As a photographer, with some high-end equipment, I used to look down on point-and-shoot digicams, putting them in the same category as camera phone, i.e. not capable of taking any picture worth keeping. I was wrong. My experience with a Kodak CX7220 (sells for about $70), graciously provided by Geeks.com, turned out to be unexpectedly positive.
About 6 years ago, back in 1999, I was at the peak of geekdom. I had quite a few geek toys, and digital cameras were the next big thing. Kodak’s $900 2MP DC290 was competing with Nikon’s $900 2MP 950, which drove the price of Kodak’s 1.6MP DC265 down. That’s the one I bought. It cost me over $600. It was big and heavy compared to current small cameras. It ate so much power that you could burn yourself taking the batteries out. There was no infrastructure in place for a consumer to get good prints out of digital pictures. The worst part about the DC265 was that the image quality was questionable at best. $600 didn’t buy much digital camera at the time.
Fast forward a few years, I bought a traditional 35mm film SLR, with a couple of lenses. I scanned the film on a flatbed scanner, printed on a basic inkjet printer, and suddenly started to get pictures worth hanging on my walls. That part was certainly exciting. I played with some specialized film bodies, and then took the plunge and bought a digital SLR (which made me throw away my brand loyalty for Nikon and move over to the Canon side of the fence). Image quality was good. I bought some high-end lenses, upgraded my printer, and image quality went higher. I recently pre-ordered the newest camera out there, which should be yet another big step forward and will likely require yet another printer upgrade.
The cost of such high-end equipment can reach dizzying heights, because its capabilities are far above what most consumers will ever need. So can the size and weight. Those constraints mean that most of the time I don’t have a camera with me. I have a very good compact film camera, but I find that having to shoot entire rolls of film is annoying. That’s exactly the reason why a small digital camera suddenly seemed ideal, even though I was afraid of the kind of results I would get.
Geeks.com gave me a golden opportunity to see for myself what a current low-end digital camera can do. I got my hands on a Kodak CX7220, which is Kodak’s absolute entry-level camera today. Retailing for about $70, it barely costs more than a similarly featured film camera, and obviously has no film costs.
So, what can the CX7220 do? It has a 2MP sensor, which on paper should be more than enough pixels for 4×6 prints, assuming that the image characteristics are decent. A 2x zoom that covers the entire “normal” range in 6 steps (39-78mm in 35mm-equivalent angles). Besides a fully-automatic mode, it also features special modes for portraits (blurry background), night (long exposure), landscapes (infinity focus) and macro (close focus). It has a self-timer, and the flash can be forced on or off. It provides exposure compensation. It has a tripod mount. The focus and exposure behaviors are actually documented.
The camera comes with manuals, software (I didn’t test the software), a USB cable, a wrist strap, a CRV3 battery, and an adapter plate for the Kodak EasyShare docks and printers.
Kodak obviously paid attention to its target market: consumers who aren’t necessarily computer-savvy, or maybe who don’t even have a computer. Comsumers who might feel at ease with an interface that’s as close to point-and-shoot as possible, with as few controls as possible to get in the way. There’s a reasonably clear separation between the photography controls and the digital controls, even though unfortunately some photography controls are buried into menus (I was surprised to see that the self-timer didn’t have a dedicated button, and that using the screen as a viewfinder requires to go two menus down).
The interface is non-modal, meaning that buttons always do the same thing (except obviously for the directional controls). At any time, you can take a picture by pressing the shutter release. At any time, you can review pictures by pressing the review button. At any time, you can go to the menu by pressing the menu button. It’s a very pleasant interface, which takes few button presses to get things done.
The CX7220 has 16MB of built-in memory, so that you will be able to take about 40 pictures even if you forget your memory card at home. While Kodak doesn’t recommend it because of concerns for battery life, it runs fine on standard AA batteries. Kodak claims that it will take up to 500 shots on a single CRV3 lithium battery, which is actually quite impressive.
Kodak’s EasyShare system allows to attach the camera directly on top of properly equipped printers, or on a computer-connected dock. I do not have the proper hardware to test those features, but obviously printing or e-mailing pictures can be done without having to touch anything on the computer, or without requiring a computer at all. It looks like a very nice system, and actually seems easier to use than a number of other consumer electronic devices that are scattered throughout the house. My mom could use it.
Taking the camera for a spin, a few quirks quickly became apparent: the top dial, which is also used an an on/off switch, sticks out a little bit too much, and when using the camera in a tight belt pouch the camera sometimes turns on when taking the camera out of the pouch (not a big deal) or even putting it in (more annoying). The viewfinder is somewhat imprecise at the long end. Holding the camera in landscape mode against the naked eye didn’t exhibit any problem, but in portrait mode when wearing glasses framing with the viewfinder was problematic. I guess that I could get used to it, but on a first spin is was a small disappointment. Not a big deal, though, since the rear LCD is bright enough to use as a viewfinder, with its pleasantly high refresh rate. Unfortunately it takes 6 button presses to turn that feature on and off. Those are minor quirks, though, and they don’t really get in the way of taking good pictures. After a dozen shots I had learned to work around them and didn’t think about them any more.
The available angles of view might seem limited (only a 2x zoom with no wide angles and no long foval lengths to speak of), but in reality it turned out to be a very versatile range. The wide end is wide enough to capture a natural-feeling view, the long end allows to frame head-and shoulder portraits without having to get too close, so that the resulting look is flattering.
