hildren love digital cameras. You snap their picture, and the kids are displayed on a screen on the camera's backside.
The big advantage of a digital camera is that the instant you snap the picture, you can take the image into your computer. Once there, you can put the image on a Web page, e-mail it to a friend, or electronically retouch it. The second big advantage of a digital camera is storage: You can cram more than 10,000 pictures into a one gigabyte hard drive - no more bursting binders.
But despite the allure of the digital, last year's e-cameras were, for the most part, quite limited. Basically point-and-shoot devices, these cameras had limited memory. That meant you frequently had to empty the images; they had limited resolution; and they couldn't adequately reproduce detail in bright spots or in shadows. The cameras themselves had few features. Another problem was in the optics: Most of last year's cameras were fixed-focus, which further reduced image quality.
Cameras released this year are likely to be significantly better, both as advances in computers move into these hand-held devices, and as camera makers begin to catch their stride. Increasingly, these cameras must stand on their own as photographic devices, rather than electronic playthings.
From the beginning Kodak has been a pioneer in the field of digital photography. Recently, the company released two new digital cameras. Both are among the best available. Alas, they are also quite expensive.
Kodak's DC240 ($700) is a sophisticated digital camera with a built-in zoom, built-in flash, and 8MB of compact flash memory. It's lightweight and relatively high resolution. Standard resolution is 640 by 480 pixels, the same as a VGA computer screen. High-resolution is 1280 by 960, which looks pretty good printed as a 4 inch by 5 inch photograph. Besides changing the resolution, you can also adjust the compression setting, allowing you to get between 30 and 160 images in a 8MB flash cartridge.
Kodak's more-expensive DC265 ($1,000) camera is loaded with more features, but of course that's what you are paying for. The DC265 has higher resolution (768 by 512 pixels standard, 1536 by 1024 pixels max) and three compression settings. The DC265 also has a microphone that lets you record a little audio note for each photo, and a little speaker to play it back. The camera uses this speaker to make sound effects when you take a photo or click the buttons on the back panel. And one feature that's super cool on the DC265 is that it has a gravity sensor: When you turn the camera sideways, it senses the turn and automatically rotates the image back when the picture is displayed.
The DC265 will allow you to take burst photos (several pictures in a row) or time-lapse (taking a photo once a minute to once a day). Burst mode is handy if the person you are photographing consistently blinks: Perhaps the first frame won't be any good, but the second or third frame probably will. Time-lapse is useful for surveillance, scientific experiments, and nature photography.
Both cameras have a little LCD screen on the back that lets you view the pictures that you have taken as well as set the camera's controls. Both cameras have a built-in flash, which you can disable, and both allow you to set the color balance of your scene. That is, you can tell the camera whether the lighting is by sunlight, fluorescent, or tungsten bulbs.
The cameras also come with programs that allow you to control nearly all of the camera's settings from your computer - a process that's much easier than fiddling with the camera's built-in menu system. The DC240's software is more sophisticated than the software for the DC265; besides setting controls, it actually lets you snap a picture.
The easiest way to get the images out of one of these cameras is to take the compact flash picture card out of the camera and plug it into your PC using Kodak's optional connection kit. The kit comes with a PCMCIA adapter card that lets you plug the compact flash into a laptop computer, as well as another adapter that lets you read the card through your computer's parallel port. Once it's attached to your computer, the compact flash looks like a big floppy disk or a small ZIP cartridge, filled with images.
Another way to get the images into your computer is to use the USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface. Once attached, the camera looks like an external hard drive. One good piece of software engineering that Kodak has done is to create an extension for the Microsoft Windows explorer, so that you can directly view thumbnails without having to start up another application. Unfortunately, despite the supposed speed of USB, viewing the photos this way is quite slow.
Overall, these are nice cameras, but $700 or more is a lot for a point-and-shoot, and I would like to see a bit more camera for the money.
My first problem with these machines isn't the electronics, but the optics. Both of these cameras have the problem that when you hit the shutter button, they don't take the photographs immediately. Instead, they focus, making a lot of noise in the process. They take the photograph about a second after you press the shutter release, and by then it's sometimes too late.
The second problem is the lens cap: It doesn't stay on the lens. This is especially troublesome because there is no way to replace the glass cover over the lens and there's no way to augment it with a transparent (and relatively low-cost) haze filter. This means that after a year or so of heavy use, the glass lens cover is likely to be quite scratched and need factory replacement.
Battery drain is another problem. One of the big advantages of digital cameras is that you don't need to keep buying film. Unfortunately, these cameras both suck batteries dry - you'll be lucky if you get 50 shots from a set of 4 AA cells. Be sure to use rechargeable batteries, if you can.
Technology writer Simson L. Garfinkel can be reached at plugged-in@simson.net.
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