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.