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Re: Cameras

Jay-Scott Moylan wrote:
> 
>         The right camera depends on what you want to do with it.  For my
> money, the Sony Mavica series are the best.  They have absolutely the best
> lenses on the market.  They record directly to 3.5 floppies.  For some that
> might be incovenient.  It means slow downloading into your computer.  They
> have something called "memory sticks" that allow quite a few megabites of
> pictures to make the floppies less inconvenient.  Most other cameras now
> come with high speed USB download ability.  But, for me, the Mavicas still
> win because of the lenses.  The top-of-the-line models can zoom 20x or take
> macro shots.
> 
> Jay Moylan



Jay makes a great point.

The ideal camera is highly subjective. I disagree with one of his points,
but the ultimate decision will best be made if you know what you like and
have a clear idea of what the camera is intended to do for *you*.

[If you want a hilarious tour of the squabbles folks can get into, try the
overcrowded Usenet newsgroup rec.photo.digital, some time. :-) "My Nikon can
beat up on your Sony!", etc.]

Jay's love for the Mavica is well placed. If you want small pictures to
illustrate a web page or to print in a newsletter, they are sound, reliable
workhorse cameras. I have several friends who just love theirs. [They tend
to be the folks who, in film cameras, could actually enjoy using a
point-and-shoot camera.]

If you want full-screen photos on a modern monitor (1200X800 or so), the
artifacts from excessive compression may start to show up, and really good,
hang-on-the wall prints are virtually out of the question. Post editing in a
digital darkroom is an exercise in frustration. All you can do is enhance
the JPEG artifacts if you try to deblur those pics. 

You can't fit enough *lightly* compressed JPEG or TIFF files on a floppy to
make it worth while. OTOH, you can copy a picture, right in the camera, and
hand a usable copy to the folks you are photographing, that they can play on
any PC. Great tradeoff, for some. [Dave Gomberg thought that feature was
super when he toured South America, a while back. They had PCs but no net
connection along the Amazon.]

My small disagreement is with regard to lenses. Sony Mavicas got away with
using lens designs intended for ultra-low-resolution camcorders, by limiting
the size of Mavica images in the earlier models, by clever in-camera
processing and by very heavy JPEG compression. As an optical engineer, for
40 years, I can assure you the lenses are about as poor in image quality as
you can find on a still camera that costs that much. Lots of zoom range, but
lots of aberrations to go with that. That's just simple physics and
manufacturing reality.

They do quite well for images seen at 320X200 (digital-camcorder-style
resolution) and not too bad at 640X480. At the 1600X800 or so that most
fussier folks want for stills, they wouldn't stand up at all well. For truly
good image quality, the largest practical zoom range is about 3:1. Sony, in
their professional lines, made a 5:1 that is quite good by using programmed
electronic focus adjustment instead of simple cam lens movements alone. Much
more than that, though, and you pay a stiff price in corner blurring, color
fringing, distortion, etc. Those are hardly noticeable at the lower
resolution of most Mavicas, though. Many folks actually *like* a softer
image. Crisp, clear focus comes off as "too harsh."

Pay close attention to Jay. I think there are a *lot* more folks that like
what he does, than fussbudgets, like me, who prefer their 4X5 Speed Graphic
for publication-quality pictures. ;-) [I miss my old Zenza Bronica and
Rolliflex, too.]

Wright

-- 

       Wright Huntley, Fremont CA, USA, 510 612-1467 
 
    An aquarium is just interactive television for cats.
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