[TriLUG] Digital Cameras

Thu Jan 13 14:21:28 EST 2005

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Brian McCullough wrote:

> My sister sent me a note asking what I would recommend as a "good"
> digital camera, and not being currently interested in that market, I
> don't have any good answers for her.  She also wondered about possible
> printers to go with such a camera.  A friend mentioned an Epson
> "do-everything" printer that takes the data from the camera, shows it on
> a screen, manipulates the picture and then prints it, all for about
> $100!
        Take the following as coming from a film camera bigot, but one
who's very interested in photography.

        Just about any digital camera nowadays is "good" - even the
cheapies at Best Buy.  How much further up the scale you want to go
depends on how much you can afford.  The top of the line would be dSLR's
such as Kodak's DCS Pro/n or Pro/c, which retail for around $3500,
followed by the Nikon D series or Canon D series and digital Rebel.

        Outside the realm of dSLR's, you generally want to compare based
on optical zoom (digital zoom is automatic pixellation), effective
resolution (the megapixel number), and - to be honest - how the camera
feels in your hand.

        I have a Fujifilm S5000 that looks almost exactly like a
shrunken SLR, and it feels very natural to me, with all the controls in
the places I expect them.

        As far as printers, I can highly recommend the HP Photosmart
line - I've printed 8x10's from scanned film and I can't tell the
difference between that and a lab print - and I can find pixellation in
almost *any* digital image.  I've got the 7660, ran me about $120 after
tax, and it's as solid as I could hope for.  It's also a "do everything"
printer with resizing, cropping, etc on the built-in LCD display and
slots for various media types (SD, MMC, XD, CF, etc).

-- 
John Berninger

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Ita erat quando hic adveni.
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