Making Sense of Digital Cameras

From the Bear Den...

It used to be so easy. You walked into a store, selected a camera from three or four choices, and you're all systems go take your photos! Now you go into a store to purchase a camera and there is a HUGE selection, with all kinds of options you never had to deal with in the past! Here are some helpful tips to help understand this digital photography technology.

Digital and Optical Zoom: Ignore digital zoom, it is pretty much worthless. Optical zoom ranges are what you need to look for. (Editor's note: I think of digital zoom as "in camera cropping.")

Batteries: The advantage of AA batteries is that you can run into a store and purchase batteries when you are traveling. Recall that battery technology has come a long way in the past few years; they stay charged longer and cost less. For everything you wanted to know about batteries and more, see here.

Memory cards: The 2 big memory formats are Secure Digital (SD) and Compact Flash (CF), although there is no shortage of other less common formats. The purpose is the same- storage space for your photos. What other equipment do you own and what memory formats do they support? If you'll be taking a lot of burst shots, you will want the fastest memory you can get (Ultra IV), but such speed comes at a premium price.

Along with strides in technology, we have to deal with new terms, options, specifications and designs. It’s not as hard as you may think. However it can be a bit overwhelming and frustrating if it’s all new to you. Let’s break down digital cameras into actual applications people would intend to use them for...


Ultra-Compact Cameras are the smallest cameras and are also referred to as Pocket Cameras. These cameras are very handy due to their small size. You can carry them in a pocket or purse and they are always there when you need them. Of course that is the reason they make camera phones right? In the past few years megapixels have increased and you can now find these camera’s in the 6 to 8 MP range. The big drawback is the optics in the lens suffers due to the small size. These cameras are fine for face or group photos, but you will not get a very big zoom range and landscapes will suffer due to the small aperture of the lens. Your photos will not produce the vast depth of field you would see in a camera with a larger lens.

Compact cameras are larger than the Ultra-Compacts. While these cameras may still be small enough to fit into your pocket, they tend to weigh more. One of the reasons for the increased weight is due to a larger lens. You will also see an increase in optical zoom ability to 3X or even 5X and also have more manual controls available.

Super Zoom cameras are not as large as Digital SLR’s cameras, but they are large enough that they are going to need to be carried in a camera case. These cameras offer great optical zoom capabilities of 10X or 12X and have a large lens that with produces a good depth of field. They will offer the user much more control over the camera. Options such as image stabilization will be required with a super zoom camera. These cameras are best suited for the traveler when you will be taking various photo subjects from portraits to landscapes to nature and wild animals.

Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras have really come down in price over the past few years and offer the photographer the most control and capture the best quality of photos. When you look through the viewfinder of a DSLR you are looking through actual lens. This camera is for the person that is going out “to take photos” or doesn't mind carrying a large camera on a trip. While they are the largest and weigh the most, you gain the capability of additional lenses for different applications. They also cost the most, but wow you will capture some really fantastic images!

So you can see that different cameras are really meant for different occasions and applications. Because of this, many people own more than one camera.

In closing….

Look at the occasions when you will want to take photos and you will easily determine what type of camera you are really going to use most often. This will make your choices fewer and easier for sure!

-Bear

Megapixel Madness!

I recall the earliest digital cameras, and their 480 x 640 resolution (a buddy of mine had the one pictured to the left). For the PowerPoint presentations that we were making, the resolution was actually ok. They were really a great solution to the problem of taking images of procedures in the operating room.
We generally only need two or three images in most cases, and with traditional film, it was a waste of the rest of the roll. It was also great to be able to view the image on the screen, and confirm we got the shot, many of which involved unusual angles to see some structure, and after we "closed up shop" we wouldn't be able to recreate the shot again.

Years ago, the debate raged as to how many megapixels equal photography film. Usually the standard held up for for film was 35 mm, although larger formats would offer even more resolution. I heard estimates as low as 6 megpixels on up to a max of 16 megapixels. As film is a continuous emulsion, and not broken up into pixels, I'm not sure there really is an answer to this question. While we can scan a negative or a slide into 16 megapixels, for example, it may say more about our scanner than about the film itself.

Now that I'm shopping for cameras, I'm noticing that the resolutions have been way ramped up. It's getting hard to buy anything that's less than five megapixels currently. There are also plenty of cameras under $200 sporting 7 and 8 megapixel resolutions.

I'm not sure this is such a good thing. After all, the more pixels captured means that the memory card will have to store more. Also, this means more space on the hard drive. When we start scaling up the hundreds of images that folks capture throughout the year, you can start to appreciate the issue, as well as the challenge of backing it up.

Of course, hard drives keep growing, and should more than be able to keep up. Also realize that compressing the images further only degrades their quality, introduces artifacts, and pushes the appearance down to a lower resolution image- or worse.

I'm wondering what folks are doing with all of this resolution. Most of us really only print out stuff at 4 x 6 inches anyway. Occasionally, I do a 5 x 7 print. Both turn out fine from my 3.3 mp camera. When I was shooting film, I never printed anything larger than that either. I doubt that most users will print anything beyond that size. So what is this resolution getting us?

I think that the magic megapixel number is becoming an advertising ploy. It is like the processors a few years ago. Isn't it great, it runs at 3.8 GHz... even if the processor is running too hot, and offers only a marginal performance bump above something slower. The same has happened in the photo industry. While there are new technologies that will improve the experience, like antishake, it's too hard to sell that to the masses. So with each new crop of digital cameras, the formula is to simply add another megapixel to make it sound new and so much better.

I really don't know if or when this will end. Many of these cameras are limited by a plastic lens, and while the sensor's resolution grows, the image quality is no better. Personally, I think that anything beyond 5 or 6 megapixels, unless planning some serious cropping, or really large prints is kind of a waste. In the meantime, we still don't know how many megapixels equal 33 mm film.

--Jonas