For a while when shooting, I felt an urge to control the shooting aperture, and the CX7220 doesn’t have any such control. The EXIF information tells the whole story: there is no aperture stop in the lens, it is always used wide open, only the shutter speed is used to control the exposure. This surprised me at first, but it quickly became apparent that it was a good idea: the lens is pretty slow to start with (f/3.8-f/5), and with the pixel size on the sensor (2.8 microns) there would be no point stopping down beyond f/5.6 because of diffraction. With the tiny sensor the depth of field is already massive, it is never a limiting factor. I am somewhat puzzled at the difference between the auto, portrait and lanscape modes, since the aperture is the same, and I guess that the only difference has to do with the distances at which the camera expects to focus. I wish that the camera had a histogram view or at least an indication for overexposure, but in reality I found that overexposed pictures looked overexposed when reviewed on the LCD, and exposure compensation did a perfect job.
Finally, the moment of truth: the image quality. This is where I had a big surprise: the pictures look good. Really good. Exposure is almost always perfect, focus has no problem. Chromatic aberrations are very well controlled, there is barely a hint of magenta-green aberrations (less than a pixel), and only a small trace of blue fringing in UV-rich areas. Distortion is well controlled. Colors are vivid but natural, in-camera sharpening is set to just the right amount. I did a test print, straight out of the camera to my HP 7960 with no post-processing whatsoever, and the resulting 4×6 was excellent. My only complaint with the image quality is that the JPEG compression is quite aggressive, and at high magnifications it becomes quite visible. That is certainly not a problem when printing a 4×6 (272 dpi), but bigger enlargements can suffer (there’s only 153 dpi for an 8×10 print, less if you crop). It’s ironic that 6 years ago Kodak had the same problem in their DC260 and added a super-fine mode in the DC265 with a less aggressive JPEG compression, and yet that in 2005 they still haven’t figured out that it is a serious issue. Certainly I am not used to seeing JPEG artifacts in unprocessed pictures straight out of the camera at the highest quality setting.
As a conclusion, the CX7220 is a jewel of a camera (especially for less than $70 that it currently sells for). For an extremely low price, it takes pictures worth printing and hanging on a wall, something that I couldn’t say of my expensive DC265 a few years ago. Small-sensor digital cameras have made a lot of progress. If you want a camera that is small and light enough to go anywhere, won’t cost much to replace if it gets damaged, and takes great pictures, that’s the one. I started out highly skeptical of the image quality, thinking that such a camera would only be good for e-mail snapshots, and I ended up playing with a very capable imager. This is the kind of toy that any self-respecting geek must have. And if you have an old digital camera and aren’t happy with the image quality, maybe you should consider an upgrade. I am certainly planning to keep such a camera with me for all the opportunities where hauling around my high-end equipment isn’t appropriate.
…what to do with OSes?
A friend of mine got a cheap Kodak from Geeks.com – it was not quite as good as the website made out. For a start it was an obvious refurb, although it didn’t say that on the site.
Also it had no optical zoom and no way to add more memory – it was 8Mb built-in only, not much good for 3MP.
Most of the stuff I’ve bought from there has been a bit low-end, like a 100Mbit mini Firewire card, erm didn’t say 100Mbit and didn’t say it was 4-pin only (the mini type like on camcorders).
They’re not quite as bad as TigerDirect, but…
I have actually *bought* stuff from geeks.com (in the past year) and I was always 100% happy. As for the kodak camera “not being as good as the website made it out”, well, I suggest you read the article more carefully which stress the question: “is it the camera or the photographer that takes the sucky pictures?” JBQ is an excellent photographer (and at times he is the OSNews photographer, at news events) and he took fantastic pictures out of this cheap camera. Maybe we should all *learn* to take pictures first before we shoot down a camera manufacturer. Yes, this includes myself too, as I take terrible pictures.
well, I suggest you read the article more carefully which stress the question: “is it the camera or the photographer that takes the sucky pictures?”
Agreed. I’m a terrible photographer, but I’ve heard stories or pros getting stuck in a pinch and using those one-time-use disposable cameras, even seen the results on occasion, and the pictures came out pretty good.
In my [small and humble] experience, a good photographer can take decent pictures with crappy equipment, and a crappy photographer will take crappy pictures with great equipment.
Cheap cameras are just plain annoying. I believe the pictures are worth more than the camera. I mean it is not worth losing or getting annoyed with a cheap camera. Just my 2 cents.
Andrew
http://www.PriceComparison.com
In most cases, I believe that point n shoots get a bad rap by photographers who rely on technology to make their shot instead of skill. I had a Kodak DC something (250?) which was abour 1M and it took reasonable pictures (purchased in 2001). My only gripe was the AA battery holder was cheap plastic and it was difficult to lock in or remove.
I bought the prosumer Oly c-5060 last year and it has amazed me. It was quite a bit more than $70, but I pretty much use it as a point n shoot and occasionally I need to get manual and like having the options to do so. I may buy an aftermarket fixed telephoto lens but otherwise, the default is superb.
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6468-7844 shows what talent can do with point n shoot cameras. Using the 5050, 5060, and 8080 line from Olympus he has shot for National Geographic, Newsweek and most of the major publications and won the highest photography awards.
Most people get hot and bothered seeing the big lenses available for the d-SLR’s with the many tiny numbers and markings and tweakable touchy things. However, I bet any amateur carrying a $$5 disposable film camera can take 200% better pictures than they do with a d-SLR.
People always buy way more camera than they need. My recommendation would be that if you aren’t planning on making a hobby out of photography, don’t spend over $200 on a camera. An “advanced amateur” may buy in the prosumer line, but $650 would be the top budget.
