Digital camera questions

I am giving some thought to purchasing a digital camera. I've only seen friends use them. Any suggestions for a good first camera? I am interested in the simpliest way to download them on a computer & what program or accessories do I need to do so? Also, I appreciate any recommendations for the best place to purchase the camera. I don't anticipate buying another camera anytime soon, so I'd want something that will last for a number of years.

Personal opinion here (They're like freckles, everyone's got at least one!)


I've been an Olympus customer for digital cameras for about 6 years now.

I would give you the following recommendations: (regardless of camera make)

Minimum 2.1MP, go for 3-5MP if you can afford to
Minimum 64MB memory card (get a spare if you can)
1800mah rechargeable NiMH batteries with charger and a spare set
USB port built into camera
Get a camera that has Apature and shutter priority modes
Get the highest zoom you can afford or find (typical is 2.5 - 3 - Olympus C700 gives you 10X)
ignore (totally ignore) "digital zoom". Digital zoom is faux zoom. it does nothing
another nice feature of Olympus cameras is that htey come with a remote control (great for getting in the picture yourself and better than a timer)

Those are from the hip thoughts. more will come to me i am sure.

prices can range anywhere from $300 - $900

hope this helps.
jim

I agree with Jim on most of his points.

Personally, I think that, unless you're planning on printing 8 x 10" or 11 x 14" prints, anything over 2.1 MP adds more cost than benefit. Costs really jump after 2.1MP.

Also, a card reader for whatever media you happen to use can be picked up for less than $20. I don't think I have a USB port on my camera, but I don't miss it, since my $15 card reader takes most media types and is hooked up to the 'puter via USB.

One EXCELLENT suggestion Jim had is the NiMH batteries. They are fantastic and don't have the memory issues that NiCd batteries do. They're more expensive, but will pay for themselves a hundred times over. Some excellent buys can be found on Ebay (do a search for NiMH and ignore the listings for the Secret of NIMH videos).

I managed to pick up a store demo of an Olympus D-520 zoom on Ebay for just under $125 including shipping. I already have software and a card reader, so the lack of these features didn't matter to me. The full retail version does have these features though.

Unfortunately, the one thing I'm missing is the aperture/shutter priority modes (I think). It does have a 3X optical zoom though, which, unless you're an absolute freak of nature at timing your shots, should be plenty at standard away pad distances.

You've really got to look at want you want to do with your camera, do you want to print lots of photos (if so what size) or do you want to view/share on you computer, be aware if you want to get the full advantages of high megapixel you will need a decent photo printer which is added expence. If you want to view on your computer be aware that average monitors are too small to show the advantages of anything over about 3 megapixel.


Shutter speed is also another feature which is good for especially for rocketry applications as you need to freeze the rocket and they can be moving pretty fast.

As for downloading the USB port will speed up picture transer and I think most cameras sold now are USB. For the program to use your camera will come with some software for downloading and basic editing, if you have XP there's a wizard which does the downloading job pretty well. You may want more than what comes with your samera and if so Adobe Photoshop is pretty much industry standard but it is very expensive, there's an abridged version though called Adobe Photoshop Elements which is still a very in depth package and is excellent value, very good for 'hobby' photographers.

HTH

I appreciate all the useful information. I'm trying to stay around $300.00 or less. I'm partial to Olympus; bought a OM-1 back in '77, & own a Stylus 35mm point & shoot, so I may go with them. I appreciate you all taking the time to answer my questions.

One point I'd like to make regarding resolution...

When I would help folks pick out a camera I would ask first what they wanted to use it for (this is still very important as a first question)

If their primary goal was to print out vacation pictures, I would direct them to high resolution (high MP) cams. If they just wanted to post on the web or do ebay aucitons, they didn't need much more than 1MP (if even that...)

But I have changed that thinking to some extent..

Even if your goal is to post your pix to the web, in the case of rocketry two things happen...

1) you can only get SO close to the pad and no closer

2) to be sure that you do, in fact, capture the launch it is common to not zoom in such as to keep as much *room* in the frame as possible in the hopes that you capture the rocket somplace in the frame, during launch

If you have a high resolution camera (2-5MP), this allows you to crop out *only* the launching rocket and *still* have a fairly high resolution image.

The only option with a 1MP camera is to show the whole picture with this tiny rocket near the top of the pix standing on a smoke trail, or a blow up of the rocket which becomes grainy and hard to view.

I will be upgrading to a 5MP olympus 1st chance I get for that reason alone (well, for nature shots too... *S*)

I clurrently have an olympus C2020 (my 4th olympus) I love them because they have all the settings of a 35mm SLR (and more) and they have Olympus lenses (some of the best in the industry)

jim

Originally posted by jflis
ignore (totally ignore) "digital zoom". Digital zoom is faux zoom. it does nothing

Click to expand...

