Welp, finally got my camera. Canon PowerShot S110 Digital Elph, known to the rest of the world as the "Digital IXUS V". Merry Christmas To Me!

Wow, what a great freaking camera. Fantastic!

The camera arrived in good condition for a decent price. The only screw-up is that the company promised a 128mb memory card, but instead sent a pair of 64s instead of a 128. I assume they ran out of 128 stock (the invoice did say 128:qty:1), and they knew it was a Christmas gift, they thought it was more important to fulfill the order as best they could. In that case, I think they made a good decision.

Since I can still fit a crapload of pictures on the 64, and I'm going to be carrying the extra battery and charger with me anyhow, it's probably no big deal to cart the second memory card around, too. Which brings me to my only complaint about the camera: Sucky battery life!

I admit that, since it was the first day, I was futzing around with it a little more than I normally would in a given day of shooting pictures. But seriously, I only shot about 30 pictures and one movie on the thing, and the battery was crying uncle before dinner time.

It's a good thing the camera has the mail-in offer for the extra battery (along with some other useless crap), or I'd be disappointed.

By my calculations, if I can keep an extra fully-charged battery handy and I'm careful with the usage, then this camera could make it through the proverbial Day At Disneyland, which is all you can really ask of any digital camera, right?

And on the good side, the battery charges pretty darn fast, considering. And it's the kind of battery that doesn't have "charge memory" so I don't need to fully discharge it before charging it again. I mean, heck, it could be worse, I could have to keep buying AAA's for it.

I'm pretty happy with the camera's features overall. The image quality is good, although I shot a day's worth of pictures with the data-compression set to the "medium" setting (called "fine" on the camera), and discovered that I should have had it set to super-fine all along. Didn't fill the memory card hardly at all, but wanted to pull more detail out of the pictures I did take.

The stitch-assist mode is nice. Came in handy to get some panoramic shots of the snow-covered mountain view from the in-law's dining room. Very nice. Basically, you tell the camera you're going to do a multi-image panorama, and it literally shows you where to move the camera to take the next shot in the series.

Now, I have one question for those who own this camera and know something about it:

The software that comes with it is severely bloated. I've already got all the image-processing tools I want. But they have a 120-meg program for the main software interface. ICK!

Okay, I installed its TWAIN driver and I can easily grab camera pictures straight from the camera into my personal-favorite imaging application. So I don't really need their bloated bundled software. But what I'd really like to do is mount this thing's filesystem directly from the USB cable. So that I could simply drag the files (or use a batch file to XCOPY) into a destination folder on my hard disk. I want to do this without first importing it into an imaging application (and the tedious series of SAVE AS's that entails), and without installing their huge 120-meg bloatware onto my hard drive. Anyone have any ideas on how I can do this?

Note: I know I could probably do this with a CompactFlash reader doohickey, but why would I want to do that when the camera itself is a perfectly good CompactFlash reader with a USB cable and everything?

Hmm, I may have answered my own question. I seem to be getting by with a subset of their bloatware which only takes up 47 megs instead of 120 megs.

Still, a simple Explorer window showing me the files on the camera and allowing me to drag them and drop them onto my hard disk would be nicer than their fancy-shmancy ZoomBrowser "librarian" tool.

Then again, maybe I'll get to liking ZoomBrowser. I dunno.

On the other hand, their panoramic stitching utility is THE BUSINESS. Very cool. Two sets of stitched panoramas from today (one horizontal, a view of the landscape, and one vertical, their 15-foot decorated tree), and they look great.

Hi Tony. I got a Powershot G2 for Christmas. Fantastic camera, same ass-poor software. Bloated is definitely the word. I thought the same thing, "why not an explorer type interface?" Oh well. My advice? Go check out the forums at dpreview.com. I remember looking there a while ago and seeing all kinds of negative talk about Zoombrowser, and a multitude of alternatives. I went there yesterday but the search function on the message board was out of order. Try that place, it's like this message board for digital cameras. Lots of people with know-how and no flaming/trolling that I've seen. Heck, I've seen people posting pics of their kids that they took on Christmas Good place.

These Canons are fantastic cameras. Check out Cnet. Canon holds the top spot in almost every single category. I love mine already.

If you find an alternative like you're talking about, please let me know! (and I didn't know zoombrowser took that much!)

edit-oh yeah, I just remembered. the closest I've gotten to what we're talking about is simply using Zoombrowser to download the images, then closing it and working with the folders as I like. It just saves them to the program's directory (in "Image Library One" or something).

my only complaint about the camera: Sucky battery life!