This is both true and not true. There are good photographers and bad photographers. And there are good (cheap) cameras and bad (cheap) cameras. Expensive cameras can show their talent on large prints, but if you don’t need to print more than a card-postal, any $100 digicam (except the really bad ones, like the Jaga (only sold in Europe/Asia)) will do, especially if you are a tiny bit skilled. And this article is a testament of this fact.
In most cases, I believe that point n shoots get a bad rap by photographers who rely on technology to make their shot instead of skill.
And who are they? Seriously. If there’s one group of people who relies on the camera for good pictures it’s the ones who likes point&click cameras. That’s the whole point of them.
There’s no doubt that you can take great pictures with a simple camera. I mean there’s even pro photographers who are using pinhole cameras for certain shoots.
The camera, no matter how expensive it is, can’t compose the pictures for you. It can help you get an ok exposure though.
The Olympus 5050, 5060 and 8080 aren’t really what I call point&click cameras. Sure they don’t have all the features of an SLR but it’s pretty close. They are advanced compact cameras, not meant for the avarage consumer. They are often used by journalists and such because they are compact and can provide high quality pictures. But they can be a real pain to shoot with in certain areas. You have to trade something for the small size.
As for “advanced amateurs” not spending more than $650 you have to be kidding. You are not allowed to have high standards even if you aren’t making money off it?
“High standards” is all in your perspective. If it’s just a casual hobby, but not an obsession then yes, $650 will buy you a lot of camera.
A true hobbyist, then 650 may not satisfy them. However I see plenty of people go out and blow $1000 on a great camera only to have it sit next to the treadmill, exercise bike, bowflex, Titleist golf clubs and so on.
The Oly’s whole niche is point n shoot, but have the option to go manual if need be. I would say the Oly 5060’s tradeoff would be weak indoor or night shots.
All I’m saying is people tend to overbuy.
Michel – read
dpreview.com
http://www.steves-digicams.com/
http://www.dcviews.com
I also think that people tend to forget the good pictures are function of how good the photographer is and how good the camera is.
A great photographer can take good pictures with any type of equipment. And a bad photographer will take bad photos even with the best equipment.
I can’t remember the guy’s name, but one good photographer shoots for the Sport Illustrated Swimsuit issues. I believe his photos have been the covers a few times. His equipment? Disposable Kodak film cameras that he buys in bulk.
I don’t know what Jean’s seeing, but the photos look horrid! I wouldn’t want to see this camera operating in ‘night’ mode – that’s for sure. Maybe $70 is all very cheap and nice, but it’s definitely not making better pictures than a $300 camera. “Noise and mush” -two things that are present on this picture. Oh, and the usual unnatural exagerrated colors too, but every digital camera suffers from this.
I suggest you take a better look. The “noise and mush” is not noise, but jpeg compression, which is a fact that was detailed in the article (Kodak compresses too much, even in ‘fine’ mode). Last night we printed the Oracle picture and the artifacts were not visible, but they can be troublesome for someone who wants large prints instead. In short: this Kodak camera can take even better pictures (its hardware part), if it was not for its software and that engineer who took the wrong decision to compress pictures so much by default, so the camera saves on flash storage space.
As for the “exagerrated colors”, no, it does not have those. A “normal” person would have gotten dull colors with this camera. But the current pics are taken that way by JBQ on purpose, who knows how to setup and shoot with the camera to make colors look vibrant and lively. I can assure you, “cheap” cameras on the hands of a non-photographer don’t have “exagerrated colors”, not of this quality anyway, they are dull instead. You don’t want to look at my pictures for example, now, these are horrid.
I hope you have a properly colour adjusted monitor and somehow received the right colour profile to view those images, otherwise there’s really no way you can possibly judge the colour reproduction from a .jpg on a website. Since you think all digital cameras suck at colour reproduction, I humbly submit the suggestion that it may in fact be your monitor that stinks…
For everyone who doesn’t know that yet, there’s a site le grande for digital cameras http://dpreview.com/ so check this out before buying anything.
Which is already linked by the article… ;P
Let me disagree, the prints look fine. Unfortunately I can’t show you the prints, but printed at 4×6 there’s no visible noise and the pictures are clean and sharp. I don’t have actual side-by-side prints. If you want to go pixel-peeping, feel free, but personally I don’t care what the pictures look like on a computer screen. I hang prints on my wall, not CDs fill with digital pictures, and I would certainly hang 4×6 and probably 5×7 prints from pictures that were shot with that camera. I wouldn’t even try to print 12×18, that’s not the point.
At 4:1 pixel magnification on a 100 dpi screen (where you can clearly see JPEG artifacts and chromatic aberrations), you’re looking at a picture size of approximately 48×64″. Printing at such a size would cost typically between $200 and $300 per print (a bit less if you get high volumes). If you’re willing to spend that much money on prints, you should consider spending a bit more than $70 on your camera, and even a bit more than $300. You should talk to your local PhaseOne and Hasselblad representatives.
Since the pictures in the articles are straight from the camera “as shot”, you can print them to try them. I printed with Photoshop CS on a Mac, on a HP 7960 with the HP driver, on 4×6 borderless HP premium glossy photo paper, with all the driver settings at their default values.
Certainly I wouldn’t try to take night pictures with that camera. I was out on Saturday night to take some pictures under moonlight, and I took a DSLR and fast lenses. I also wouldn’t take pictures indoors unless I’m in a tight enclosed space with white walls and ceiling, because the flash has very little power and is extremely close to the lens. Choosing the right tool for the job is important, and the CX7220 is certainly a tool that is right for some jobs.
