Product Advice - Digital Cameras

by Celtic 12 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Celtic

  Do any of you know anything about digital cameras, as I need some advice on buying one.

  The family are in the antiquarian print and map dealing business. Many of the old steel engravings are black and white with very fine detail, ink clarity in various stages due to fade out from age, early 1600's - 1860's.

  We are looking to put some of these images onto the internet in specialised hosting communities that deal with this business. Image size flat is from a few inches square to 24"x20"+.

  Which camera would be particularly well suited to the purpose and which features would we be needing ideally? Prices, including shipment to UK would also be helpful.

  If you can assist, thankyou very much indeed.

  Peace

  Mark
• 

  perfectpie

  Mark, goodnews. The price of Digital cameras is very low right now.
  I bought a digital camera last year to take pictures of the faux finishing and european plastering I do. It was great. I just show the pictures to people after putting digital chip in my laptop.

  Anyways, the best advice I can give to you is to research through the internet. Some sites are very unbiased and let people review them and they will give you an overall rating. You can get this and much technical spec. info. at www.Bestbuy.com. Of course if you use your search engine you can get load of info.

  As for me I use the sony cybershot with an advanced zoom lens.
  Hope this helped
  3.14
• 

  gotcha

  hey celt..i too am looking into digital cameras..with soo much new stuff coming out it's pretty hard to decide..why not base it on your budget? hehe..the questions to ask is how much pixels do u need..the more the better coz u get to have larger prints.. you also have to consider the zoom capabilities of the camera...features also matter depending on your need....you can check out www.megapixel.net or www.dpreview.com for reviews...and www.bhphoto.com (US) is i think a good online shop..i'm thinking of getting the Canon G2 or if i opt for the handy one maybe the IXUS 300..nikon is also coming out with a new one..olympus is also good from the reviews i read
• 

  SEAKEN2001

  There is no simple answer. It primarily depends on how you intend to use the images created by the camera. What concerns me is the fine detail found in maps. Most consumer grade cameras will not be adequate for capturing the detail. Size will also be a consideration. To digitize a 20" x 24" print will create a HUGE file size at even a medium resolution. Take your time and do your research. There are professional imaging devices available for this kind of work but they are usually only found in the Professional market and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. If your family is not planning on professional results you can probably compromise somewhere along the line and preserve the quality you really need for the purpose you have. You can get professional equipment through a leasing company and pay a monthly fee plus an per image cost. Or, alternatively, use a service bereau and pay them to create your images for you.

  I have an Olympus and it cost over $600 a couple of years ago. Same camera these days is less than $300. But it will definently NOT handle fine detailed etchings or text. Most consumer camera are great at capturing colored pictures. They are NOT good at capturing text or fine line drawings. That takes special equipment. Actually, a desktop scanner will usually be a better choice for text and line drawings, scanning at a high resolution in 2-bit or 4-bit depth. Files sizes can still get very large but the results are good when printing to hard copy. Screen viewing is poor with bitmaps in general so think carefully before you decide to splurge on equipment that won't create images that can be viewed on the screen anyway.

  The advice to check the net and some of the sites mentioned is good. Take your time and learn something about the technology before you spend your money.

  Sean
• 

  Simon

  I would imagine you need to get one with good Macro (close-up) facility. A lot of the digital cameras are aimed at family shots etc... and not this sort of thing. I know someone bought a Nikon digital camera a year or two ago because it was one of the few that did close-ups remotely well (this was for jewellery).

  Depending on how much money you have to 'burn', take a look at the digital image attachments for regular SLRs - you will probably find Canon and Nikon are the best in this area but I can't remember the latest model numbers off the top of my head (Nikon do one with the IBM 1Gb Microdrive CF for storing the images which at high resolution will be big).

  For a website, you may find the biggest problem is providing the images so that they can be downloaded quickly. HP have a technology that would help with this where the image resolution that is sent to the browser is adjusted based on how zoomed in/out the picture is so would for instance allow a quick picture of a jacket to be shown and zoomed in enough to eventually see the threads ( http://www.pictureiq.com/products/transforce/ ). There may be other, similar solutions available now (and probably cheaper than HP).

  Hope this helps.
• 

  Simon

  Oh - forgot to add...

  The other reason for looking at an SLR type is that the lighting accessories are better and this is often one of the biggest problems with doing close-ups. You can't beat bellows and a ring flash (am I showing my age?)
• 

  Simon

  Some links:

  http://www.epi-centre.com/reports/9907cs.html

  http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D30/D30A.HTM

  http://imagingspectrum.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/prodigitalcameras.htm?E+scstore
• 

  Englishman

  Celtic,

  You can buy a 2.5m pixel Fuji for about £200.

  Englishman.

  Nostalgia isn't what it used to be....
• 

  ISP

  Celtic...get one with as big a CCD as you can! I have got one but surprise..surprise...I don't use it a lot!

  To me you can use a normal camera and scan images pretty easy! But digital cameras have some great facilities! You can review what you just shot...erase the pic if you like...etc!

  ISP
• 

  Francois

  Someone has noted that this isn't a simple question, and they'd be right about that.

  Right off the point of my head, I'd recommend you investigate the Sony Mavica line of digital cameras. I believe they have a line of these with super-fine resolution. And the nicest feature is that they have a built-in full-sized diskette drive. No cables, no interface cards, etc. Just take your pictures and pop the disk out and slip it into the A: drive of your computer and you're ready to go.

  Good luck
  Francois