Hmmm. Maybe I've just got a super battery then. My wife took ~180 pictures WITH Flash during our Xmas on one charge. (128M flash + 64M flash, highest resolution and fineness). I've been very impressed with it, period. Does get quite warm after taking that many shots tho...

RE: Software. I KNOW there is a way to pull the photo's directly in Windows... I never installed the stuff that came with the camera. I did get a 4-8M download from their website tho.

Of course, all I use now is a PCMCIA to CF adapter on my laptop. Much easier, and only $8

Good choice on the camera. I've got one myself and love it. It's so Pocket Sized and the quality is high.

I definitely recommend a USB Compact Flash Reader or PCMCIA adapter if you've got a laptop. It's the only way to download pictures. It's quick and you can use the card as a drive in explorer. Usually, you don't even need a driver for the reader depending on your OS.
Using a card reader saves battery on your camera as well.

As for battery life, turn off the screen as much as possible. You don't really need it for taking pictures, and there is an auto review feature which shows you the picture for 2 seconds after its snapped. You can optionally turn these on as needed. I've had a battery last through 128MBs of pictures no problem that way.
Even then, the battery charger is fairly quick to get you snapping again.

As it stands right now, I'm having a problem with the power circutry in the camera. It was shutting itself off itermittently. This was not due to a powersave or low battery because it would just snap off without closing the lens. It's under warranty and I should have it back soon.

Ben

If you find an alternative like you're talking about, please let me know!

Sorry nobody has told you about this sooner...

You NEED to check out BreezeBrowser. This thing blows away that crappy ZoomBrowser.

The biggest benefits are that it is MUCH faster than ZoomBrowser. It can extract the EXIF data from the RAW and JPG files into a text file. And it's very fast at doing conversions from RAW to TIF.

Check it out.

Thanks for that link to BreezeBrowser, I will give it a shot. It looks like exactly the thing I was looking for.

Thanks for the other information, everyone. These have been good replies. Here are my comments on the various things so far:

Bmiller: As for battery life, turn off the screen as much as possible.

That's good information. It is true that I spent a lot of time messing around looking at pictures on the built-in screen, so it's likely that this was the reason the battery drained so quickly. Makes sense.

Bmiller: Using a card reader saves battery on your camera as well.

This is a good point and I think I shall look into how much a separate CF->USB reader costs.

Synergy: I never installed the stuff that came with the camera. I did get a 4-8M download from their website tho.

So did I, I grabbed their TWAIN driver and it worked. I can open the camera files directly in my imaging application. My problem is that they are not saved to my hard disk when I do it that way, they still have to be "SaveAs'd" each and every one, which would be irritating for a cardful of photos. I was looking for more something inbetween, a way to quickly dump all the images to a specified hard disk folder. Their included ZoomBrowser does this, I just needed to figure out how to pare down all their utilities to the bare minimums.

DiGNAN17: (and I didn't know zoombrowser took that much!)

Actually, I pared it down to the Twain driver, ZoomBrowser, and PhotoStitch only, and those three together take up 47mb on my hard disk.

Wait, make that 46. Just ripped the Sample images out of the PhotoStitch folder. Already had ripped the "My Camera" images and sounds out of the ZoomBroser directory.

Wait, make that 45. Just ripped the extra camera bitmaps out of the ZoomBrowser directory (only needed the ones for my brand of camera). Next I'll try and see if it works with no camera-brand bitmaps at all.

DiGNAN17: It just saves them to the program's directory (in "Image Library One" or something).

Oh, I got farther than that. I figured out how to feed it a different directory for the images. It now dumps the images into my folder instead of its folder.

Next I'll try and see if it works with no camera-brand bitmaps at all.

It does. Puts up a generic picture of a camera lens.

Next stop, BreezeBrowser.

In reply to:

---

Bmiller: Using a card reader saves battery on your camera as well.

This is a good point and I think I shall look into how much a separate CF->USB reader costs.

---

It's not expensive at all (Thinkgeek has one for ~$30). And allows for the very nice ability to transfer images while someone else is still shooting.

My Wife works at a public library, where we have a teen night once a month, with bands, coffee, etc... So, we've gotten in the habit of having her go around taking pictures during the night, and dropping off the CF to me to upload onto the web via my 802.11 connection on the laptop.

Zero downtime, thanks to dual cards.

Plus, that connector on the side of the camera just doesn't look real durable to me.....