I definitely wouldn’t expect a $70 camera to beat a $300 camera in all aspects. But I also don’t expect a $14000 car to beat a $60000 car in all aspects. But just like a $14000 can be enough car in many situations, a $70 camera can be enough camera in many situations.
The colors actually look just as shot – they look on the prints the exact way I remember them when I shot them under a bright late-morning sun. The pictures look very colorful because the subjects were very colorful.
“a $70 camera can be enough camera in many situations”.
I enjoyed your article very much. And I understand what you are saying. The reason I bought my present digicam is because of its small size. It fits very nicely in my pants pocket and at 5.1mp takes very good pictures. What many people fail to understand is that the most expensive camera on the planet will do you no good at all sitting home on the table. I found I was going out for walks on the beach or taking other outings and leaving the camera in the car because it was too bulky to carry conveniently. I don’t have that problem with my present camera.
Thanks for a good article.
::Puts on flameproof suit::
I don’t think it’s worth spending money on a low quality digital camera. The test of a digital camera isn’t the pictures it takes under optimal conditions, it’s the pictures it takes in variable everyday conditions that count, because most of your pictures will be in the second box.
If you can’t afford or justify the expense of buying a decent digital camera, you can buck the trend and get a quality film camera. Film cameras and film developing are cheap now and can give the picture quality of an expensive digicam. You don’t want the quality of special family photos degraded by a $70 digicam.
“I definitely wouldn’t expect a $70 camera to beat a $300 camera in all aspects.”
Kinda like buy a PC and a Mac……..j/k….it’s a joke laugh!
My first digital camera was a DX6340 – ideal for what I needed at the time
However, after approx a year it developed a flash misfire, apparently caused by using non CRV3 batteries (I used 2500mah rechargables). The irregular power causes the flash to not work correctly. In my case, it would sometimes not fire at all, and other times over compensate for darkness etc.
So, in short – Kodak make great point n shoot cameras, but make sure you use the correct batteries!
A better camera isn’t going to help you compose a good shot, but it’s going to improve the chances of a decent exposure dramatically.
I own a Sony DSC-W1. I’m pretty happy with it, but it doesn’t compare to a d-slr. I can shoot at ISO400 on my camera, but the photos come out grainy. If I am zoomed all the way in, my lens is only opens as far as f5.6.
So lets say you see a bird in a tree and you want to take a photo. Assuming that the 3x zoom is will give you a sufficiently close shot, you are still shooting into shade. Since you are zoomed in any camera shake is going to be magnified. With the slow lens, your only option is to jack up the ISO or take a long exposure. If you take a long exposure, you will almost certainly get a blurry photo. If you shoot at ISO400, your photo will be grainy (and maybe blurry as well).
ISO800 on a d-slr is often less noisy than ISO400 on a compact digital camera. With a fast lens and higher usable ISO ranges, the d-slr will have no problem getting the shot.
hey the bird might fly off before one can fiddle with all the settings!!
i own and use a konicaminotla DimageZ10 .
the only two features i would want on this?
1. image stabilization
2. audio along with video capture.
the Z5 in teh same series has both but, dpreview says the image has otehr artifacts coming in..
any way i decided to bide my time and wait till one of the good D-slrs come down in price and i practice and become a better photographer with teh current camera before i splurge on more expensive hardware.
cheers
ram
Maybe all my negativism comes from just liking film a lot – from the way it looks and feels like to the way you care about your shots. It’s just so different. And I agree with the poster that said you shouldn’t judge the camera based on ideal situations. Most of the pics will probably be taken in low-light or otherwise bad conditions, or with the flash. (Why aren’t here any flash examples by the way?) But okay… most of the people really wouldn’t mind the quality (or absense thereof). As for the colors… I still think they’re unnatural. I dunno. I just never get the same sky colors on slide film, they’re always somehow different and better than on digital (even on better digicams). I say Jean-Baptiste, you should go to some place with Eugenia and take your med-format Hassel loaded with Velvia 50 with you and Eugenia takes her best digital camera and you make shots of the same scene and scan the film on Imacon. And let us know the results. Now THAT’ll be interesting – I haven’t seen comparisons of this sort anywhere on te net.
I don’t know what you guys are seeing, but if you look at the sky in some of those shots, the images most definitely have noise, along with jpg compression (the latter from compression for web, I assume).
I’ve been shooting professionally for over 10 years, and have owned a Nikon 800, Canon S230, Canon Digital Rebel, Canon 10D, Nikon D70, Sony P92, and a Sony V3. In other words, nearly the full range, with exception of super highend D-SLRs, and super low end, like this Kodak.
There are much better choices for cheap digital cameras, Sony being one of them. Sure you’ll pay slightly more, but I think it’s worth getting a quality image.
>the latter from compression for web, I assume
No, if you read the article (which obviously you didn’t), Kodak compresses too much. The pictures posted here are unretouched, straight out of the camera.
>There are much better choices for cheap digital cameras,
For $70? I *hardly* think so. Yes, you can get better quality or night-features with a $150 Canon, Nikon or Sony camera, but for the average user that this camera is meant for, this is hardly visible difference (don’t expect granny to open Photoshop and Zoom-In to see the jpeg artifacts or noise). And don’t forget: these other cameras have DOUBLE the price!
So, in conclusion, if you just need a really cheap digicam that doesn’t suck as much as the other cheap digicams, this one is a very respectable choice. That’s what JBQ tries to say with his article, and having seen the camera myself, I agree.
FYI, JBQ usually shoots with a Canon 10D (check his homepage for a link for some of his gallery pictures).
