introduction

Introduction

I decided it was time I replaced my aging 35mm SLR camera and go digital. This page describes categorising the requirements and the selection process.

One of my main reasons for making the transition was my increasing use of my computer both for communication and for storage. The big attraction of digital photography is instant results, No waiting to see what develops - after it is generally too late to repeat the shots. You can review the result instantly - and if necessary retake. When you get home - you can immediately download the trip's take without waiting for a film to be finished. I have taken shots and they have been at the other side of the Atlantic minutes later.

When I started my research - I looked for direct replacements for my existing SLR. I got the photography bug before I left school - and have relied on being able to make overriding manual adjustments for special shots. Once I started looking at Digital Camera (DC) specifications - I soon realised that I could get away from lugging a bulky camera around and still achieve good results.

My experience using camcorders - which use similar technology for converting an image - indicated the satisfactory images could also be achieved at very much lower light levels than with conventional film. On the down side there were problems in viewing a LCD screen in bright light - and more serious - obtaining replacements for failed custom batteries.

So what did I want from a DC?
Apart from acting as a general-purpose family camera - I need to be able to photograph records - old documents and pictures - often in poor light conditions without a flash.

Remember - todays family shots are potential genealogy material for the future. Although how well digital media will survive the rigours of time remains to be seen - so make plenty of anotated backup copies to durable media. Whilst digital storeage preserves the original quality - I have doubts as to the durabilty of modern printed images when compared with the older conventional photographic process. In the end it is - as always - down to the perceived value to whoever sorts through our things after we have gone.

Basic Requirements

With the above considerations in mind - and during my research - the categorisation of the basic DC requirements evolved as:-

use standard off-the-shelf batteries.
good picture clarity and colour replication
to operate at low light levels without a flash
to have an optical (conventional) viewfinder - as well as LCD
macro facilities (for close-up shots)
something compact - preferable pocket sized.
2 mega-pixel minimum image size.
budget Ł200-300 including tax (multiply by 1.4 for us$ and by 2.3 for can$ approximation including tax)

Nice to have features but not absolutely essential. If two DC's were equal in performance when judged against 1 to 8 above - then having the following features would give plus points:-

manual override of at least exposure - shutter speed - flash
(manual focus and compact do not usually co-exist)
Raw image output - or jpeg with a Compression Factor (CF) of 1.
Jpeg by its very nature results in image degredation unless the Compression Factor is set to 1. The jpeg CF can be set between 1 and 99 and is a trade-off of file size against quality. A CF setting of 99 gives the smallest file size but the poorest quality image.
take short video clips - (overcomes the significant delay between pressing the shutter and taking the shot from which most DC's suffer)
use the widely available Compact Flash memory cards

next - research