As for battery life, turn off the screen as much as possible. You don't really need it for taking pictures

This is one of my biggest problems with digital cameras. I find that I do need the screen, because the viewfinder is so far off. I mean, I recognize that it's not an SLR camera, but still.... And, really, for the kind of money that folks are spending on digital cameras, why can't someone make a decent SLR digital camera that isn't professional grade (and professionally priced)?

Wow, you're right about the viewfinder being off.

I just checked. Its center-point is reasonably close to accurate, but the edge cropping is way off. The actual image is about 10-20 percent larger on all sides than what's shown in the viewfinder.

I mean, sure, I can fix some of that with postproduction cropping, but I should have to do that. I should be able to frame the photo the way I want at shooting time.

Well, at least the screen works good on this camera.

The elph is a great buy!

I have a Nikon CoolPix 950 that came with a "lexar" USB enable CF card. THe Cool Pix came with a serial connector as it's only option to download from the camera, it was DOG slow and the software was totaly usless.

I ended up at the Lexar site www.digitalfilm.com and found that their USGB enabled cards have the USB protocol embeded into their design and because of it the readers are dirt cheap.

As far as batteries, I use Raidio Shack AA NiMh 1500mha batteries and a quick charger. They are 10x better than Duracell Ultra.

John

Heh, you should see how bad the parallax is when you're shooting up close.

Unlike Canon's point-and-shoot cameras, the Canon D30 is designed so that you use the viewfinder and not the screen. The LCD is only active once you've taken a picture. All the info that you need, like aperture and shutter speed, are displayed in the viewfinder like a normal SLR. Because of this, the viewfinder on the D30 is supposed to be great.

And the centerpoint will probably change depending on how close or far the object your photographing is. This is the majority of the reason that cheap cameras tell you that the subject should be at least 4 feet away. Any closer and you run the risk of not photographing the right thing at all. Most have enough depth of field to get a reasonably crisp picture well closer than that. Which is why I prefer to use the screen, when forced to use a digital camera.

Have you seen the size of the S110? And for less than 500 bucks, (Tony chime in here) It's a damn good camera for getting images on the computer and being very handy to carry around.

I'm not a pureist when it comes to cameras. You can't find enough arguments to convince me that film is better than storing all my photos on a CD and duping it for people rather than developing film.
It's all about perspective I suppose. (pun intended)

For me, I'm really happy with the S110. I never get a picture I don't like. If I'm that concerned with how the piciture is going to turn out before I take it, I use the lcd. Usually, I fire at will knowing I wont have to pay to develop pictures that don't turn out, just hit the delete key.

My problem is that $500 is a lot. I realize that good CCDs are expensive, but I find it objectionable that it's packaged inside what is essentially a disposable camera. Cheap lenses, fixed focus, separate viewfinders, etc. And don't get me started on digital zoom. I understand why you like the ease of use, but I've never been an ease-of-use type photographer. Personally, I hate taking snapshots of family vacations, etc. I figure that if I can't remember it, it's not likely to be worth remembering. But for those of you that like that sort of stuff, more power to you. I'm sure that it's a good and inexpensive camera relative to the other consumer cameras out there (I don't mean to knock it specifically), but I'm still not likely to get one until it's about $20 plus film -- uh, memory.

I certainly hope that Tony enjoys his camera to its fullest extent. Merry Christmas!

I'm glad you are enjoying your new digital camera. I thought I would comment on your battery life issue. Nickel metal hydride batteries need to be charged and depleted 2 or 3 times before they reach their full capacity. So don't worry too much about battery life - it will get better.

Sean

but I find it objectionable that it's packaged inside what is essentially a disposable camera. Cheap lenses, fixed focus, separate viewfinders, etc.

Have you ever SEEN one of these Canon's? It is far from a disposable item. It is very high quality machined parts with some pretty advanced servomotor-based stuff in it. It's not fixed-focus, it auto-focuses with a mechanical focusing system. I agree that digital zoom sucks, but this thing has a small amount of optical zoom before the digital zoom kicks in. And it's very clear on separating the optical from the digital zoom. It stops zooming at the optical limit, and if you want to push into digital zoom, then you have to release the zoom lever and press it again.

I can't comment on whether or not the lens is cheap, but the folks at DPReview seem to think it's pretty good as it doesn't suffer from the chromatic aberration problem which plagues many digital cameras.

Won't argue about the separate viewfinder being cheap, but as has been discussed elsewhere in this thread, the LCD on the back of the camera takes care of that problem.

I do agree that this camera is not a professional grade unit. I don't expect to be doing anything more than taking Happy Snaps and the occasional empeg install picture. If I were a professional photographer, this is the last camera I would consider. However, for its intended usage, its size and quality make it worth the steep price tag.