I don’t think I am ever going to figure out the logic that drives the content of this site.
How is this OS news? The ‘and everything geeky’ clause seems to be taking over the ‘OS’ part of the site.
I bought a 7220 for my granddaughter when she was 7. It really does take very good pictures, all things considered (and she loves the video mode!). The dock and software are easy — I gave her no training at all and she figured it out. And there are advantages to having a low MP count for someone like her — it cuts the download time.
Overall I have been very impressed with it, and yes, I have an extensive background in color and color photography. And I find the review to be pretty accurate.
DrJ
yeah, point’n’shoots are all well and good, i use them myself, but as someone said, they’re no good in non-prime situations – like poor light or even with moving objects.
i’ve taken some pretty poor pictures of dances where the light is low, and it’s all just a blur. apparently getting a seperate flash can help, but then it’s no longer p+s.
for the average holiday snap in sunshine, they’re great.
>i’ve taken some pretty poor pictures of dances
>where the light is low, and it’s all just a blur
And I did the same thing with a Canon A75, just a month ago at my brother’s wedding celebration at around 11 PM. It all was one moving blurring mass. And don’t forget that the A75 is a much better camera than this Kodak reviewed here. And yet, I didn’t manage to get not even a SINGLE good picture out of the wedding dancing.
Why?
Because I suck as a photographer and because I didn’t use a tripod. Sure, with a high-end camera and good flash you will get a bit better results, but you CAN get acceptable results with lower-end cameras too, but in that case you must know how to work with them. If JBQ was at the wedding and used my camera (he couldn’t make it to Greece for work reasons), I am sure he would have gotten much better pictures than I did with the A75. Even printable ones.
Heh, I have an A75… Everyone thought I was a genius photographer because my pictures of my eccentric uncle’s wedding turned out so well. What they didn’t see were the hundred (literally) lousy pictures I took, and then deleted before anyone looked at them. That’s probably the real power of digital cameras- the ability to instantly review and retake shots.
Digital compacts never equal the quality of a real SLR. Why? Simple optics. Presently I have two cameras on my desk here. A Nikon D70 SLR and a broken point-n-shoot Kodak from a friend. Just looking at the size of the lens openings alone: the D70’s standard kit lens has an opening that is many times wider than the few millimeters of the Kodak (it doesn’t say, I estimate about 4mm. The filter on the D70 lens says 67 millimeter diameter. I suck at maths, but that D70 has a hell of a lot more lens surface area!
Never mind the fact that the D70 lens probably has more precise optics than the Kodak (I can’t prove that conclusively), it’s obvious that the D70 simply catches more light at any given moment due to its much larger lens opening.
Add to that the bigger size of the sensor in the D70, which allows for bigger pixels. A bigger pixel captures more light than a smaller pixel, again due to surface area, therefore lowering the noise floor considerably.
So *without* taking the actual build quality of the equipment into account, about which I can only give educated guesswork, the D70 is at a huge advantage over every compact I’ve ever seen simply because of physics.
You will *NEVER* create pictures that are of equal technical quality as long as compacts don’t get bigger lens openings and bigger sensors.
The 6MP photo’s that my D70 takes are consistently much better than anything I’ve ever seen coming out of a compact, even if it has a much higher pixel count. Simply because the D70 has much more light to work with. Add to that the fact that the D70 permits me to store files without lossy compression or in-camera colour “correction”.. that helps a lot too.
What I’m saying here about my D70 goes for any SLR vs. Compact comparison. You need actual light to take good pictures. Many compacts and camera phones skimp on that to provide the highest possible pixel count in the smallest possible form factor.
Yes I’ve seen aesthetically great photography coming out of a tiny Canon Ixus digital compact but the photographer would probably have taken the exact same brilliant picture with an SLR and have gotten a technically better result.
Printing at 4×6 is also totally useless to compare print quality. Camera resolution really only starts to count at 13×19 and bigger. Print that big and you’ll see the difference very clearly.
If you’re planning to buy a digital camera in the eur. 600 and up range, consider an SLR. They’re in a completely different leage compared to compacts. Personally I’ll vouch for the Nikon D70 in combination with the 18-70 1:3.5-4.5 kit lens. I don’t know about other glass, but the mentioned combination beats every compact I’ve ever seen for less than eur. 1000.-.
Of course film is still king of the hill when it comes to resolution and dynamic range. No digital camera beats properly exposed high quality slide film.. even if it’s shot with yesterday’s mediocre autozoom/autofocus film based compact of the kind that photo shops are practically giving away at the moment.
The 6MP photo’s that my D70 takes are consistently much better than anything I’ve ever seen coming out of a compact, even if it has a much higher pixel count. Simply because the D70 has much more light to work with.
Yep, the optics is the most important thing on a camera, the rest isn’t worth much if it doesn’t have a good lens.
That said, I am actually rather impressed with the optics on some high/mid-end compacts these days. I’m surprised how good my Nikon Coolpix 4500 is at macro shots for example. But it’s a real challange taking other than snapshots with that camera. The autofocus is really slow (the manual focus is laughable), there’s not enough control directly at my fingertips. And it’s overall rather slow and awkward to use compared to an SLR. But the size is the key. I can easily take it with me everywhere, something I can’t with an SLR.
If I actually know that I’m going to have an opportunity to take good shots, I’ll bring an SLR though. No compact can compete with the quality and ease of use.
Its not the optics that make all the difference. They help. But in the case of the first poster, its because the size (not MP) is about 6 times the area of a point and shoot sensor.
