Digital Cameras and Digital Image Editing

Observations

From our experience, most of us don't recognize the benefits of a digital camera until using one for quite a while. Here are the main things we have learned in taking well over 25,000 pictures since December 1997:

  • Immediacy. We particularly enjoy seeing pictures taken during trips or parties at the end of the same day. They always look great on the computer screen. And because the camera's LCD lets you get a glimpse of each picture right after you take it, you can immediately re-take pictures of someone who had his eyes closed or had a weird expression. Or you can re-take a picture where the lighting was drastically wrong.
  • No incremental cost. Once you own the camera and rechargeable batteries, there is absolutely no incremental cost of taking one additional picture on any occasion. You can put aside the usual considerations of film and printing prices and take pictures with no concern for cost. The real benefit from this is the opportunity to improve your photography skills. If you want to improve you have to take lots of pictures: taking dozens of pictures where you would have previously taken only one with a film camera.
  • No limits. Until you use a digital camera you don't realize how much the size of a roll of film influenced traditional picture taking. You either couldn't take the last few pictures that you wanted because the previous roll was just completed, or else you ended up with a few pictures exposed on a new roll that didn't get developed until weeks later. There are no such issues with digital cameras, and this is one of the surprisingly big benefits.
  • Quantity. We find that we take over 3,000 digital pictures a year. Experience has shown that we discard at least 1/3 of the pictures we take, but because there is no cost we take a lot of similar scenes at different angles and exposures to be sure we get pictures we like. You will certainly get better pictures than you did with film cameras if you utilize this opportunity to take multiple views of the same scene. Usually only one or two pictures in 100 are truly exemplary, so if you don't take hundreds you won't likely get any such pictures.
  • Storage and accessibility. We transfer each day's pictures to our computer's hard drive and keep them there permanently. While traveling, this often involves taking a laptop computer and saving the pictures there. Our 20,000+ pictures now occupy around 40 Gigabytes. We could always delete really old ones, but computer hard drives keep getting bigger so that hasn't been an issue.

Our Own Camera Experiences

Our original camera was a Kodak DC210 with a resolution of 1152 x 864 pixels (approximately 1 million), which yielded small prints that were usable 1 million pixels is very low by today's standards, but still usable for some situations.

After nearly wearing out this first camera, we purchased a Kodak DC4800 (for Jack) and Pentax Optio 550 (for Anne). The DC4800 had a 3.1 million pixel resolution (2160 x 1440 pixels) and a 3x optical zoom. It was quite satisfactory, though physically a little too big for easy traveling. The Optio 550, which Anne still uses, is smaller, with a 5 megapixel resolution and 5x optical zoom. The higher resolution is better for situations where cropping reduces the resolution by discarding part of the original picture, and Anne quite likes the 5x zoom.

Since November 2005 Jack has used the Canon A620, which has 7.2 million pixels and a 4x zoom. These specifications are more than adequate for most users. It is thin enough for easy packing in carry-on suitcases, but is rather limited in its ability to take picutres in low-light outdoor situations without a flash.

Product Comparisons and Reviews

Here are the key Web sites devoted to digital cameras and related subjects that are well regarded and particularly helpful:

  • Steve's DigiCams has extensive information about cameras, scanners, printers, and other related devices. It has a large list of cameras, with links to detailed product descriptions at each manufacturer's web site. There are camera reviews, sample pictures, comments from users, and much more.

  • DP Review has reviews, information, and links to various discussion forums.

  • The Digital Camera Resource Page is a respected site run by an individual. It says it "is designed to be an unofficial resource for current or future owners of digital cameras ... We're not out to sell you anything, so we will try to remain as neutral as possible."

  • ZDNet is a helpful site whose editors review and comment on various cameras. The editor's review for each camera has a link that lets you "Read user reviews" for the camera -- be sure to look at those user comments.

  • The Imaging Resource site has lots of information about digital imaging generally. Its Cameras section is helpful because it organizes product reviews in terms of the resolution (number of pixels) of the cameras.

  • ShortCourses in Digital Photography provides tutorials on various aspects of digital photography and has a lot of other helpful information.