Nickel metal hydride batteries need to be charged and depleted 2 or 3 times before they reach their full capacity. So don't worry too much about battery life - it will get better.

That's great news! Thanks!

Okay. I was exaggerating. It's obviously got a more durable case. I honestly didn't realize that it was variable focus (but don't get me started on auto focus, either). And most photographers worth their salt wouldn't even touch an optical zoom lens, but I understand their necessity given the fact that the lenses aren't interchangeable, and, for that matter, the need for digital zoom considering the short maximum focal length.

You know, I was just looking for some nice SLR digital cameras to compare. I knew that they were out of my price range, but I didn't realize how much they had not come down in price in the last year or so. What I want is in the $2800-$5500 range. Ouch! Oh well. I guess $500 really is a steal.

PS: I seem to get more and more unintentionally argumentative. Please accept my past, present, and future apologies for any offense I cause. I don't intend it. Or, rather, if I did, you'd really know it.

I find it objectionable that it's packaged inside what is essentially a disposable camera

Exactly the same way I feel. If you have any interest in digicams checkout the sony DSC-D770. Sony discontinued the line, but you can get them pretty cheap on eBay. It is a 1.5 megapixel camera (very consumer level) with a SLR look and feel and a lot of professional features that don't exist on other digicams. If you like the feel and features of a traditional SLR, but don't need the pixels (or can't afford) something like the Nikon D1 it is a great compromise. I am surprised sony every made the d770 in the first place as it is pretty radically different from the rest of their camera line.

-Mike

What I want is in the $2800-$5500 range. Ouch! Oh well.

I agree with you there. I really wanted the D30, but didn't want to spend $2500 for the body, then even more for some lenses (which I don't have). I'm very happy with my Canon G2, which after various rebates and whatnot, I got for $620. This thing is as close to SLR as any point-and-shoot camera will get.

I figured I'd get the G2, wait a few more years while the technology continues to get better, then pickup a digital SLR when they're at like 10 megapixels (and hopefully cheaper).

Why don't you have a look at this toy. You can use it with (some) "old fashioned" camera's. It's resolution isn't that great compared to today's 3 and 4 megapixel stuff but the price is reasonable (around $600 if I'm correct).

btw, santa must be into digital camera's this year, he bought me a canon powershot S40 and it's great. Incredible how they're able to cram all of this stuff in such a small package.

That's pretty nice. Too bad it isn't an interchangeable lens; it looks like it would have cost them next to nothing to do that. Oh well. On the other hand, I've seen the quality of the other Sony cameras, and they all look like someone accidentally set the JPEG quality level about 2 orders of magnitude too low. Is this one any better (he says as if he has any money to spend)?

eFilm has been vaporware for years...

Check this out:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0109/01091702siliconfilmvaporizes.asp

should've checked, my bad.

I really liked the idea though.

Too bad it isn't an interchangeable lens

Yep, that and somewhat slow autofocus are the only things I think they could have done better considering that the camera was introduced 3+ years ago.

they all look like someone accidentally set the JPEG quality level about 2 orders of magnitude too low. Is this one any better

The highest quality JPEG is pretty decent and there is a super high quality mode that produces an uncompressed image (a TIFF I believe, I generally just use the highest JPEG). The images it produces are a little flat and look a lot better after being sharpened in photoshop or a similar tool. Supposedly it is better to have a flat image than an overly sharp one as you can extrapolate sharpness but not missing detail.

Oh, I also love the battery on this camera. It is a version of the smart batteries sony uses in their camcorders. It will tell you exactly how much battery life is left and is generally good for over 100 pictures if you are not using the flash or LCD constantly.

-Mike

My problem is that I used to work (sort of) for a newspaper, and they had a Nikon F5 (or maybe F4) body with an adapter to make it record images on a digital medium instead of film. It looked like it had an autowinder on the bottom, and I think that it had a CCD that stuck up into the body instead of film; I never had the guts to take it apart as I'm sure that it cost at least $15,000. It all got recorded on a Type-I PCMCIA card that must have had almost no memory at all in it, but this was back in 1993 or so, well before anyone had ever thought of making a consumer digital camera. It was sweet. Of course, I had a chance to play with it again a couple of years ago, well after consumer digital cameras were available, and its image quality was pretty lousy in comparison. Maybe the electronics had gone to pot; I don't know. But being able to put a 400mm telephoto lens on it still rocked.

but I'm still not likely to get one until it's about $20 plus film -- uh, memory.

