Digital Cameras 2001
They Don't All Suck
A couple of years ago, I posted a page about the woeful state of the digital camera market on this web site. My gripe was that I was unable to find a digital camera that was as capable as a bare-bones manual 35mm SLR.
A lot has changed since then. We've reached the point where digital really can compete with 35mm in terms of absolute image quality, and medium format isn't too far away. Digital is also way out in front when it comes to convenience. However, film is still ahead when you consider the relative quality of a digital camera and a film camera at any given price point.
Olympus C-2020Z
The
camera that finally convinced me to go digital was in May 2000 the
Olympus C-2020Z. The C-2020Z was the
first digital camera that I had seen that gave me manual control over the
shutter speed and aperture and also let me hook up an external flash via a PC
socket and control it independently of the internal flash. The C-2020Z is
still a point-and-shoot at heart and has the whole load of point-and-shoot
annoyances like a motorized zoom lens, a teeny-tiny viewfinder, and no filter
thread, but there wasn't really anything better on the market.
The C-2020Z turned out to be surprisingly good, and I found myself taking it everywhere. It is a 2.1-megapixel camera (1,600x1,200) and generates JPEGs of about 400K that are great for screen display and small prints but look a little fuzzy when blown up to 8x10 or larger.
It has a fast lens, f/2-2.8, and the focal length of the lens is so short (6.5-19.5mm) that the lens is still very compact. The lens exhibits considerable barrel distortion at the wide end, though no more so than most point and shoot cameras. The camera can be set to ISO 100, 200, or 400, so combined with the f/2 maximum aperture at the wide end, it does pretty well in low light. In normal operation the camera uses matrix metering, but you can also select spot metering.
One
particularly nice feature of the C-2020Z is its macro mode. I suppose that
getting up close and personal with a 19.5mm lens doesn't take that much
extension, but the effect is impressive.
The user interface of the C-2020Z is typical of digital point-and-shoot cameras. There is a single control wheel that turns the camera on and selects either program mode, a non-program shooting mode, playback mode, or movie mode. Aside from that one wheel and a rocker switch for to zoom the lens in and out, all the controls are buttons. One button turns the LCD on and off, another sets the flash mode, yet another selects the macro and spot metering modes, one brings up the on-screen menu, and a collection of four arrow buttons performs different functions depending on the mode that the camera is in. Nearly everything is selected through the menu. If you're in non-program mode, for example, then your actual shooting mode--aperture-priority, shutter-priority, or manual--is selected from the menu. Fortunately the shutter speed and aperture aren't set through the menu, but they are set using the arrow buttons, which is almost as bad. (Is it up and down to select the shutter speed, or right and left?) The ISO, white balance, file format, and numerous other variables are all set using the menu.
The camera uses the serial port to communicate with the host computer, which, at the time I bought it, was fine with me because I was using Windows NT 4.0, which didn't support USB, but I uploaded maybe two images before realizing that I would grow old before the entire contents of the 32M SmartMedia card was transferred. I bought a USB SmartMedia reader for not much money and uploaded the photos to my Windows 98 machine instead.
Over a period of 18 months I shot over 3,000 pictures with the C-2020Z, and those were just the ones that I kept. The camera more than paid for itself in terms of saved film processing costs. It also paid for itself again in another more indirect way. Being able to shoot high-quality photos and utilize them in digital form almost immediately made it very easy to photograph and sell unwanted items on eBay. It became so simple to list something on Ebay that I auctioned off many things that I would have thrown away before. I had a broken VCR sitting around my apartment for years. I almost threw it away, but it was so easy to snap a picture of it and list it on eBay that I did that instead and wound up selling it for $39.
Olympus E-20N
I am currently using a 5-megapixel Olympus E-20N SLR. This camera, like all digital cameras, is a compromise. The E-20N shoots very high-quality images due to its high pixel count and neutral color saturation, but on the other hand, the autofocus sometimes doesn't, and it takes the better part of forever to save the multi-megabyte output of its sensor to the media.
Phil Askey has an excellent review of the E-20N on his Digital Photography Review web site.
I'll add more to my own comments as soon as I become motivated.
All contents copyright 2001 by Willis BoyceLast updated November 28, 2001