A APS-C sensor used in most DSLRs are huge compared to their compact brothers. Which makes most the difference.
I have a 5MP point and shoot canon elph that takes some nice photos, but has to be the right conditions. But most days, my 6MP DSLR (minolta 7D) will crush it. And the difference isn’t 1MP but the area of the sensor.
Of course when the 7D botches the jpeg compression which it does a lot, results aren’t so good, but thats why you shoot RAW.
In the end camera quality has so many factors + the user. Sensor size, type (CCD vs CMOS, i’ll take a CCD for the colors), lens, post processing, ISO speed (and quality at each speed) and so forth and so on are all issues. Two people can review the same camera and reach total different opinions. If someone was using a camera with a high end Kodak chip at ISO 100 and a good lens. Verse someone with same camera but at ISO 1600 and a iffy lens. They will get some seriously different results (ISO 100 person like, 1600 guy dislike), but the 1600 person will probably argue ISO 1600 is very important and make and break (I think those people are fools).
If P&S offered raw more, many could play catch up, since the faults aren’t as much of the camera, but the jpeg compression which is built around “one size fits all” for each mod.
Also those extra pixels don’t matter much if you don’t put them to use. For most things my old Nikon 2MP shots are fine. But you aren’t going to make them very big.
Umm, it’s not advisable to use AF with Macro work I hate to tell you. Most passive AF systems will crap themselves trying to focus on a very non contrasty object, especially when doing close ups/macro subjects. Manual focus is the way to go, tripod mount your camera, and pick a nice F ration (f11 or f16) to increase your maximum depth of field (usually horrib with Macro shooting). Make sure to get your focusing absolutely accurate. Sometimes it’s good to have a benbo style tripod and be able to gently rack the camera further/closer from the subject (macro bellows are good here).
As to the size thing – have you seen the size of a Canon EOS 350D? It’s tiny! Too tiny and plasticky for my personal liking, but it’s damn well small!!!
Optics? Yes, it’s vital. I hate to say it, but most compacts, and digital compacts, digicams, use cheap, achromatic plastic lenses. Horrid. Achromatic fringing, poor resolution at wide open f stops, curvature (barrel and pincushion) generally runs riot. Build quality is usually what I’d consider as being sub par.
If I want to shoot 6″ x 4″ “snapshots” I’ll choose a digital compact like what’s been recommended in this article, if I’m serious about photography, but as a serious amateur etc, then I’d go with a SLR.
Dave
The best camera is useless without driver software. Before buying any digital camera you want to make sure that is has good driver support, either native or using PTP mode.
For cameras and drivers see:
http://gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php
http://www.teaser.fr/~hfiguiere/linux/digicam.html
sadly a lot of the salespeople have done what the computer sales world has done – chase Mhz .. or this case MPixels …
megapixels is only part of the story. you need:
* a good lens
otherwise you stand no hope of images of any fidelity. you need to ensure maximal transfer and minimal abberation, colour or shape.
* a good sensor
although sensor technologies vary – a good guide is the size. a tiny sensor is severly limited in the “signal-to-noise-ratio”. many small cameras have small sensors – much much tinier than a normal 35mm film.
* megapixels only matter if you want to zoom and crop. too few and you won’t have enough pixel-freedom to do this.
have a look at the guides on photo.net which explain the science behind some of the above.
Agreed. Megapixels aren’t the be all and end all. Pixel size comes into play, white noise, thermal currents, etc.
Most people can get away with a 3mp camera (Canon eos D30 as an example of a good SLR as opposed to a digital compact unit) in terms of the numbe of pixels (temporarily ignoring the problems listed above). I’d recommend that other a digital compact for a variety of reasons, as long as you’re interested in photography. If you’re not, then grab the digital compact.
That said, I’d avoid Kodak digital cameras – the software is simply atrocious. I remember upgrading my father’s Kodak software last Christmas – what a bloody joke. Upgrading screwed his system so that it wouldn’t recognise the dock. Kodak’s help pages were as useless as tits on a bull. I spent countless hours editing the registry, reinstalling (on a dialup line, and you can’t download the actual .exe file, you have to connect to their servers to do it, wasting download bandwidth). Nothing worked. Even rolling back the registry didn’t fix the problem. Sorry, can’t remember Kodak based on that.
Dave
After having tried Sony, Kodak and Canon ‘point and shoot’ digital cameras over the years (friends, relatives, etc.), Canon’s Powershot line have been among the best performing of cameras in the $100+ price range.
Clarity, color, features…I’d buy a $200 Canon before I bought a $70 Kodak or Sony, and a $130 Canon is quite a nice camera for the money.
this is turning into a mini /.
you can’t mod down OSN staff, eugenia apparently is auto +5, people asking why a cam review is posted on a supposed ‘os news’ website get an auto -5.. this site is crazy.
This is because the answer has been given a gazillion times: OSNews is a technology site most and foremost, not an OS-only one. Learn to go beyond the name of a domain name.
and not to forget, jbq is the officail photographer of osnews ; and he clearly comments about the limitaions of the software [ which by any account is the OS for the camera] . so i think it is not out of place on osnews ;
more over, its cool to discuss about something like this atleast once in a while instead of rants and more rants of platform zealots and processor zealots..
thanks for posting this review
cheers
ram
worse than that, it appears to be turning into geeks.com ad site.