Things You Should Consider

Here are some of the things you should consider in selecting a digital camera:

  • Price. We wouldn't buy a digital camera, or anything else that is expensive, without checking the lowest prices on the CNET Shopper and NexTag pages. These are remarkable services that provide pricing information from dozens of Web sites. NexTag is particularly helpful because it includes tax and shipping charges. This is a good way to compare prices of various digital camera sources quickly if you have a model number in mind.

    We don't recommend spending less than $100 for a digital camera today. And we don't recommend spending more than $250 (including tax and shipping) unless you are very sure you want and need the features you are paying for. Many people will think they need more resolution or more features, and buy a more expensive camera than they need or will use.

  • Image resolution. This is measured in units of million pixels (megapixels, or "MP").

    • 1 MP (megapixel) resolution is fine for pictures used for web sites and e-mails; higher resolution won't help much for these applications. Many people do not want to receive a picture bigger than 0.5 MP by e-mail. Of course, cameras with such low resolution are no longer available, although some cell phones have cameras of this sort.

    • 4 to 6 MP resolution is appropriate for most people. Camera prices in this range are reasonable, and the resulting pictures can be printed at good quality to at least 5 x 7 inch size. The file size of each picture on your hard drive or camera's memory module is reasonable.

    • Resolution of 8 MP or more is, in our opinion, not needed by most users. These resolutions produce images that are much too large to send by e-mail, take up a lot of valuable memory space in the camera's memory module, are cumbersome to edit because of the long computer processing time required, and take up a lot of computer disk space if you keep many of them. However, if you use a graphic editor and crop a picture severely you can quickly reduce the resolution by 50%, and thus may benefit from starting with this high resolution. 8 MP or more might also be justified if you genuinely plan to make a lot of high-quality 8 x 10 inch or larger prints.

  • Manufacturer. There is some good evidence that users are most satisfied with cameras made by companies that have long been traditional camera manufacturers, but not so satisfied with cameras from electronics companies that recently decided to get into the digital camera business. This has to do with how comfortable and convenient the camera is to hold and operate, rather than any quality or reliability issue. For example, Canon, Nikon, and Kodak cameras are well regarded.

  • Date of camera's introduction. This tells you how current the technology is. A camera introduced within the past 12-18 months is certainly reasonable.

  • Lens and Zoom. Consider the size of the lens and its optical zoom capability. Our assessment of the Kodak and Canon lens and image qualities were important considerations in our choice of cameras. Based on lots of experience, you should not purchase a camera having less than 3X optical zoom, and 4X optical zoom is well worthwhile. "Digital" zoom is additional zoom capability obtained by digitally selecting and expanding the center of the picture, which lowers the resolution significantly but may be useful if the initial resolution of the camera is high enough. We have always avoided using the digital zoom capability, however, and camera reviews usually strongly recommend not using digital zoom. Using any zoom larger than 5X may result in a blurred picture because it is hard to hold the camera steady enough in your hand. Some new cameras include an image stabilization feature intended to help address this problem.

  • Light Sensor One problem with our original camera was its inability to adjust its light reading based on a spot in center of the picture. Instead, its judgment was based on the overall brightness of the entire picture, so taking a picture of a dark person against a bright background was difficult. The ability to quickly and easily adjust the light sensor between a center spot and the overall picture is useful if you have the presence of mind to use this feature.

  • Exposure Value (EV) Adjustment. A digital camera feature that gets used constantly is the manual exposure value (EV) adjustment, providing a manual override on the brightness of the picture. There will be many times when the picture you take is obviously too dark or too light, and you will need to make this adjustment quickly and re-take the picture. A manual digital camera adjustment of +1 EV, for example, is similar to opening the lens aperature 1 f-stop on a film camera, making the picture brighter. A manual adjustment range of +2 EV to -2 EV in 0.5 EV steps is typical. A separate switch on the camera for this purpose is ideal; otherwise, be sure you can quickly and easily access this capability on your camera.

  • Viewfinder. We strongly recommend making sure the camera has a traditional optical viewfinder for viewing the picture you are going to take. An LCD screen used as a viewfinder is awkward, hard to see in daylight, and consumes large amounts of battery power. Use the viewfinder instead. It's true that the LCD screen shows the exact dimensions of your final picture whereas the optical viewfinder typically shows a larger view, but this exactness is irrelevant. Your original picture should be 20% or so larger than the final cropped picture you want to keep because 4x6, 5x7, and 8x10 prints all require different croppings and there is no way the original picture can be exactly right for each such print size.

