I bought a digital camera, a Kodak DC290, a year ago and have been very
pleased indeed with it. This particular model is not made now, as far as I
know, but the important thing to consider when buying a digital for general
purposes is
(a) the resolution. Mine has four choices but I have found that the medium
resolution of 1440 x 960 pixels is adequate for general purposes, including
reproduction by printers in magazines. (for an example see below)
(b) how it stores images. I am pleased with the "Compact flash" disks which
go into the camera. These are the equivalent of floppy disks but are only 42
x 36 mm in size. Their capacity varies. The camera came with a 16MB disk and
I have since bought two more and one which has a capacity of 32MB. A 16MB
disk holds about 28 pictures of the medium resolution mentioned above. When
full I move the pictures (files) to either a Zip disk or to a CD-R and wipe
the disk clean. Each exposure creates a jpeg file with a unique consecutive
number. (E.g. the first picture you take will be 00001. I am now up to
00562).
For sending to a magazine I convert the picture to tiff in a programme
called Adobe PhotoDeLuxe which came free with the camera. With this
programme one can also alter the pictures in various ways, including the
size. A more advanced version is now available as 'Photoshop Elements'.
For examples of pictures from my Kodak see the current issue of the magazine
LOCAL HISTORY (No. 85, May/June 2001) pp 10-12. One of these is a picture of
part of an original architectural drawing, 1920. I took this picture in a
record office, using only available light, (flash was not permitted,
although the camera had built-in flash) with my hand-held camera held about
three feet above the drawing. (The result surprised me as I was pretty sure
at the time that this would not be successful and that I would have to pay
the fee for the record office's professional to do it!)
In short I recommend a digital camera for general use. One of the main
advantages is that you can take numerous pictures of a subject without
regard to the cost of film, developing and printing. When you get home you
simply look at your pictures on the PC screen (or on your TV), and delete
those that are unsuitable or unsatisfactory. Another advantage is that you
can store hundreds of pictures (possibly 1000s) on CD-Rs, and find a
particular picture in a few seconds.
All this is bad news for film manufacturers and film processing businesses!
Brian Read
> From: Max Satchell <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: "From: Local-History list" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 16:11:28 +0100
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: digital cameras
>
> A beginners question. I am interested in purchasing a digital camera to
> photograph excerpts of estate maps, plans etc in public and private
> archives. If anyone out there does this and I would be graetful for details
> concerning the type of camera required to achieve a good result?
|