I know you're exaggeratting, but even in the low price ranges, you're not going to get a good film camera.

As for that used Sony someone mentioned, honestly you can NOT go lower than 2 megapixels if you want a decent camera. I had a Mavica until this fall which was a ~1.2 MP camera, and I was lucky if I got a decent 4x6 print of any picture I wanted to frame for the folks.

As for the quality of digital cameras, I can see what you mean in many cases, but that will change. I think the only reason the cases are so cheapo is because the stuff inside is heavier, isn't it? Anyway, the G2 has a nice case.

As someone mentioned, the G2 can give you professional quality at much less than an SLR. 4 MP gives you one hell of an image, and sometime I'm going to see exactly how big a print I can get with it (when I have the money). The camera also has many features you'll find in pro cameras. Exchangeable lenses including a macro ring; a hot shoe for external flashes (there's about 5 of them); 4 selectable focus areas; adjustable white balance, aperature, and other exposure modes. I realize that it's expensive for just a camera, but it's not $2500.

As for your philosophy on photography, I think that's a bit odd. "I figure that if I can't remember it, it's not likely to be worth remembering." Is that all you take pictures of? Things that you deem worth remembering? Or is that an exaggeration? What about things worth remembering for friends who never saw it? What if it's a use like Tony's friend's install of his empeg?

Digital cameras give you the freedom of choice without fear of money. $700 is not much at all to spend after you factor in developing costs. I can discount the $5 or so that I might spend on prints in the next year. My parents went to Italy with a Kodak digital camera and a laptop. They took over 500 pictures! How much did it cost them for all those pictures? $0. How much would they have had to spend to get them developed? A heck of a lot.

You can talk about the quality of digital cameras, but if you don't NEED a true pro camera, it's a worthy purchase.

I don't think that autofocus, zoom lense etc are bad per se (of course, I will also want convenient, quick manual focus with good focus screen etc), especially for casual, documentary, sport and other types of photography where one doesn't want or can't afford to carefully setup each shot. I spent my 'formative' photography days (highschool, more or less) using Exacta, essentially a totally machanical but very robust 35mm laboratory SLR made by the original Zeiss guys left on the Eastern side of the Wall. You could get all sorts of microscope, telescope, endoscope, whatever-scope adapters for it, but not a zoom lense , so I have grown to appreciate control over ease of use. I have never learned, for example, to control zoom using motor and buttons, but only mechanical ring. However, things change and one has to keep open mind.

I browsed a little around after reading your posts, trying to see whether I agree with your $2800 and up price range. As always, it depends. For example, one manufacturer (I forgot which) claimed that ease of use, sealed and so dust-free interior and added rigidity made possible by non-changeable zoom lens outwieght loss of versatility (or loss of quality if converters are used). Similarly, manufactuters of non-SLRs try to convince us that paralax is not so bad or that composition is better done on LCD. Anyway, if one just wants vacation photographs or something for web site, there is plenty of choice. If, however, the aim is to replace a traditional midrange 'photochemical' SLR, things are not so bright. For example, the best Canon camera bellow EOS-D30 (which you probably deem acceptable), PRO90 IS (at $1500) 'features' vignetting, perceptible chromatic aberration, noise at longer exposures and too long shutter lag, according to some dpreview.com users. Hm...

I think I will wait some more before plunging into digital photography

even in the low price ranges, you're not going to get a good film camera

That's my point. While you'll likely get a better image than you can get with a disposable camera, that's about the only advantage. I would rather get a lower quality image than be unable to get the right image.

All of this come from the fact that I ``grew up'' with high quality cameras, slide scanners, etc. Being surrounded by that kind of stuff makes you think twice about what really needs or wants to be photographed. So I tend to think more as an art photographer. Certainly, there's a necessity sometimes to photograph something for posterity, but that's not how I think, and I also think that $500 for that privilege is a little high.

But, again, I'm not trying to [censored] on Tony's Christmas present. He obviously loves it, and I'm happy he has it. I just don't want people to think that this is as good a camera as a good SLR. It's ease-of-use versus total control.

Every professional photographer I ever knew or heard about takes as many photos of a given subject he can while the conditions are optimal, knowing that he will sift through them selecting the one that captured the moment the best and discard or archive the rest.

That's my approach which lends itself more affordably to the digital medium.

Yes, but that's mostly due to influences outside his control, not because he hasn't framed his subject properly. Occasionally, one will stumble on a good photograph by accident, but 99% of it is skill and good controllable equipment (ignoring artistic talent).