  • Memory. See "Memory", below.

  • Connections. Serial port or infrared connections to a computer are relatively slow. An ideal connection to a PC is via the high-speed USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface found on all new PCs. A Bluetooth wireless link would be good, too.

    The ability to view pictures directly on a TV is nice; we sometimes use this feature of our camera at parties and other gatherings. Another useful way to transfer pictures from a camera to a laptop PC is by removing the camera's memory module and placing it in an adapter in the PC. This makes all the pictures available immediately as individual files on the PC, as though they were stored on a hard drive in the PC.

    Connecting a camera directly to a printer is not a good idea for serious photographers. Nearly all pictures can benefit greatly from cropping, brightness/contrast adjustment, or both. Lots of experience has shown that at least 50% of the "value" of a good picture results from this kind of post-camera editing. Some camera-ready printers provide a few of these basic adjustments (especially cropping), but these functions are better performed on a computer using a high-quality display.

  • Power. See "Batteries", below.

  • Cycle Time. One of the biggest problems with our first camera was the half-second delay that occurred after pressing the shutter button before it took each picture, and the 12-second delay after each picture before the camera was ready to take another one. A camera's power-on delay can be frustrating as well. Be sure to consider these characteristics of any camera. New models have improved greatly in this respect, but people still complain about these aspects of some cameras.

  • Size and Weight. If your camera is too big, bulky, or heavy you won't take it with you and use it enough. Then your money will have been wasted. Ideally, a camera should fit in a coat pocket and a carry-on suitcase. Furthermore, if it doesn't look, feel, and operate like a conventional film camera, it may not be feasible for you to ask a friend or a passer by to take your picture. These are very important considerations based on our experiences.

  • Reviews. Read some reviews on the sites mentioned in the "Product Comparison" section above. Pay attention to comments about each camera's optical quality.

Memory

There are confusing pros and cons about the various standards for digital camera memory. Be sure to choose a camera that uses an industry standard memory module so you can purchase additional memory at competitive prices. The principal standards include CompactFlash (CF), SmartMedia (SM) , and SecureDigital (SD).

These memory modules are based on Flash ROM technology that you can insert in a PCMCIA or USB module to transfer pictures directly to your PC. Each picture is a separate .JPG picture file, and the PC typically sees the memory module as an additional hard drive (for example, E:).

Some new cameras come with only a 16 Megabyte memory module; that certainly is not enough. Today people should purchase a module with at least 1 Gigabyte capacity, since such modules cost less than $30.

People often ask how many pictures a camera will hold. The answer to this has more to do with you than with the camera, because it depends on: (a) the size of the memory you install, and (b) the resolution setting you select on your camera.  Here are examples of picture file sizes based on resolution, and memory module capacity using a 256 Megabyte module as an example:

  • 3 megapixel resolution: 0.8 MB (Megabytes)/picture; 1280 pictures in 1 Gibagyte (1 GB).

  • 5 megapixel resolution: 1.0 MB/picture; 1000 pictures in 1 Gibagyte.

  • 7 megapixel resolution: 2.9 MB/picture; 360 pictures in 1 Gibagyte.

A 1 GB memory module is adequate for most of our purposes. However, we always carry a spare memory module. From experience, we each take around 300 pictures on a typical 4-5 day trip.

Batteries

We don't suggest using anything other than rechargeable NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) or Lithium-Ion batteries in a digital camera. The LCD is the part of the camera that consumes the most power. Several camera manufacturers note that NiCd batteries are not effective in digital camera applications. If you decide to use non-rechargeable batteries you better have an inexpensive source for purchasing them; you might expect only 200 pictures per set of ordinary batteries. We find that we get 100-200 pictures on rechargable batteries before they need charging. This is usually enough pictures for one day. We charge the batteries overnight. However, we always try to carry a set of spare fully-charged batteries.