Heya,
I have been looking for a digital camera that also works well in low-light situations. It seems it is difficult to find one. Maybe it is because I ‘m looking for something that is portable (it doesn’t have to be very small, but also not big.) and doesn’t cost more than 500 euro. I wonder if anyone knows such camera’s? I have been looking around. My first look what at the minolta camera’s: Z5?, … They have a 10-12x zoom. Not all of them have image-stabilization, but this is something I would like.
thanks,
Michel
I would go with the Canon A610, which was just released.
the Canon Powershot A620 is meant to have a better sensor than the A610:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=15036…
Though I’ve seen SLR film cameras going for a similar price to these Powershots!
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilmf10zoom/
Fujifilm F10. You said low-light, it is the KING of portable cameras for low-light situations, there are NO comparisons.
…that having owned a point and shoot film camera and they after recently graduating and buying myself a Canon EOS 20D with a 17-85 lens, the camera is a big factor in the kind of pictures you are able to capture. The thing is there are a lot of shots…especially in the case of travelling that require you to just have an itchy trigger finger. I mean I went to this river bank in India…and there was a little kid and his brother I believe it was, just diving from a ledge into the river…and the lighting and everything was just great…I whip out my camera and I fire away in continuous drive mode and get some really great shots.
It is that kind of an advantage that pushed me to getting a digital slr. True that if you take your time and compose a shot, you can get really awesome results on a throw away camera. But for those on the go and into action photography I think technology and advancements are definitely a must.
I must go ahead and say that I am not a professional photographer by any means and I have barely started exploring my camera’s features and when and how to use them…there are limitless possibilities and that is quite appealing to me. My 2 cents.
I started in digital photography with a 3 megapixel Fuji, coupled with a 6x zoom lens. What others have said concerning the rotten color produced by digital cameras applies here. Because of this experience, I went back to film for a couple of years, shooting with my trusty Olympus IS1 and IS3.
I had the negatives developed at the local drug store, but scanned them using Vuescan driving a Polaroid 4000 pixel per inch scanner. Fabulous color! Amazing dynamic range!
Then there was dust, scratches, and grain, oh yeah there was grain. Since the IS series lenses were about f5.6, I tended to shoot ISO 400 and 800 film. ISO 400 today is vastly better than the dreck I shot back in the 1960s, when I started out. ISO 800 film is actually pretty usable, but the grain is there. When you look at the sky at the roughly 100 pixels per inch of a computer monitor, you see an interlocking jigsaw of grain. It looks a lot like the sky noise in the article’s sample photos (yes, it is noise, Eugenia, not JPEG compression artifacts), but bigger.
Over the last couple of years I purchased a Canon Digital Rebel (300D), flashed it with a Russian BIOS, and purchased some good lenses to go with it. I’m looking at a picture right now, taken in the Dutch town of Delft of the Old Church silhouetted against a blue sky at ISO 100. There is no noise, zero, zip. I have never been able to take such flawless pictures before. Had a point and shoot taken the shot, I would have gotten a decent print, but nothing quite this perfect.
Then there are the interior cathedral shots in natural light of the Dom in Cologne, and St. Mary’s in Luebeck. They were taken hand held, and blown up to 8″x12″ (20x30cm). There is good detail in the darkest areas; the bright windows are not blown out; color balance is perfect, and noise is minimal on screen (and not present in the print). Fir the first time in forty years of taking pictures, a digital SLR allowed me to capture the interior of a cathedral to my satisfaction.
The Kodak camera for $70 is a good buy, and under the right conditions, will produce good photos. For me, the “right conditions” are too limited.
Peter Besenbruch
Realy intriging…
Have you put those photo jewels somewhere
so we can look at?
🙂
then why the heck name it ‘osnews’?
makes…no..sense…
Because the name was there before the first or the second re-organization of OSNews. The first version of OSNews was published in 1997, and it was completely ‘re-innovated’ in 2001 in goals and design (but we kept the domain name, after all it’s a great domain name and popular too).
Now, do you really want to continue this completely off topic discussion? Cause I don’t. It’s a real shame, because we have a very interesting discussion here with the other guys and you are really disrupting that. If you are not interested in the topic, then don’t participate. Just skip it.
I am going to go buy this camera for a young friend’s birthday. Since “graduating” from disposable film cameras to digital, I have found that my decent photos have increased by a magnitude of 10. Of course my crappy photos have increased by a magnitude of 50, but that is what the delete key is for.
I’m sure a camera like that is perfectly fine for small prints or images to be used on the web, but what if you want something larger?
If you’re blowing images up to poster size, or even printing them A3 then I find that the pixelation and other flaws of low end digital cameras are more noticable. That’s when a dirt cheap film camera easily beats a low end digital.
I got myself a refurbished Vivicam 3715. This is a 3.3MP camera that usually runs about $150 these days – I got it refurbed for $70. Two main complaints that you hear from everybody – it eats batteries and the display is almost impossible to see in bright light. Most folks turn it off and use the viewfinder.
I plug it into my linux box and the camera pops right up on the desktop so I can retrieve the photos. Despite some flaws, it works for me. With a 256MB SD card in it, I can store over 300 photos. It has a lot of nice features and takes really good pictures.
Is this author praising photo quality relative the the camera’s price tag? Because those sample photos, expecially the macro on flowers…fails for me. Miserably.
I’d happily pay $20 more and have a compact flash slot and lossless image compression (even if it’s very weak compression). Then I’d happily spend $100 on a big flash card… The idea of losing image quality between your shot taken and the shot stored makes me feel sick… It’s just … unecessary. But I suppose these $70 jobs are catered to people who just want a $70 camera that stores 25 pictures on its tiny onboard memory..