Aaargh. I've gotten myself in an argument I don't want to be in.

Well, for me it's merely trying to capture a moment so I can remember it better latter. The more snapshots, the more likely the moment can be represented accurately.

Given what you said, I can understand the artistic approach and that quality tools are needed to produce what you visualize.

You artists go do your thing. I'm just a senseless hack about it hoping for a good outcome. Wasting money on film while I learn how good a photographer I'm not doesn't appeal to me.

Every professional photographer I ever knew or heard about takes as many photos of a given subject he can while the conditions are optimal, knowing that he will sift through them selecting the one that captured the moment the best and discard or archive the rest.

That's my approach which lends itself more affordably to the digital medium.

You have nailed it with that statement. This is the difference between Photography (note the capital P) and "happy snaps".

If one is taking happy snaps, one is satisfied with a single exposure of a given subject. The purpose of the picture is to capture a moment, to record an event. But when a Photographer is practicing his Art, limiting the work to a single exposure would be foolish.

Good Photography isn't all trial-and-error. It does require skill, you still need to frame the subject, control the exposure, and know how to operate the equipment. But the real art in Photography comes in choosing the best exposures out of a selection of many.

It's just like recording music. You don't think those songs on the radio were laid down in one take? No, every phrase was recorded over and over again until they got the take they wanted. Well, OK, there are exceptions, like the Beatles' recording of "Twist and Shout"...

The beauty of digital photography (and digital music recording for that matter) is that the media is random-access and rewritable, so you can blow through even more exposures and more takes than you could back in the days when you were wasting film and tape.

Auugh! I'm sorry! Can I take it all back?

As for that used Sony someone mentioned, honestly you can NOT go lower than 2 megapixels if you want a decent camera

Not at all true. I will take a 1.5MP camera with manual focus, manual aperture, manual white balance, etc any day over a 3MP point and shoot for "artistic" shots. The extra features allow someone who knows what their doing to take the picture they want rather than the picture the camera wants to take. If you are talking about taking snaps of your kids playing football that is a whole different story, but I thought the original poster would be more interested in the other features. The cheapest camera I have been able to find with the same types of features as that three year old sony is the Nikon D1 which is a lot more expensive and probably not an option for anyone who thinks $500 is too much to spend on a camera.

-Mike

I think you're missing what I was saying. I don't think the MP has anything to do with the manual settings you're talking about. What I said was that if you wanted to get a decent print out of it, you're going to be more hard-pressed to do so with <2MP. This doesn't have anything to do with the white balance. This has nothing to do with the aperture or even focus! This has to do with the sheer amount of pixels! I'm talking detail, not effects. I agree, you'll be able to get what you want more easily with a fully manual, low-res digicam (if you know how to use it) than you would with sheer point and click on any camera*.

Now that I re-read your quote (which is a bit out of context now), I should re-write it as this to fit my opinion:
"As for that used Sony someone mentioned, honestly you can NOT go lower than 2 megapixels if you want a decent 5x8 print"
How's that?



*my next point would be that the G2 gives you the choice. you can do everything and more that it sounds like you can do with that camera, or do automatic, and you have 4MP detail. but I guess there's no shaking someone from the whole SLR deal. Oh well, to each his own.

I'll try to get back off the tangent. As for one of the original topics, I'd still love to see the ability to plug in the camera to the USB port, and automatically open up a window with my pictures in it. I don't need a browser whether it zooms or breezes. I just want to get my damn pictures! Is there any way to do this?

you're damn right it's awsome.. I know 3 people with them, and I've finaly found enough cash laying around to pick up one for myself tonight.. The nice thing that I'm going to note, is my girlfriend has one, and it works great with gphoto2 on her linux laptop.. gphoto2 is missing the GUI stuff right now.. but she'd rather just CLI anyway. the USB works great, and is nice and zippy.

hehe.. well.. I know this probably won't help anyone but me.. but..

I use gphoto2 -P to get all the pictures into a directory on my laptop.
then I use a little shell script i wrote, which uses imagemagick to rotate and re-compress the jpeg's to a reasonable size.. (keeping the original image files of course)

then I upload the files to my web server, and run photoaddict.pl to make thumbnails and such.

oh.. did I mention I use linux ;)

I used a digital camera once for making photo IDs for a job, and it had this neat feature where it would detect if you were holding the camera horizontally or vertically and automatically rotate the picture for you when you downloaded it. I always thought that was neat. It wasn't a function of the software on the computer, either, as I was using Linux stuff. Does yours have that feature?

