.
But, comparing a 1mp image to a 6mp image taken with the same glass and camera would be no comparison.
I'll put it this way, if an image is captured with approx 1 million pixels and then the same image is captured with approx 6 million pixels, that 6mp image most certainly will have better detail.
You may also be surprised to find out that some digicams have glass that is of higher quality than a DSLR. Some digicams have smaller sensors than a DSLR does with the same megapixel rating.
The pixels are different in size which leads to a difference in dynamic range of how the scene or image is recorded and what detail is retained or just plain lost. The larger the pixel, the larger the dynamic range.
Fuji uses octagonal pixels as compared to other cameras that use square pixels instead. To simplify, Fuji claims the odd-shaped pixels increase their dynamic range which leads to capturing more of the transition of highlight to shadow in an image. This results in a smoother less noisy (grainy) image. Not sure I agree totally with Fuji but the end results are incredible.
Some digicams do not use their entire sensor to capture an image which leads to less effective pixels being utilized when you press the "shutter" button.
The relationship of how a particular lens interacts with the CCD or CMOS sensor chip is important also.
The higher a MP rating of a camera the less the jaggies will appear on the edges of your subjects. For instance, a rifle photographed on the diagonal across your viewfinder will show the "stepped" edges of pixels as it is enlarged. The more pixels in a sensor, the less this problem shows. All images have it, some just to a lesser degree as the MP count goes up. Jaggies become less visible as the sensor or image resolution increases.

Good illustration of the bird photo. Some of mtmiller's images were "flat" looking and needed some levels or curves adjustment. Which is a good example from my earlier post that all captured images need some kind of tweaking. And that film card inkjet printers are a gimmick. The most ideal approach is to shoot in a RAW format (if your camera supports that) and adjust your images in the camera's aquire module software like Kodak Photo Desk. Then export your image as a Tiff. Making adjustments to a Tiff file is much more preferrable than a Jpeg file. It's been explained to me this way as to why. A Jpeg contains 1 byte of color/detail information per pixel. A Tiff contains 25 bytes of color/detail information per pixel so a Tiff will "accept" that tweaking much better than a Jpeg.
But then there are ER (extended range) Jpegs which allow you some some of the post-shooting adjustment capability of a RAW-image file.
Allen

[model 70]

wow