Smile for the Digicam
The performance gap between digital and film cameras has snapped shut.
By Ronaleen Roha
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, April 2005
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Room to zoom
Most midprice digicams ($300 to $600) still have 3X optical zoom lenses -- fine for parties and portraits. Note that it's optical zoom that counts. Digital zoom simply spreads out the pixels, sacrificing picture clarity for a tighter shot. But parents who want to zoom in on Timmy's winning touchdown or the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker need more zip in their zoom.
Consider the five-megapixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20 ($600), with a 12X optical zoom, or the eight-megapixel Konica Minolta Dimage A2 ($800), with a 7X zoom. The zooms on both cameras operate smoothly, quickly and quietly. Both cameras give you a wide range of control choices, from auto to fully manual, but the Dimage allows more creative handling of photos, letting you add one of ten filter colors to a black-and-white photo with the turn of a dial, for example.
Cameras with more powerful zooms tend to weigh as much as some single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras. This makes it tricky to hold the camera steady, especially when held away from your body to frame the photo in the display, as you must with many digital cameras that have traded viewfinders for screens.
To counter the jitters, look for anti-shake, or stabilization, systems. They are not a gimmick. When we zoomed in on a cluster of kids across a playground, cameras without such systems were hard to control -- faces wandered around the display and sometimes pictures came out fuzzy. But with stabilization, smiles stayed put even at maximum zoom. Both the Lumix and Dimage have image-stabilization systems.
Panasonic also builds image stabilization into the smaller 3X zoom Lumix model. This may seem like overkill, but it's welcome because the camera is among those that lack a viewfinder.
Manual versus auto
Every camera here has a full-auto mode along with special shooting modes. These so-called scene modes are preset for measures such as aperture and shutter speed, and they are designed to get the best shots in specific situations. Common settings are for portraits, landscapes, action sports, snow scenes (very bright light), fireworks and extreme close-ups.
The Exilim has the most scene modes of any camera we recommend, with 23 in its "best shot" library. Each mode's purpose is clearly explained on the screen, complete with a sample photo to drive home the point. Of course, all of the cameras let you switch to manual to fine-tune the settings.
But if you really want to take control, you'll want a digital single-lens reflex camera. We recommend the 6.3-megapixel Canon EOS Digital Rebel ($1,000) and the 6.1-megapixel Nikon D70 ($1,300). Larger and heavier than most other digital cameras, SLRs are the giants -- literally -- of the breed. These cameras (and their prices) are close enough to film SLRs to draw serious 35mm film photographers into the digital fold. Digital SLRs use interchangeable lenses and are perfect for photo enthusiasts who already have a stash of lenses for their 35mm film SLR cameras. Of course, you will need a digicam compatible with those lenses -- film and digital SLRs of the same brand generally work with the same lenses.
Features on the Canon and Nikon SLRs range from full-manual focus, aperture and shutter speed to settings that are specific to digital photography, such as white balance, which lets you adjust the white in a photo for the truest possible white (the camera fine-tunes other colors to conform to that setting). White balance helps colors stay true no matter what type of light you're in -- tungsten, fluorescent or sunlight, for example. All the cameras mentioned here have white-balance settings.
Nikon's D70, which comes with an 18mm to 70mm zoom lens, powers up in a blink and has a top shutter speed of 1/8,000 of a second. (At that speed, you can clearly see the individual drops of water flying off your dog after his bath.) The Digital Rebel, which comes with an 18mm to 55mm zoom lens, has a smaller frame that fits more comfortably in the hand than the D70. It was the first digital SLR to sell for as little as $1,000 (including a lens) and has a top shutter speed of 1/4,000 of a second.
Should you want the SLR feel without paying SLR prices, consider the Dimage A2 mentioned earlier. You won't get interchangeable lenses, but it has SLR-like features, such as smooth-functioning manual focus and zoom rings on the lens. And it's simpler to use than true SLRs. Of all the cameras here, digital SLRs have the steepest learning curve. Each has buttons and dials galore -- you'll need to spend some quality time practicing and studying the manual.