I don't belive the S110 has such a feature, tho I would love to see that happen more.. because having to go through and rotate pics on the download side is so damn anoying

It was such a neat feature that the several of us using it had it happen to us many times before we realized that it was happening at all. Very intuitive and insidious.

Does yours have that feature?

One of my cameras does that. I don't remember if it is the sony or my older Kodak dc260. It is a handy feature. Some cameras will let you manually rotate the image on the camera before transfering it to the computer as well.

-Mike

Wow what a great idea.

The S110 doesn't have that feature, unfortunately. It will let you rotate the picture by punching a couple of buttons on the back of the camera, though.

I find that I like to have the images rotated in the camera already before I get to the PC downloading software.

Does it use lossless rotation when rotating the jpg on the camera though ?

Does it use lossless rotation when rotating the jpg on the camera though ?

All it does is update a tag which tells it that it's a rotated image. It doesn't actually attempt to rotate the pixels of the image.

In fact, that's why I like to do it on the camera because I don't trust the browser software to do it right. When I told the browser software to rotate the image, it had a little percentage bar go across the screen saying "rotating image", which made me think it was doing a decompress/recompress of the image.

Yeah, I've gotten some sketchy results from Zoombrowser rotating images. I sure is nice to have on the camera though. On the G2, at least, when you're in play mode you can select a menu option of "rotate". Then as you go through the pictures, if one was taken vertically, press the "set" button once to rotate right 90 degrees (and again for more). Is this how the 110 does it?

I also like it a lot because if you do slide shows, you don't have a whole room of people with cricks in their necks

On the G2, at least, when you're in play mode you can select a menu option of "rotate". Then as you go through the pictures, if one was taken vertically, press the "set" button once to rotate right 90 degrees (and again for more). Is this how the 110 does it?

Wow, I didn't even know you could do that. Yes, that's how the S110 works, now that I've tried it. Nice! Thanks!

From my understanding, ZoomBrowser actually does some compression to the picture when you rotate it. That's one of the claims that BreezeBrowser has...no compression when rotating.

Now that I think about it, it wouldn't matter whether the image was rotated in the camera or in ZoomBrowser, ZoomBrowser would have to do the rotating at download time anyway. So my idea of rotating it before downloading it doesn't make any sense, does it?

Hmm, I'll have to look into BreezeBrowser again. I was going to grab it, then I saw that it cost money so I stopped.

I don't mean to push it, but it's WELL worth the money. Of course, I have to be honest in saying I'm currently playing with a hacked copy. It was rather easy finding a registration name on the web.

But, I plan on purchasing the product to help support the guy who is developing it.

Anyways, you should definitely check it out. It completely blows away the crappy Canon software.

Since this is the off topic forum I wont feel too guilty about arguing over this.

This has to do with the sheer amount of pixels!

So by that logic (taken slightly out of context I will admit) a $10 drugstore disposable camera takes just as good of pictures as a professional level SLR since they both use the same 35mm film with the same number of phospors/mm? The features that allow you to properly compose the picture and the optics of the camera can be just as important as the number of dots on paper. To someone who knows how to use those features they can be more important.

"As for that used Sony someone mentioned, honestly you can NOT go lower than 2 megapixels if you want a decent 5x8 print"
How's that?

Humor me would you? Grab this image and try printing it at 5x8 and see what you think. I have not tried this as I don't own a color printer so I am curious if you think it makes an acceptable print. The image is kind of harsh as it was taken in doors with the flash, if it was not dark and raining I would go outside and take a picture of a flower or something.

but I guess there's no shaking someone from the whole SLR deal

Very true. People, including me I guess, tend to be rather religious about that.

-Mike

So by that logic (taken slightly out of context I will admit) a $10 drugstore disposable camera takes just as good of pictures as a professional level SLR since they both use the same 35mm film with the same number of phospors/mm?

No, by that logic a single shot from 8mm camera can't give acceptable large blow-ups regardless of lens quality and perfect control over exposure and focus the auther might have had, because of insuficient resolution.

Now, I agree that not everybody does architectural or documentary photography (or photoghraph Pink Floyd lyrics in tiny print ) and that it is possible to use photochemical films' grain as a creative tool, but I would like to have all resolution I can at my disposal, and lower it only if I want to. And again, I agree that 6"x9" studio sheet film camera's resolution will not save incompetently taken shot (or one where the camera was second-guessing the photographer).

