[PLUG] Digital camera -- wrong choice?

Jason R. Martin nsxfreddy at gmail.com
Sun May 28 20:18:52 UTC 2006


On 5/28/06, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:
>
> Along with all the others, I recommend using a PCMCIA card reader.  I
> bought one from, of all places, Radio Shack!  It works fine.  I wrote
> up a couple of little scripts to move the files off the card, erase it,
> and so forth.  There is probably great photo management software that
> works with PCMCIA card readers, but I haven't learned about it yet.
>
> Another reason for the card reader, you are not using up the battery
> on the camera.  And I can be copying pix off the card while my wife
> uses the camera with another card.
>
> A USB/Firewire cable connection might be useful if I was directing
> multiple photographers at a big event, and all the cameras were
> feeding a master mix console, but I don't think anyone does this
> (sounds like an interesting open source app!).  And wifi would be
> better for that.   Networking without a network is semi-pointless.
>
> I keep the card reader, along with a spare memory card, along with
> lots of batteries, in a small camera bag.  No cables to worry about.
> The laptop is hidden in the car or back at camp, where I can suck
> the pix out of the card(s) after taking a few hundred pictures.
> If I was properly paranoid about the laptop (containing all those
> VA medical records!) I would probably just carry lots more memory
> cards.
>
> I have a Canon A2, BTW.  Going off topic, the 2M pixel count is
> fine on this older camera, I've rarely needed more.  OTOH, more
> pixels use more power and memory.  What I would really like in a
> camera, if I could find it in the same size, is (1) lower shutter
> delay (2) longer battery life  (3) customizable persistent settings
> (4) lower light levels (5) physically robust (6) 2 Mpix, not more(!) .
> But you really have to dig for these specs, while everyone touts
> big Mpix like infinite memory usage was the holy grail.  Unless
> you spend a lot of time editing big scenes and cropping out small
> segments, most of the time you will be scaling down the pictures
> to fit a web page or something.

A couple of things.  First, you are assuming that better battery life
is tied only to the MP count, and leaving out the improvements in
technology.  My new Canon A620 gets amazing battery life, despite the
7.1MP.  It is also smaller, has a better display, boots incredibly
fast, takes pictures faster, and can take 640x480 movies at 30fps for
unlimited (except by card size) periods of time.

Second, the size of the image is adjustable on the camera.  While the
default is the largest size, you can certainly set it to take much
smaller pictures, including a mode that is designed for web-sized
images.  I never use it, because I am of the mindset of take the
original at maximum size/quality, and scale down via software, in case
I ever decide sometime in the future that I want that image for
something else.

> The A2 has one very annoying "feature" - the firmware locks up if
> you try to change the flash, zoom, etc. in the 2 or 3 seconds it
> needs to save a picture to the memory card.  A power cycle is
> needed to get it out of that mode.  Of course, such stupidity is
> in none of the reviews.
>
> One geegaw that would be nice to have on a camera would be audio
> annotations - push a button and say what the last picture was
> about.  Do any cameras have something like that?   Another feature
> would be a "shallow suspend" mode - push a button, drop to low
> power mode, push again and immediately ready to shoot.  The button
> could also operate as a "picture cancel" button.  I hate waiting
> 10 seconds to turn the camera on, then turn off the automatic flash,
> in the middle of a long event.

Again, the boot times of cameras is in the more in-depth reviews, just
not on the crappy consumer reviews.  The Canon A620 boots from off to
first image in 1.6 seconds.  Not sure what more you would want than
that.  I haven't found the audio annotation feature, so this camera
might not have it, but I've definitely seen others that do.

Jason



More information about the PLUG mailing list