The Really, Really Big Picture
Now when you visit, you can end up taking home a portrait of larger than life. That's what happened to me earlier this week. A friend casually snapped a picture while we were having dinner and, delighted by the result he immediately observed on the screen, quietly left the room, returning moments later presenting me with a 13" x 19" huge blow up of the picture he'd just taken.
Just as email has become a necessity, tossing that old film camera aside for a digital camera now makes sense for almost everyone. Digital cameras are simple to use; the software easy to understand; the computers now powerful enough to handle imagery; the storage readily available and less expensive. As more people avail themselves of higher speed internet connections, trading images online has become routine.
Digital cameras were the exclusive province of nerds less than two years ago: now the barriers that kept rational people away have fallen. Digital cameras are easier to use and surpass film by allowing us to store, organize, and share visual moments instantaneously. And they're fun. Here are this season's greetings of digital cameras coming to store shelves:
Canon PowerShot Digital Elph 230
This 3.2 megapixel camera is ultracompact with a 2x optical zoom. You can record movies up to 3 minutes in length with audio. You can print directly from camera to a Canon printer. The metering was excellent… and the tiny flash really brought lovely light to portrait subjects. It comes with a 16 MB card which will be filled up pretty darn quickly at "superfine" resolution. We found taking pictures with this camera at "fine" resolution were more than adequate. It's sleek, stylish, and has a great "form-factor". The "stitch mode" is a cool feature: With the Arcsoft camera suite of video and photo editing tools , you can easily seam together several pictures into a continuous panorama. The camera's split screen allows you to see where the previous shot ended to match it perfectly to tie the shots together and the software does the rest.
Casio QVR4
My buddy Howard tested this 4 megapixel camera and was so enamored I barely got it out of his hands. "When can I buy it?," he implored over and over. Well, right now, Howard, and everybody else your Casio awaits. For $499 (list) this camera has outstanding picture quality and a host of other great features. The quality Pentax lens offers a 3X optical zoom plus you get an additional 3.2X using the digital zoom. With 11 MB of on-board memory and slots for an SD card, running out of disk space is becoming harder to do. This camera also records :30 second AVI video clips. No complaints on the easy to use software the camera comes with, too.
Konica Digital Revio KD-4002
This 4 megapixel camera is as impressive as the two mentioned above and took very sharp pictures. I was intrigued by the small size, stylish look, and the bluish flashing light in front of the camera (but confess I couldn't figure out for the life of me what the heck that did.) One useful feature is that the Konica accepts different formats of memory: both SD cards and Sony's memory stick. It also lists at $499.
Toshiba PDR-T30
Well, Toshiba really thinks out of the "box" with this unusual James Bondish 3.2 megapixel camera. The lens slides open and the flash pops out and the shape is lean unlike the boxier cameras discussed above. There's even a stylus pen for the touch screen display panel hidden in the wrist strap. (I would never have found it if someone didn't show it to me. Far be it from me to actually "read" the easy manual!) The camera uses SD cards and has many automatic or easily set manual modes. Some of the features are unique: you can actually "paint" right onto a picture you've just take and annotate onto it as well. (I found that using red-eye on this and on all the other cameras was generally a mistake. The "red-eye" mode usually spooks the suspect and ruins the spontaneity of the pictures. This is especially true when taking pictures of children: they've disappeared from view by the time the shutter clicks in the redeye mode. Fuhgetabout it.) As for this feature-rich camera, the price is about $449.
HP's Photosmart 850
It's a 4.1 megapixel camera with a whopping 8X optical plus 7X digital zoom . It features a 16 MB SD memory card, which will get you a few pictures, but you'll probably want a larger card. This camera is very easy to use, and yields great pictures, printable without the jaggies at 8X10 easy. The suggested retail price $499, and comes with a nice software suite that's Windows and Mac compatible.
Canon EOS D1 S
Lastly, we have perfection. With 11.1 megapixels, this camera isn't for everyone. In fact, only the most muscular and super-sizing camera nuts will buy this Rolls Royce of picture-taking. The breathtaking Canon EOS D1S uses a unique full frame CMOS sensor (instead of the more constricted frame earlier digital cameras have had) so images are identical to the 35 mm SLR film frame. Basically, this means you'll get the maximum optical benefit out of your EOS Canon lenses as you've seen in the past with the film camera bodies. 11 megapixels means that the resolution rivals large format film cameras… and film emulsion, just give up, you are so dead. You can take about 600 photographs on a single charge. Which is more photographs of your family than any honest person would be willing to see. Now, perfection isn't cheap. You'll have to pay at least $8,000 if you want this big mama in your camera bag. Start saving up now.
Maxtor's Personal Storage 5000 XT
Now, where the heck are you going to store the thousands of images you are going to take in the first few months of using your digital cameras? Well, that was the reason I found the "mother of all disk drives" …an external drive with 250 gigabytes! (That's a whole lotta pictures.)
This ingenious drive, about the size of a hardback, can store about 20,000 pictures at the highest possible quality (11 megapixels) and still have room for literally thousands of MP3 songs or your digital videos, oh, I'm dancing for joy. Most joyous is that the drive works either on a Mac or a PC and uses either FireWire or USB 2.0 (the only ways to go when transferring huge amounts of data.) The price is $399… and these babies are so hot you may have to search a bit to find them online or in stores.
HP Photosmart 230 Printer series
This baby features up to 4800 dots per inch and makes beautiful and borderless 4X6-inch photos . The tiny 1.8-inch LCD display gives you a good idea of what you are going to see printed. What I like best is that there are slots for practically any type of digital media you might have: Compact Flash, Memory Stick, Secure Digital (SD) and Smart Media cards. You can even connect directly to the HP camera I showed above, so you can make prints without bothering with a computer in between.
Canon's S9000 printer
This thing is as fast as it is large. It prints out beautiful photo-quality pictures on paper up to 13 X19 inches. Stick that on your wall and frame it. Best of all, it retails for only $499 – a steal, in our opinion.
By Dan Dubno