5"x8" print from 2MP camera will have some 10 pixels per millimeter (roughly equivalent to 300dpi) which I think should, with some antialiasing and printer dot bleeding be enough to avoid artifacts like staircasing and moiré, but just barely. Again, the photographer can avoid some of these artifacts by not photographing motifs where they might become visible (and taking angles etc into account), but I think this is a problem where technological brute force (i.e. resolution) is a better solution (if we can aford it ).

The Coolpix 990 has a USB cable that is fairly quick. I think you can purchase the cable after the fact. Dunno if that helps.

Calvin

No, by that logic a single shot from 8mm camera can't give acceptable large blow-ups regardless of lens quality and perfect control over exposure and focus the auther might have had, because of insuficient resolution.

Sure, but we where not comparing 8mm to 35mm. A better analogy would be something like 25mm to 35mm at which point the cameras other features become more relevant.

but I think this is a problem where technological brute force (i.e. resolution) is a better solution (if we can aford it

Agreed, but for me at least the only cameras that have the features that would make me replace a 35mm SLR and a resolution that allows for "brute force" methods cost upwards of $3000. The niche that the sony fills for me is when being able to print at 8x10 or higher is not a requirement, but traditional SLR type features are. In another few years we will be able to get digicams with 10+ megapixel resolutions that will use my existing nikon lenses and have all the high-end SLR features for a reasonable price, but we sure aren't there yet.

-Mike

Okay, I downloaded BreezeBrowser and I'm checking it out.

I can't figure out how to get it to download the images off of my camera. There seems to be no option for doing this.

Is BreezeBrowser just an image cataloging utility? Jeez, I need another one of those like I need a hole in the head. I was looking for a lightweight utility to pull the images off the camera onto my hard disk, not a fancy way of typing "DIR *.JPG".

Yeah, unfortunately you still need to use ZoomBrowser to extract out the images from the camera.

My general workflow is:
1. Extract RAWs (and the occasional JPG) from the camera using ZoomBrowser into a directory.
2. Open BreezeBrowser to view all the images.
3. Extract the EXIF data for all the pictures to a .txt file.
4. Convert all the RAWs into TIFFs.
5. Work off all the TIFFs in Photoshop, leaving the RAWs unchanged.

I like BreezeBrowser for a few reasons. First, extracting the EXIF data to a .txt file is awesome. In Zoombrowser, you have to do a "properties" on an image to get the EXIF data. Second, it converts to TIFFs faster. Third, and probably most important, is that it displays thumbnails of images in a directory SO much faster than ZoomBrowser. What would take ZoomBrowser ten minutes to do takes like two minutes in BreezeBrowser. I also like the different view modes in BreezeBrowser. Kind of like ACDSee. But, ACDSee doesn't currently support G2 RAWs.

They also added an HTML photo album creator to BreezeBrowser, but I don't use it. I have all my pictures on pbase, which is just awesome.

Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs-> BreezeBrowser -> Remove All.

Done.

Heh...To each their own.

go to Staples -> buy Sandisk CF Reader -> hookup to PC

done.

Well, that's my solution. I don't need a browser either. I prefer using Windows to do whatever browsing I'll need. Anyway, I like the card reader. Just plug it in and a new drive letter appears. Easy as that. I don't have to open up some damn browser that won't let me easily save where I want to. now I just drag and drop.

One thing I would like though. When I plug in the reader, I would like it to automatically open the drive. Does anyone know how I would go about telling it to do that? I didn't load any of the software the reader came with, but I'd rather not if it's going to load its own way of pulling the files off.

Anyway, that's my solution, and I like it!

go to Staples -> buy Sandisk CF Reader -> hookup to PC ->done.

Heh.

When I plug in the reader, I would like it to automatically open the drive.

Hmm. I don't know about this, but when I plug in my camera, it automatically launches ZoomBrowser. I seem to remember finding the registry entry that did this, once. Maybe there's a way to get the same thing to happen with the CF reader by hacking at the registry? Not sure.

Maybe there's a way to get the same thing to happen with the CF reader by hacking at the registry?

Doesn't look like it. All of the documents I can find in MSDN are specifically talking about "still image" operations. This seems to be restricted to cameras and scanners.

In reply to:

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go to Staples -> buy Sandisk CF Reader -> hookup to PC ->done.

Heh.

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As somewhat of an aside, Tony... I was wrong. The windows box I used earlier that allowed me to pull the files directly off of it was not w2k.

It was XP... ick. So.... If you want to fall further into the Microsoft trap, XP does do what you want.

I figured that out when I dual booted the other day by accident. I had loaded XP a while back to check the compatibility... and since I don't use windows, I forgot what was on there.