Except blur your picture. The digital zoom on my Kodak is worthless. Every picture that I have taken using the digital zoom feature came out blurry. I no longer use digital zoom.

The digital zoom from my Nikon Coolpix 200 seems to be OK and can be vital it getting that bit closer when the optical zoom has nothing more to give, having said that it is noticable which shots have used digital zoom so I try and avoid using it if I can.

not to rankle anybody, but I can't emphasize enough...

...digital zoom does *nothing*. It doesn't *work*. It's faux zoom to the highest degree...

Let me explain. The way digital zoom works is to electronically take the image that hits the CCD that is coming from the lens, take a smaller segment of the CCD image and expand it to fill the CCD cells.

There is NO difference than taking the full image (getting a larger area in the picture) and going into your editor and cropping the image to the SAME area as the digital zoom then blowing it up to the size of the original image. That is what the camera is doing when you use digital zoom (with all the resolution loss that you get when you blow that image up).

you are far better off to leave digital zoom off and do the cropping by hand with whatever editor you use (all editors have cropping ability). Then you can crop it the way you want rather than what you happened to select at the spur of the moment with digital zoom.

Many times I've taken a picture of a launch only to discover after downloading the picture that there was a rocket on the pad along side of it that really interested me, or there may have been some defect in the launch (cato) where I see a piece of the rocket off to the left or right. I would not have had that in the field of view had I used digital zoom. Now, I can crop the part of the image that I want (capturing that detail that I didn't even know was going to be there) and blow it up the cropped area to full size. It would look identical to the digital zoomed image, but now has exactly what I want in the image.

Conversly, I've seen many folks take launch pix with digital zoom only to find the bottom half of the rocket at the top of the photo. This would not have happened had they not used digital zoom, and the resolution of the final image would have been identical (but with the whole rocket).

sorry for the rant, but i've seen people plunk down serious extra dollars for high-end digital zoom and it truely is worth nothing to the final product.

I have a 2.1 MP HP 612 camera that cost $100.00 after rebate at Staples. A 128mb CF card and reader was another $55 online. I get about 130 flash photos on a set of alkaline AA batteries. It has 2x optical zoom and 3x digital. I have to agree that the digital zoom is not real good. I have read articles and reviews that imply that one should only consider the optical zoom when looking for a digital camera. Even the HP camera manual admits that the digital zoom reduces image quality.
The camera gets 138 high res images and like 1800 low res on a 128 mb card. The high res are excellent guality and could easily be printed at 4x6 or maybe 5x7. I don't think I'd go larger than that. The controls are simple, and it comes with 8 mb internal memory and a USB cable, so one really doesn't need anything else to get started. It also came with a set of lithium photo cells.

Jim, I apologise if you felt that I was going against what you said in my previous post and I do agree on all of your points especially not using digital zoom as a factor when buying.

I got a $30 Argus digital at Meijer.

Cheap, plastic, low res, no flash.

Basic camera. no frills, no nothin', crumby pictures, I get one good one for every 40 I take.

It seems to keep you guys from attacking...so far!

I'll bet I could even leave it on the seat of my truck and nobody world steal it...of course it might be melted from leaving it in the sun.

sandman

The pics I've posted here (sample) were shot with a FujiFilm Finepix A303 digital. It's a 3.2 mega pixel but, I normally have it set for 1 mp shots. The sample pic above is cropped out as Jflis comments about. I usually hold the camera up on its end so I can get as much frame as possible when shooting a launch. They do tend to come off the pad rather quick.

Originally posted by Mike
Jim, I apologise if you felt that I was going against what you said in my previous post and I do agree on all of your points especially not using digital zoom as a factor when buying.

Click to expand...

Mike, no, please, I wasn't taking any offence (heck, i've been wrong many times and don't have a problem being told so )

I guess if i'm upset or frustrated with anybody it's these camera sales people who try to sell features that either they know don't perform or they simply haven't a clue.

I have a ball when I'm at compUSA and I interupt a salesman making the hard sell with a customer... LOL

More than anything, I just don't want people throwing away money thinking they are getting something then discovering it just ain't so...

I've had a few times where someone told me that they wanted a camera to make prints and I would point them to a moderately high end camera with features suited to their skill level only to have them come back to me complaining that the quality was crap. Then I would soon discover that they printed very large prints (8X10) on plain copy paper with their printer in low resolution mode, etc, etc, etc.... (like it's the cameras fault...)

guess it's sorta a pet-peeve with me

Originally posted by sandman
I got a $30 Argus digital at Meijer.

Cheap, plastic, low res, no flash.

Basic camera. no frills, no nothin', crumby pictures, I get one good one for every 40 I take.
sandman

Click to expand...

That's the type of camera that would be perfect for someone starting out in rocket photography would get a lot of use out of. (i have a similar low end camera that I plan to experiement with). The financial risk is low while you're working out issues with your design!