The
club digital competition is looming and what better way to precede
it than to have the members show us what digital cameras they
have and more importantly what do they think of them.
A
good turn out brought an excellent range of cameras for us to
view. They ranged from the very small, lose it in your pocket
cameras to much bigger chunky SLR look-alikes. No digital SLR
cameras yet – but watch this space.
The
many cameras on view offered a wide range of resolutions from
around 3Mp to 7Mp. The newer cameras on the market have larger
sensors in them and hence able to capture more detail. However
that said, a good quality 3Mp camera will produce good quality
A4 prints at 200ppi with no loss of detail.
All
the cameras on show offered a host of features, far to numerous
to mention and many users found such an array of features a little
daunting. Most found that they tended to use their cameras in
the auto-programmed mode and let the camera do all the hard work
for them.
Most
cameras tended to have a good range of zooming facilities ranging
from a good wide angled 35mm through to about 150mm for more distant
shots. Many cameras featured macro facilities for getting ultra
close up shots but few users had ventured down this path to date.
Battery
power seemed to be an issue – some cameras used standard
off the shelf batteries while others had built in rechargeables
which could be a bit limiting. Spare specialty batteries came
at a price. Most people tended not to use the monitor because
it was power hungry and you usually could not see it in bright
conditions.
Memory
cards come in all shapes and sizes, the smaller compact type cameras
tended to use SD memory cards while the bigger cameras were usually
using compact flash memory. The price of memory has dropped dramatically
in the last couple of years and large cards are now readily affordable.
Reasons
for buying digital cameras are many fold and our members are no
different from anybody else. Some had bought them for their size
and portability, others wanted the resolution quality to create
large prints. Cost and ease of use was a high priority. Both the
big names in digital photography, Canon and Nikon were well represented
with a good range of their products on view. Everybody agreed
that their cameras had been a good buy and value for money.
We
looked at picture resolution and both Geoff and Nev had done some
experimenting to see how well their pictures would come out after
being interpolated up. Geoff produced a very good large panoramic
landscape and although close inspection showed a clear loss of
detail, the overall effect was excellent. Nev had been experimenting
on seeing how far he could take the resolution of his pictures
and managed to increase the size quite significantly before quality
dropped off.
Finally
Derek showed us a new small Canon printer aptly named the Smoothy
which used an ink film technology to print 6”x4” prints
– the results were excellent. The manufacturers reckon that
this technology will overcome the fading effects of inkjet prints.
Although not cheap, a print film costs around £10 and does
36 prints the results were very encouraging.
An
excellent evening with full member participation was a fitting
prelude to our photographic competition in December. So now we
know you all have some very fine digital cameras, no excuses,
get out there and start snapping. Remember, YOU could be the first
recipient of our new photography trophy.
Dave
Robb
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