Digital Camera Ratings

Dr. Carver Mead, the founder and chairman of Foveon Inc., and his band of techies have been toiling away in their California lab developing a revolutionary concept in imaging chips. It's called the X3, and it may just be the future of all digital imaging.

Last year there was an 84 per cent increase in the number of digital cameras sold in Canada, compared to 2000. That's despite an economic slowdown. The year before, the increase was better than 130 per cent, year over year.

If the X3 lives up to all its promises, including lower cost and higher resolution than charge-coupled devices (CCDs), image sensors found in current digital cameras, we could see an enormous increase in digital camera sales in the coming years.

It's interesting to note that, statistically, every home in Canada has at least one camera. This may be a simple point and shoot photo camera that's hauled out for birthdays and vacations, or a sophisticated interchangeable lens model that's carried everywhere by a photo fan.

This is carrying over into the business world. Digital cameras can be carried in a pocket or briefcase, and their pictures downloaded to a laptop moments after capture. No rolls of film to drop off at the local photo finisher; no second trips to pick up the prints. No strips of film to handle. No prints to lose or bend. But if you want prints, just use the office or home printer. Sounds like the perfect technology -- but it isn't yet.

Pick up your daily newspaper or walk into your local camera store, and you're likely to see a selection that, under normal circumstances, you'd probably relish. The list of camera brands is as long as your arm. Ditto the accessories. But what you're looking at are some competing technologies that may have no relevance to your needs, or those of your clients.

For example, what's the best in-camera storage medium for the images? Just how many megapixels are necessary? And is there an option for a tethered download (cable connection)?

Digital cameras come in all shapes and sizes. Generally, they tend to look a great deal like their photo counterparts, and they act accordingly. There's the boxy, simple-to-use kind, perhaps with a zoom lens offering up to 3X power. Then there are the bulkier models with more protruding lenses, which will probably even whistle the national anthem if you could ever get through the manual to find out how.

Most of them use a CCD to capture the image, although a few do use a complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. Digital cameras using CMOS chips tend to be less expensive models, with lower resolution. CMOS chips are much easier to manufacture and are therefore less expensive; they also use less power. But you can't get maximum CMOS resolution from an average CCD.

Just what constitutes an average CCD these days? Although Sony has one model with a 350,000-pixel CCD, the bottom-end models tend to have megapixel ratings just above one megapixel -- 1.2 and 1.3, for example. This is the bare minimum necessary to be able to produce a good quality print comparable to a photo snapshot (four by six inches). At the moment, cameras with a pixel count in the three million area are about middle-of-the-road, with four megapixel and five megapixel models gracing the higher end of the consumer range. If you slip into the higher stratosphere of the professional digital camera, six megapixels is now the bottom end.

If the camera is to be used for taking digital images for use on a Web site, for example, with no intention of printing any of the images, then it really doesn't matter what the pixel rating is; you can use other criteria, such as camera size, as the determining factors in the purchasing decision. After all, the image is going to be held to 72 dpi and image size is likely going to be restricted.

But if images are destined to become prints (as well as shown on a screen), then consider this rule of thumb: the more pixels, the better, with three to four megapixels good for anything up to eight by 10 inches. You can produce good quality enlargements with fewer pixels if you are ready to spend some time on image manipulation using software such as Adobe Photoshop.

The pixel rate is climbing, as camera manufacturers enter their version of the old horsepower war. About a year-and-a-half ago, the president of Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., said there really wasn't any need to go higher than about four megapixels. "We think four megapixels is enough," said Masatoshi Kishimoto. "More than 4 megapixels could be over-specification for consumer use."

With higher pixel counts, image storage can become a major problem. A 4MB CompactFlash or SmartMedia card that once was standard with lower resolution cameras is now hopelessly too small; 8MB has become the norm, but optional cards pack anywhere from 32MB on up to a whopping 1GB (with matching price).

If you're building multi-megapixel cameras with the intent of facilitating the making of prints larger than 4 by 6 inches, you need to have good quality optics.

Take Minolta's DiMage 5, DiM-age 7 and DiMage X, for example. The first two are upper level models with sophisticated features, making them similar in operation to the photographic SLRs (single lens reflex) for which Minolta is famous. Models 5 and 7 incorporate a new lens design the firm specifically produced for its digital cameras. The results appear in the DiMage X, a camera so small it is dwarfed by a CD and will fit in a shirt pocket.

The resolution war

Digital cameras need some kind of image sensor to capture an image. Most use a COD. Today, the pixel count on those CODs range from about 1.2 million pixels (megapixels) to about 5.5 megapixels in the general consumer range, with the professional sector raising the pixel bar even higher. The higher the pixel count, the more expensive the CCD, but the better the image quality -- especially when it comes to making prints from the images.

One camera manufacturer, Sigma, has produced an upper end, interchangeable lens camera using the Foveon X3 chip. It is not designed for general consumer use. But the thinking is it won't be long before others produce high-resolution point-and-shoot digital cameras at a price lower than currently available models with lower resolution.

What resolution are we talking about? About 10.5 megapixels. That's what the bare-bones X3 chips clocks in at, if you consider you have three layers of 3.5+ megapixels each. Effective pixels: 10.3 million.

Foveon has designed a file structure that has similarities to a JPEG file. You might want to think of it as a JPEG with extra overhead containing data that's not understandable by current image handling software. Mead stated that Microsoft is now working to integrate the Foveon file structure into an XP update, and that Foveon is working to help other software companies with the seamless integration of the file structure into their products.

Part of the chip's success may relate to its ability to do video imaging, too -- in the same camera.

Points to consider

When considering the purchase of a digital camera, there are a number of points to consider: lens, pixel count, features, storage, A downloading and software.

Some manufacturers are now making a point of collaborating with specialty companies that have made a name for themselves in optical design. There's good reason for this: the better the quality of the lens, the better the picture. This has become more important as resolution increases and, therefore, the possibility that large prints may be made from a digital image.

Lenses are of two basic types: zoom and non-zoom (otherwise known as fixed focal length). Zoom lenses usually add to the size of the camera. The zoom range is usually given as 2X or 3X, for example. The higher the number, the more powerful the telephoto. For general use, 3X is probably sufficient.

Then we have what is probably the least appreciated, but likely the most important component of the entire digital camera experience, and that is the image software. As one ACDSee representative said, "Software is arguably one of the more important features of a camera. It's the software the actually lets you edit, share and organize the photos that you take."

Cameras come bundled with a variety of programs for image transfer and image manipulation, as well as image cataloguing. For designers and professional photographers, Photoshop rules the roost when it comes to image manipulation. But that's overkill for most people, although there's a light version that may be of benefit. ArcSoft prides itself on being designed for amateurs, providing simple tools and intuitive programs -- which is why, a company spokesperson said, it is bundled with so many cameras.

Image software has become a battleground; as the number of digital camera users increases, so too will the number of digital images -- and that's what market companies are eyeing for the future gain.

Digital camera sales in Canada


1998   56,000  +78% over 97
1999  100,000          +80%
2000  235,000         +134%
2001  431,000          +84%

Note: Table made from bar graph

COPYRIGHT 2002 Plesman Publications
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