On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, Ellen Z Hazen wrote:
> We're interested in purchasing a digital still camera in the under-$1000
> range.  It will be used primarily to take pictures of artifacts and gift
> shop items for use on our web site.
> Any thoughts, experiences or recommendations for us?


Hi Ellen.  Each Digital Camera has indeed their own peculiarities and
characteristics. No matter how high the resolution, too, they are far
lower in resolution that what we thend to be used to from traditional
photography. BUT given that your shots are intended for web viewing,
resolution is not much of a factor since the "standard" 640x480 resolution
would work fine for you, and in fact most web images are smaller yet for
speed of loading.

I JUST purchased the higher end of the two Sony Mavica cameras. The camera
is $699 (mail order I have seen down to $629). The camera has a few unique
features that seemed to have suited my research needs as a theatre
designer. First the camera has "unlimited" cheap storage capacity as the
only digital camera on the market to use simple standard floppy disks!
Second the camera has a 10:1 zoom lens which means that in practice one
can actually get higher resolution images at times than one could get with
higher end cameras with less of a zoom. Third the camera has better low
light capabilities than most more expensive cameras.

Last week I was in Troy, NY designing a show and had a great opportunity
to test out the camera. Troy is a wonderful old "museum-like" historical
city. In the few days there I was able to take 250 shots of architectural
details. The camera in general worked amazingly well. Indded the use of
floppies was GREAT!!! I had an older Epson digital camera but all these
others require memory cards or other devices that seem to become
unavailable and obsolete just weeks after these cameras hit the market.
When I ran out of floppies I was able to simply stop at an office supply
store and get more. Also once transferring the images to my hard drive I
could simply re-use the floppies. Free digital film in essence.

The camera has built-in macro capabilities too - useful for museum work no
doubt, and the LCD screen makes it possible to roughly check your work.
The system can even show thumbnails. I was skeptical of this feature on a
tiny LCD screen but lo, it did work.

I thought the camera would be clumsy but I did quickly get used to it.
It took a bit longer to get used to using an LCD screen as a viewfinder.

Problem: In daylight the LCD viewfinder can be very hard to read.
Problem: The camera was not as great in low light as I had hoped for but I
suspect that other cameras would not do much better. There IS a built in
flash which I have not yet been able to test beyond a single shot which
did wash out (perhaps I was too close).

The battery system is amazing as advartised. The lithium cell took well
over 150 pictures before it needed a recharge and the camera had a nifty
meter that tells EXACTLY how much charge is left. Some cameras I have used
run out of juice after just a few shots!

Also a BIG plus by the way with the floppy storage is this camera requires
NO added software and NO cables, adaptors, flash memory or card ports,
etc, and is platform independent. The floppys can go into any modern PC or
Mac for file retrieval at any time. No software to crash!!! Also the files
are in web-ready JPG format. At their high res setting (640x480) not much
detail was lost from the JPG compression.

So where I feel that this camera would be best is in situations were one
might need to take a lot of pictures, especially away from a host
computer, with cheap and universal storage media. The zoom lens is also
great for taking shots of inaccessible stuff. The built in macro can get
tiny objects, and the system is simple and compatible with the equiptment
you already have. Other cameras do have higher resolution if that is a
prime desire.

Richard F in Boulder