I went to Walmart today to look for this camera. I didn't find it, but I did end up buying a Samsung Digimax A402. It's pretty small and is a 4 megapixel camera. So far, I'm pretty impressed. The most impressive thing was how quickly it turns on and is ready to take a picture. I can't tell you how many times I've missed a great shot waiting for my old digital camera to "boot up".

There's boot-up time, and there's trigger time. On all the cameras I've had, both of these have been disconcerting problems. In only a half-second, smiles to frowns, babies head the other direction, and UFOs fly off into the night. One of my cameras needs to have its card reset every time it gets brought up (that company went under).

How do you know before buying a camera what kind of delay factor you're going to have?

I was in WalMart, and discovered that they will develop your film onto a CD for only 2.82. Hey, for that price, I could buy a disposable camera, take only 10 pictures, and be paying only $1 a piece for the photos. With the digitals, I would have to take 120 to 400 photos with a digital to bring the cost down to that. The disposable is lightweight and with 800 speed film and flash can take photos day or night with near instant up time.

The only question would be lens quality and focus. But I bet the higher resolution of film makes up for the lower lens quality.

So what I would like is a small, lightweight, inexpensive conventional camera with a decent lens. Where would I start looking?

Thanks!

in this particular situation, the camera was out of the box, had a charge and includes a small amount of memory. So, I was able to play around with it for a while before purchasing it.

There are several very good digital camera review sites, which list boot-up time and shutter lag (the time between when you hit the shutter, and when the camera actually takes the photo). In practice only dSLRs have near-zero shutter lag, but the point-and-shoots are getting better. Places to start your research:

DPReview.com
Steve's Digicams

Both of those sites have comprehensive reviews, although both are bit spec-heavy.


Film does not have a higher "resolution" than most digital cameras, particularly not at higher ISOs. In fact, you're really comparing apples and oranges. The resolution of film is measured in lines/mm or line pairs/mm, assuming an optical system that exceeds the limitation of the film. Digital sensor "resolution" is usually given in megapixels, which is somewhat irrelevant to the amount of detail and quality of the image. In both cases there are many other factors at play (e.g. pro film vs. consumer film, processing, etc.).

A good 4mp point-and-shoot will beat the pants off consumer grade film processed at a mini-lab.

A 12-16mp dSLR beats or ties any 35mm professional film, and clearly beats film at higher ISO. I shoot events with my "lowly" 8mp camera at ISO 800, 1600, or even 3200... I wouldn't dare do that with film!

Finally lens quality is always a factor, the best film or digital sensor will suffer from an unsharp lens, or a lens that exhibits severe aberrations. That is why a lot of high-end digital cameras make up for the relatively poor sensor by using Zeis optics (Zeis = double-plus good).

Honestly, though, the best test is to see an 8x10 printed at a good lab from the camera. You could do "pixel-peeping" at 800% view on your monitor all day, but if an 8x10 prints looks good, chances are the camera's quality will be fine for most people's daily use.

(Sorry that was so long... shop talk, you know.)

Good stuff, patc! Thanks!

I checked the two web sites you suggested. There are a lot of spec.s, and I like the look-up database at dpreview. But I didn't see boot-up or shutter lag listed in the database. I looked up an interesting camera, and then read reviews on it at the 2nd site (FinePix A350). But I didn't see boot-up or shutter time mentioned. Maybe if I dug through the user's forums?

But what would the boot-up / shutter time be of that camera? The ISO? Do you have a particular camera in mind?

Every so often the military does "sasquatch" moments things around here. Like a few weeks ago they were flying helicopters with guys dangling from them. Only got a couple pictures of that, the camera was so ornery. That's when I started wondering about going back to film.

But I bet its max-your-visa-card expensive.


I didn't see any specs in the dpreview for optics quality. Or is there a code term I should be looking for?


Thanks for the info!

Look at the full review in DPReview. There is usually a page called "Timings" or something similar, for example You might have to dig around each review to get all the info you need.

The ISO range of a digital camera should be listed on the specs sheet, check the manufacturer's site. Both of the review sites I mentioned will list that in the specs as well. More importantly, they will have tested the higher ISO ranges... it doesn't do you much good that the camera can reach ISO1600 if the image is so bad you would never want to use it!

For anything where timing is crucial, I wouldn't dream of using a digital point-and-shoot. A good film camera, or a digital SLR, is your best bet. In particular the "live preview" function on smaller digitals - what lets you see the image on the back display before you take the photo - is responsible for much of the shutter lag.


Good bet! The 16.7mp Canon 1Ds Mark II retails for $7150USD, and that doesn't even include a lens. I use a Canon 20D, which is find for most professional/advanced consumer applications, that's only $1200USD currently. Not bad considering it essentially includes a "lifetime supply" of film. Mind you, I paid a heck of lot more when I bought mine a year ago!

You won't find much other than vague comments. Only on SLRs can you remove the lens and test it separately, and even then you need special equipment. On a point-and-shoot you need to evaluate lens quality indirectly - for example its reflected in how sharp the images are, etc. Even without knowing the brand names, the reviewers will usually clue you in when they describe the camera.

It looks like only cameras that they have specifically reviewed have that feature.

Looking at your sample, it lists lags of almost a second. Another FinePix I looked at had similar lags. It would be really cool if this was in the database. My guess is that manufacturers would rather not talk about this aspect of their cameras.

Really? If I turn it off, will I get better times? Gotta try this.



Ha! That's the other thing about digitals -- they keep coming down. By next year your home-mortgage-payment-sized camera could be selling it for $198 at X-Mart ;-)


Ah ... that's a shame.

Many thanks!
Mark

Not a clue, why not try it and let me know? It might be a bit faster, if the programmers managed to skip some of the slow steps. The problem is that a great deal of extra electronics and processing are needed for the live preview, it requires a completely different sensor design, and the price you pay for that is a slower camera (and reduced image quality).

Some cameras offer buffered shooting in which the camera is continually sampling into a high-speed buffer a series of frames and the shutter release just commits to memory. Other cameras offer this as a continuous shoot mode where a single press will start the buffering and a release of the button will then commit the frames. The first method pretty much eliminates shutter lag at the expense of battery time. the second method will eliminate shutter lag if you anticipate the shot and can start the buffer-capture before it happens.

It doesn't seem to work, alas. But I think there is a relation. I noticed that a camera we got for our daughter that's only 640x480 resolution (with no monitor, of course) seems to have faster click-times, so maybe it *would* be faster if the programmer had allotted a way to handle things behind the scenes faster when the LCD was off.

The continous shooting thing might work, except that on my non-buggy camera you have to set it for continous shooting EACH time you take a picture -- which kind of defeats the purpose.

It looks like we might be a few years away from a camera that's fast, not too big, and reasonably priced. I would be willing to accept lower resolution for better times at a reasonable price.