It doesn’t surprise me the pictures taken with a cheap digital camera look good. They’re well-composed, taken with a technology that’s been around for around a decade, in ideal circumstances,… What’s more, the subjects aren’t moving. You can take similar pictures with disposable camera’s and plain film for 15$ (at least, I did when my point-and-shoot film camera died on me in the middle of Bali’s temples).
But how many pictures are you going to take like this? If you’re an average Joe, not a whole lot. Joe likes to take pictures of his wife and kids in front of that cathedral, of his dog running around in his garden on a cloudy day, of his family dinner in the house. And those are the conditions which separate the men from the mice (in camera-terms, that is).
So this is what I find to be prohibitive issues with digital (in general, and digital Compact P&S in particular):
1. shutter lag
It may well take more than a second from pushing the button to actually getting the picture. This means facial expressions change and your dog has taken off. In the end, it is impossible to take the picture you see on the screen (and decide you want to have). Film camera’s (even Compact P&S) only have this problem when your flash is trying to avoid red eyes… (even the award-winning digital P&S photographer complains about this problem)
2. Depth of Field
With my Analog P&S Pentax, I was able to take a reasonable portrait with blurred background with my 115 mm zoom. Digital P&S compact camera’s make it impossible of shooting pictures with a blurred background. The award-winning photographer made these crisp images his hallmark. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but even without the fact wether or not you like the blurry-background-effect, these camera’s lack the possibility of using it – and are therefore less versatile.
After the pentax, I got an old east-german SLR: quite a hassle to use it, but excellent pictures and great portraits… this one gave up on me only recently.
Even though I seriously considered going digital, this lack of depth of field-control kept me from actually doing it. This article http://www.photo.net/learn/optics/dofdigital/ explains how even digital SLR’s do not offer the same possibilities… despite spending thousands of dollars.
Conclusion:
Saying people shouldn’t spend more than $300 on a digital camera because they won’t use all of its features is ridiculous. Digital P&S camera’s today do not offer the same possibilities as analog camera’s (and vice-versa). They take different pictures. You cannot fake DOF adequately in Photoshop…
People who (like me) do not want to give up on some features analog camera’s offer end up paying quite some money for a digital camera with similar possibilities (and a large CCD) – the low-end camera’s just don’t cut it…
PS: I only posted this reaction because I feel a lot of people do not realise these differences. Many people I show my pictures to wonder why they like mine better (even if composition is the same)… It’s Depth of Field. This is kind of the third dimension in photography, which is a 2d-medium. Once they know about the difference, some of them regret going digital… today (Canon release a full frame digital SLR last week, let’s hope this technology trickles down to P&S’ers)
Just a few comments, the depth of field is limited by both your optics, your choice of f ratio, your focusing point, and the distance between the lens and the film plane, as well as the size of the imaging area and finally, the type of lense being chosen. Digital still has great depth of field, providing you obey the above rules. A shot taken at f2.8 will induce the Bokeh effect, whereas a shot taken on the same subject at f22, at the hyperfocal distance will give you a large depth of field, analogue or digital camera.
Many pro photographers are using digital now. Very happily. I asked a model that I know, if the photographers that shoot her are using analogue or digital, and EVERY single one has switched over. Most using Canon I might add.
As to Canon and full frame digital sensors – both the Canon eos 1ds mark II and the Canon eos 5d have full frame sensors, matchin the traditional 35mm film negative (36mm x 24mm). As the cost of producing cmos chips at full size drops, so will the price to the end user, and the technology will increase in adoption.
At the moment I still use my trusty Canon eos1n with pb-e1 and various L series lenses. I’m tempted to grab a 2nd hand D60, but at this point of time could not justify anything more than that. A Canon eos1ds-mark II is very yummy, but at au 9 grand or so, I don’t think so.
Most people will using a digital compact will not know anything about f stops, hyperfocal distance, depth of field, thermal noise, white balance, etc. They’re point and shoot, and nothing more. And nor will they want to. They see the shot, they take it, on impulse, without any thought. I’m not trying to be snobbish here, I’m merely pointing out what I see. I recently went to Sydney’s Taronga Park Zoo, and I found it amusing to watch these people taking photographs. As an example – you go to a rock concert, and everyone, of course, sneaks a camera in. What the flashes go off!!! Unless the flashes have a GN (Guide Number) of around 3000, they’re gonna do fuck all. Yet, these point and shooters insist that it’s going to help.
An old saying is, a camera doesn’t make the photographer, and that is true. I still fondly remember my very first 35mm SLR – a Russian Zenit 12xp. Built like a tank, the Helios 52mm lens was sharp as, pity the features were pretty crap 😉 A good photographer will take good pictures, no matter how good or bad the camera is. A bad photographer will take bad photographs, no matter how good or bad the camera is.
Dave
For $70? I *hardly* think so.
That’s why I said for slightly more. Had you read my post, you’d realize that.
Just because I can buy a piece of junk for only $70, doesn’t mean it’s good. It just means I paid only $70 for it.
Odds are if you use a cheap plastic camera and you’re happy with the results, that’s all you need and no one will convince you otherwise.
but if you require a higher level of quality befitting photos to be hung or sold, these little toys are positively useless. as a professional photographer i can tell you that it’s a simple matter of mathematics and physics why these little cameras produces sub-par images.
and no amount of marketing, driver software, or fancy printers can convert a low megapixel, noise filled, color aberrant photo into something really decent.
just buy what you need, not what someone else says you need.
Your camera has at least one, possibly two, stuck pixels. Take a closer look at the Oracle and Playground pictures and you’ll see at least one white stuck pixel.
It’s well-known that Geeks.com merchandise is refurbished or faulty–even the new stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.