Tech
Talk Radio Program
April 1, 2000 Show
Sponsored by Stratford University
Digital
Cameras Have Come of Age
Digital Camera Links
Digital Camera Lineup
It's All in the Memory
Picture Processing
Software
The Netscape (Standard)
Color Cube
Digital
Cameras Have Come of Age
The digital camera has made impressive strides over the past
few years as memory and sensor technology have benefited from the economies of
mass production. CCD (charged coupled device) sensors are lower noise and more
expensive than CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensor arrays. Low
end cameras tend to be CMOS technology.
The
sharpness of the image depends on the number of picture elements in the sensor
(called Pixels). When comparing cameras do not be fooled by the Interpolated
resolution, which is not true optical resolution. Do not confuse optical zoom
with electronic zoom. Electronic zoom is simply cropping the image to a
smaller size.
Get
a camera that has an optical viewfinder so that the LCD screen can be turned off
to conserve power. Look for through-the-lens (TTL) metering and optical
viewfinder.
Match
the memory to your shooting needs. Most cameras come with inadequate memory in
their base configuration. Look at the revolutionary IBM Microdisk technology.
Solid state memory options include ComPactFlash, SmartMedia, and MemorySticks.
Get
simple, intuitive controls, matched to your desire for complexity and control.
And
don't forget that you will need good image processing to compress and crop your
images for publication. Use the standard 216 color palette for websafe colors.
PaintShop Pro is an exellent, and inexpensive, product. JPEG (Joint Photographic
Experts Group) compression is the preferred compressed file format.
Digital
Camera Links
DigiCam Reviews (Steve's
Digicams, DigiCamera,
DC Resource Page)
DigiCam WebZines (MegaPixelZine,
Digital Photography)
The
Digital Camera Lineup
DigiCams (Agfa,
Cannon, Casio,
Epson, Fuji)
More DigiCams (HP,
Kodak,
Konica, Minolta,
Nikon)
More DigiCams (Olympus,
Polaroid, Ricoh,
Toshiba)
Studio Grade DigiCams (MegaVision)
It's
All In the Memory--An Expensive Proposition
MicroDrive (170MB-340MB, 1" Disk, Microtech
Reader, IBM)
ComPactFlash (4MB-192MB, PCMCIA Adapter, USB Reader, SanDisk)
SmartMedia (8MB-64MB, PCMCIA or 3.5" Floppy Adapters, Toshiba)
MemoryStick (2MB-32MB, PCMCIA Adaptor, USB Reader, Sony)
Picture
Processing Software
My Favorites (Photoshop,
PaintShop Pro)
Both can be downloaded for evaluation.
And if you are a student, don't forget about academic pricing!
The
Netscape (and now the Standard) Color Cube
Use this 216 web-safe color palette when optimizing pictures
for the web. Then, when the display is set to 8-bit color (as most are),
what you see now will be what your customer sees on the web.