The world of photography will change when most content originates in computer-readable form. That means the world will change when the average person converts from a film-based camera to a digital camera.
Thus before we get into thinking about which digital camera is best, we have to consider whether a film or digital camera is better for a particular application.
How much worse than a film camera is a digital camera?
How much quality do you lose by using a digital camera? Maybe none. In fact, a digital camera is better quality than a film camera in many important respects! The easiest to understand specification is resolution. A 35mm film-based camera will crush any digital camera in the number of good pixels. But maybe you care about color balance under mixed lighting. A digital camera is actually better than a film camera. Maybe you care about scale, the ability of the camera to capture detail in the brightest highlights and darkest shadows of a scene. A cleverly designed digital camera may be much better in this respect than a film-based camera.
The key word in the above sentence is clever. Most digital cameras come from Japanese companies with a lot of engineering experience making imaging pipelines that run from a CCD to an analog video tape (i.e., what is inside a camcorder). They've adapted these pipelines to the new DV camcorders. So why not adapt them to the digital still camera? It is mostly the same thing except you write one frame at a time to some sort of computer memory. The flaw in this argument is that the CCD sensors are capable of much more dynamic range than one can record in an NTSC video signal. There has thus been very little pressure to make the pipeline milk the ultimate in shadow and highlight detail from the sensor. However, if one were to store digital still images with 16 bits per pixel, it would be worth trying to squeeze all the dynamic resolution from the sensor. Cameras like the Nikon D1 and Canon D30 are just the beginnings of the trend away from 8-bit cameras.
Over the next few years, expect to see some interesting digital cameras from non-traditional companies with strong backgrounds in instrumentation (e.g., Hewlett Packard).
Yeah, yeah, but what about resolution?
You need at least 200 pixels-per-inch for photographic quality. So for a 4x6 proof print to stick on the fridge, an 800x1200 image will be fine. For an 11x14 you'll want 2200x2800 (6 megapixels).
Note that the megapixels from a digital camera aren't as good as the megapixels coming from a slide scanner. Slide scanners essentially have three CCDs underneath each pixel, one for red, one for green, one for blue. The array of CCDs in a digital camera is covered by a mosaic of red, green, and blue filters. Thus a digital camera might produce a megapixel of luminance (black and white) information, but only a third as much resolution in the area of color.
The process of mapping those megapixels, each a different color, into a traditional computer RGB format is known as "demosaicing". The quality of the algorithm used to demosaic will affect the final image quality. This is yet another reason not to judge cameras by specifications alone.
To show that you can't judge an image by the numbers, compare the following:
- 1600x1200 image from Canon S100, unaltered, maximum quality
- 2048x1536 image from Canon G1, unaltered, maximum quality
- 1536x1024 PhotoCD scan from a 35mm ISO 100 slide film original
- 1024x1024 ProPhotoCD scan from a 6x6cm original slide (section of a 1536x1024 scan)
- 1300x1024 ProPhotoCD scan from a 4x5 inch original slide (section of a 1536x1024 scan)
The bottom line for us here at photo.net is that we're not satisfied with the quality of the pixels as they come out of any digital camera. For Web (screen) presentation we reduce the image by 2X and are much happier with the resulting quality.
$4,000 or $500 and not much in between
Conventional marketing wisdom has it that there are only two types of camera consumers: (1) the average person who just wants to push the button, and (2) the professional photographer who needs control and will pay virtually any price. Thus, if you want to control exposure, change lenses, use the lenses from your existing Canon or Nikon 35mm SLR, expect to pay $2500-4,000. Part of the reason that these cameras cost so much is that a 35mm camera lens paints an image 24 x 36mm in size. Digital camera sensors are essentially computer chips. The larger the computer chip, the more likely it is not to work. This is because a single flaw in the silicon wafer may ruin a chip. The larger a chip, the more likely it is to enclose a random flaw in the wafer. Very expensive chips such as Intel Pentiums are usually no larger than 20mm square and these have the benefit of huge manufacturing volumes and enormous capital investment. Making a flawless 24 x 36mm chip in small quantities is going to result in enormous costs.
What should engineers do? Swing to the opposite end of the spectrum. Make a physically very small sensor. A small sensor can be covered by the image coming out the back of a small lens. This makes it tough to build a true wide-angle lens but easy and cheap to build a mid-tele zoom. Most consumers will be grateful that they've not been burdened with excessive weight, size, and cost.
How will it change your photography?
In "Choosing a Medium Format Camera", I allude to the steps in getting an image up onto the wall:
- picking a subject
- picking a place to stand and a lens (perspective)
- deciding whether to compose vertically or horizontally
- deciding whether an image is good enough to frame
- choosing a frame molding shape
- choosing a frame material
- choosing a mat size
- choosing a mat color
Digital cameras not only force you to make all the choices that you have to make with a 35mm camera, but you also have to edit in real-time. You can't run off to Italy for two months, come back with 60 rolls of film, let them sit in your files for another two months, then start to pick the gems.
Essentially film comes with its own built-in write-once storage medium for the bits that it records. Digital cameras have limited storage space. If you're traveling, you'll have to spend every night figuring out which pictures are worth preserving on a laptop computer's hard drive. The really great ones you'll have to make sure that you e-mail back home or risk losing them if the laptop is damaged or stolen.
Consider the picture at right, the chess master in Harvard Square, taken with an old manual Nikon. Had I been forced to edit this in real-time, I'd probably have tossed it. Yet upon close inspection, the upper-right corner of the frame reveals a contorted photographer! A perfect image for photo.net! I didn't really notice it until many months after I took the picture.
Guide for Shoppers
Here are some reasonable choices:
- The Canon S100 (Digital ELPH) is a remarkably small camera that works about as well as any other $600 camera. For $200 you can get a Canon-brand underwater housing for the machine. I've tested the camera and the housing and both work very well, though the image quality is very poor in low light unless you use the built-in flash. Also see the Sony Cybershot DSC-S70.
- The Canon G1 and Nikon 995 are the best mid-priced cameras if you want to use off-camera flash. They can control the full range of Canon and Nikon (respectively) strobe equipment.
- The Olympus E-10, which started at $2000 in the fall of 2000, is a very nicely engineered single-lens reflex (SLR) digital camera with a purpose-designed lens built in. One nice thing about non-interchangeable lenses is that it keeps dust off the sensor.
- If you're got a big line of Nikon F-mount lenses, the Nikon D1 and Fuji S1 are nice digital SLRs. If you're bought into the Canon EOS line, the D30 is the best choice.
Displaying Digital Images
Once you get those images on your hard disk, you'll probably want to either
- upload them into the photo.net photodb system
- print them out using a color printer and hang them on a wall or
- read Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing and build a collaborative Web site based around your photos
More
reviews of specific cameras in photo.net (doomed to be pathetically out of date)
- Digital Imaging threads in the Q&A forum