Don't overlook the AC power requirements of the battery recharger if you travel a lot. AC power in the U.S. is 120 volts and 60 Hz. For any hope of operating a recharger (or any other AC appliance) in Asia and Europe, you need one that is rated (on its power label) for operation at 100-240 volts and 50-60 Hz. If it doesn't specifically give ranges like that, it isn't compatible. Don't assume battery rechargers have this operating range -- the only way to find out may be to physically look at the unit's power label.

Printing

People often ask about printing digital pictures. You may not want to; it's fun to look at them on the PC screen or TV. We print very few pictures. When you really need printed copies you just use your PC's printer or the printing services now readily available at many retail stores. We recommend getting a good HP or Canon inkjet printer -- typically less than $199. 24-pound extra-white paper is important and not very expensive. For special situations you can purchase glossy photo paper for PC printers, though it is much more expensive. The software described below is useful for printing pictures. Also, we often use Microsoft Word for arranging and printing pictures via the Insert > Picture > From File menu function.

Shutterfly is an example of a well regarded Internet-based company dedicated to providing color prints for digital camera users. You send them your pictures via the Internet, and they mail the prints back to you. They have their own in-house all-digital printing facilities. Such services also provide free online albums where you can share your pictures with your friends, but their underlying objective is to sell prints.

To meet the growing demand from digital camera owners, print kiosks are now available at many local stores. You can bring a CD-ROM or the memory module from a digital camera, select what you want to print, perform some basic editing such as cropping, and get your pictures quickly. This editing process is better than nothing, but the resulting quality is far less than what you will obtain using good imaging software on your PC (below) to edit and adjust your pictures before printing them.

Digital Image Editing Software

It doesn't make sense to have a digital camera without having software for editing, adjusting, viewing, and printing digital pictures. You may want to augment the software that comes with a camera by downloading some inexpensive or free digital imaging software from the Web. Basic functions anyone will need include cropping, adjusting contrast and brightness, lowering the resolution to reduce file (memory) space, and printing in various sizes. These kinds of functions are typically provided in software that comes with your camera.

Here are readily available software applications we recommend:

  • IrfanView is an exceedingly popular free file viewer and editor. This is a great way to view a group of pictures on your PC, with each one automatically sized to fit the entire PC screen. Viewing operates much like the Slide Show feature of PowerPoint; you can use the mouse buttons for forward and backward sequencing. This efficient software also provides controls for adjusting image brightness and contrast, resizing, cropping, rotating, and converting from one image file format to another (such as from .BMP to .JPG). If you have a digital camera, you should definitely download this free software.

Example of Contrast and Brightness Adjustment
Behind the Waterfall at Yerba Buena Arts Center, San Francisco

Picture as originally taken by the camera..

After adjustment for brightness and contrast.

Note: The resolution of these and all other pictures on this page have been drastically reduced
to make their file sizes smaller so they will fit on this page and you can view them quickly over the Internet.

  • Digital Image Suite is Microsoft's current high-end image editing program. If you want to buy something, this is what we recommend for most people. The price including tax and shipping is around $50.

  • The "gold standard" for image and graphics editing is the full Adobe Photoshop software. However, it is very expensive and very difficult to learn. Adobe makes other simpler and much less expensive photo editing software for casual users.

  • Panorama software automatically combines overlapping photos to produce a single high-quality panorama. It can produce a single image file (such as .JPG) or, in some cases, an output panorama file compatible with Apple’s QuickTime that you can scroll through using a mouse and browser. If needed, you can produce a full 360-degree panorama. A good panorama program is ArcSoft Panorama Maker. Microsoft's Digital Image Suite (above) also includes this capability, as do some of the software packages that come with digital cameras.

Examples of Panoramas Created from Photos that We've Taken

The entrance to Waipio Valley on the Northeast coast of the big island of Hawaii
(a panorama made from a sequence of 3 ordinary photos).

Rockport Harbor on the coast of Maine
(a panorama made from a sequence of 4 ordinary photos).

Regardless of what software you use, you may want to consider buying a copy of The 123 of Digital Imaging (123di, $45-50) to learn the basics of image editing and the underlying technology. This friendly and easy-to-use tutorial program is particularly well regarded for teaching people how to use Adobe software, including Photoshop (above). At least download a free demo to try it.

Created by Jack Landau (Landau@cox.net)
Last updated April 2007