dacs.doc electric

I visited the Photoplus Expo at the Javits Center on October 30, as I have each year for the last
ten years I have watched the floor space devoted to film photography shrink like a pool of water
on a hot sunny day. Today the show could be called the Digital Photo Expo. While I saw nothing
that was dramatically new this year, it is clear that there have been significant advances in digital cameras and printing.

The "point and shoot" customer, looking for a good, reasonably priced camera, will notice that
quality has increased while prices have come down. A few years ago, a 3-megapixel camera was
top of the line. With this you can easily crop the photo or make high quality enlargements. Today, 3-megapixels is the low-end standard, leaving the smaller one and two megapixel designs to novelty cameras, such as camera phones and sub-miniatures. Good quality 3-megapixel cameras are available from several manufacturers for $200 to $300.

For the serious amateur, the good news is the emergence of reasonably priced ($1,000 plus or
minus) single lens reflex (SLR) cameras with interchangeable lenses. You may recall that when I
wrote the piece about digital photography in this newsletter last year, I said that cameras with
interchangeable lenses suffered from problems of dust falling on the photo sensitive element
when the lens was removed from the camera. That problem has been attacked head on, and this
year the full force of the industry is now focused on providing SLR cameras using innovative means of to eliminate dust. Olympus, with their new E-1, actually uses a method of vibration to shake the dust off of the photo element, and other manufacturers are using other methods to shield the element itself. Another SLR entry is the 6.4-megapixel Canon Rebel, priced just under $1000, including one lens. It is a scaled-back version of their popular 10D model which is used frequently in sports photography, and uses many of the lenses in the Canon line, so you can use that old telephoto lens in your collection.

The issue with SLR cameras is matching the lens to the sensor. The digital photosensitive element is physically smaller than the traditional 35mm film frame, so old 35mm lenses will not always work with digital cameras. One solution is for camera designers to develop new lenses. But customers won't invest in new lenses they think will soon go out of style. So Olympus, Sony and Kodak are teaming up with a new "standard" of lens and sensor design they hope will catch on with other manufacturers. It is called the 4/3 (that's four thirds) standard. The sensor is about twice the size, and four times the area, of the more common sensors in use today. However, the 4/3 standard is still about 1/4 the size of the 35mm frame size, so using old lenses is still iffy. The second solution is to make the sensor larger, so that old 35mm lenses can be used. CMOS technology already requires larger sensors than the more common CCD sensors, and CMOS is the Canon approach. Their CMOS sensor is about 65 percent the size of the 35mm frame, which is why they can build cameras with an old lens mount, and let those with a supply of old Canon lenses use them on the new cameras.

The bad news is that the whole sensor market is confused. There are three technologies (CCD,
CMOS and Foveon) and a half-dozen sensor sizes. This is the result of rapid technological innovation, and is just not a stable situation. The next few years will see a consolidation of these
technologies into a smaller number of choices. The average person could hardly care less, but the
industry will be stressed until they find the right horse to bet on.

At the high pixel end, the Canon, Kodak and Sigma cameras occupy the shelf. Canon is the front
runner in sales with an 11-megapixel studio camera. Also, the previously mentioned 6.4-megapixel Canon 10D has the ability to take a handful of pictures in a couple of seconds. This is strategically important when shooting various sports (including weddings). Kodak has had its 14-megapixel studio camera out for a year now. These cameras run upwards from $5000, so they are only for professional use. Of course, for a lot more money you still can get a 22-megapixel digital back for your 2 1/4 square. Hasselblad, too, The Sigma camera is a curious dark horse. Sigma cameras are not particularly well known, but they use their own sensor, called Foveon, which employs three layers, one each for red, green and blue. That gives you three times the number of pixels in the same area as those which place the red, green, blue pixels side by side. This is still a somewhat experimental technique, but something to watch.

For me, the big news was printing. Epson announced their Stylus Pro 4000 series of printers, which use eight separate inks (five color, three black/grey) to produce stunningly beautiful color and black and white prints up to 17 x 22 inches in size. Aficionados of printing know that it is harder to create an outstanding, gallery-quality, black and white print than a color print from an ink jet printer. The eye detects very slight changes of color in so-called black inks. Last year I said that black and white printing would be that last bastion to fall in the war between film and digital. With the technology behind the 4000, the battle will soon be over. The marketing director for Epson was reluctant to say that the tipping point had been passed, but he did suggest that it would happen within the next two years. I suspect, from what he said, that there are products in the pipeline that will further improve the quality and availability of high-quality black white printing. Don't plan to rush out and buy the printer, however. It will not be available until January, and the price is about $1,800. Also, each of the eight color cartridges will cost $65.00. An Epson representative estimated the printing cost to be $1.05 per square foot, which may seem high to all but died-in-the-wool gallery-quality black and white printers. But I will expect to see under-$1000 printers using this technology within a year.

But while gallery-quality photos may be important to some, the biggest photography market is family vacation wedding birthday party photography. There are still a lot of folks who don't want to learn Photoshop. For those who want to take their film to a one-hour photo store, I saw a product at the show that will digitize a roll of 35mm film and put the photos on a CD in about two minutes. Well, that's what the guy said. That same machine can also take your digital camera's memory card and do the same. So, either with film or digital, you can easily have digital printing. The vendor and I talked about a scenario for the user of a digital camera. You would take your camera or memory card to a 1-hour photo. There, the clerk will put your card into a reader and burn the images onto a CD. That's for you to keep. He also prints a proof sheet with thumbnails on it, as well. You look at the proof sheet and circle the ones that you want printed or enlarged. Since he has a copy of your photos in his computer, he clicks on the ones you want printed, and you either wait for them or come back in an hour. The same scenario works with a film camera, but it takes a while longer to develop the film first.

Film photography may stick around for another few years, but digital photography is gaining momentum so quickly that there are few remaining areas where digital will not be the preferred solution. Eventually, it will be the only solution.

Richard Ten Dyke is a member of Danbury Area Computer Society who has had a long interest in both photography and computers. He started his photogr aphy career with a Leica IIIC in 1952, and his computer career working with an ERA 1103 in 1956. He currently is retired from IBM and resides in Bedford, New York. You can reach him at tendyke@bedfordny.com..

© Copyright Danbury Area Computer Society, Inc. 1998-2003 All Rights Reserved

Web Site Terms & Conditions of Use