Mark Verber
September 2002
Minor Revision May 2007
In 2002 I switched to exclusively using digital cameras. Today I am using a Canon Digital Rebel XTi as my main camera. I take a Fuji F31fd it I am planning to take pictures and don't want to bring the DSLR, and I always have a small Pentex S4 with me. While none of the cameras produces images of the same quality as the film cameras I used to use, I have found that image quality is "good enough" for most of my needs, and going all digital has been much more convenient, especially since my favorite E6 lab closed in mid-2002.
For me, the single biggest change shooting digital has been that I feel free to "burn film" since the extra images don't cost me anything. I review the images and delete the images I don't like. I am taking more pictures and throwing out a lot of images. I am ending up with a smaller percent of keepers, but since I am shooting more images, the total number of keepers is going up. The instant gratitude is also nice.
I believe 95% of the photographs in the USA, Japan, and Europe will be exclusively using digital cameras in five years. Why? Because digital gives you instant gratification, the work process is much easier (especially when you want to share images both electronically and prints), the quality of the images is good enough for most people most of the time, digital is cheaper in the long term, and archival characteristics of digital images are arguably better.
There are a number of of good review sites. My favorite is dpreview (was Askey Digital News), but Imaging Resource, Digital Camera Resources, and Steve's Digicams are all good. Realize there are a number of factors which need to be traded off against each other. The camera which is right for one of these reviewer might be different than what is right for you. I think there are five major factors which will dictate what camera you should buy.
Image Quality: If you mostly want 4x6in prints or have people look at pictures on computer screens (sharing pictures through email / web) then nearly all the >=3MPixel camera will provide adequate image quality. If you are a serious amateur photographer then you will most likely not be satisfied with image quality of any digicam including higher end like the Sony 828, Canon G6, Nikon 8800 Today, all the cameras which aren't DSLR have sensors which are significantly smaller than DSLRs. Smaller sensors means they have too much noise in even moderate light conditions for high quality image quality. If you already have an investment in lens for SLRs, get a digital body which can mount your lens such as those made by Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Pentax, Olympus, or Minolta. If you don't owns lens already, I would recommend looking at Canon, Nikon, or Minolta.
Subject Material: If you are mostly taking posed portraits, still life, or landscape then any decent digital camera will work well for you. A number of the digital cameras provide tools to stitch multiple images together for really great panoramas. If you want to shoot action (candid shots of children, fast moving sports, wild animals, etc) then things aren't quite so simple. The problem is that only the DSLRs have fast auto-focus / auto-exposure. All of the consumer grade digital cameras have what is often described as long shutter lag times (which is really auto-focus, exposure setting lag). With some of the digital point & shoot cameras, from the time you press the button, to the time the camera records the image is more than one second. When taking action shots, this is an eternity. I have lost many images with a camera that has a mere .5 sec shutter lap. The higher quality consumer grade cameras do permit you to set focus and exposure manually. Once these are set, shutter lag can be acceptable, but you have lost the P&S ease of use. Using any of the current consumer grade digital cameras in manual mode is significantly more difficult than using a fully manual Leica. See a nice table listing many digital P&S shutter lag times. I don't know if these number of fully accurate, but they are a useful general guidelines. For some content, shutter lag times of the Canon XTi DSLR are .105 sec, classic film SLR is about .06 sec, and a Leica M rangefinder with a mechanical shutter is .018 sec. If you want to shoot night images you will need a DSLR since none of the consumer grade camera deal well with noise from the sensors which come with extreme long exposures. Likewise, many DigiCams have only mediocre macro modes. Finally, if you regularly rely on a narrow depth of field to through the background out of focus, you will have trouble with any of the consumer P&S since they have small sensors (e.g. given the same field of view and aperture setting, the depth of field will be significantly greater than 35mm).
Size: This is often a trade-off between usability and portability. The small the camera, the smaller the buttons, and the harder to control the camera. The larger the camera, the more difficult it is to transport. You need to decide what you are looking for. Some people are looking for a camera that they can carry with them all the time, or that they can drop in a pocket for an outing. Other people want a camera which can be easily dropped onto a purse, backpack, or fanny pack s. Finally, there are cameras which are larger that you need to plan to carry, typically people are trading off portability against image quality or price.
Media: Most cameras take Secure Digital (SD), Compact Flash (CF), or Memory Stick. CF tends to have the highest capacity and highest performance possible at the most reasonable price. SD cards are smaller than CF, and are quickly becoming the most common format supported by a wide range of devices. Memory Stick was historically used only on Sony products, tends to be more expensive.
Cost: You need to decide what you are willing to spend. This varies widely person to person. Given equivalent functionality, smaller is more expensive. Better image quality is more expensive.
You might want to take a quick look at PhilG's Best Digital Camera. If you really want to get a P&S, check out Mike Johnston's "recommended" point and shoots. I would suggestion the following cameras... but you should investigate for yourselves. Undoubtedly each of these products has already been replaced.
The human eye can distinguish differences down to approx 400dpi at normal viewing distances. That means that you need 2.5MPixel for 3x5 prints, 4MPixels for 4x6, 6MB for 5x7, and 12MPixels for 8x10. This means that the current crop of 3-4MP digital P&S have enough pixels for people who mostly use P&S cameras today. These folks will share snapshots images electronically (<1MP), or will print at 4x6. Less than 1% of their images will be printed at 8x10, and most likely nothing larger than that. I think people are willing to give up a bit of quality on <1% of their pictures for gains in other areas. Likewise, I think higher end DSLR are good enough for most serious amateurs / pros who shoot 35mm and don't typically don't print larger than 8x10.
Once you have enough pixels you need to care about the quality of those pixels, e.g. not all pixels are equal. A number of factors contribute to the quality of the pixels including accuracy of the sensor, color discrimination, dynamic range, how susceptible to noise, and what is the quality of the lens which the light is passing through. Theoretical numbers argue that that good film has a few more bits of color and a larger dynamic range than the sensors used in DSLR, but there are a number of people who claim that in practice the high end DSLR are as good or better than high quality film. The am/pro DSLR like the Canon D20/Nikon D70 are not as good as film, but are pretty good. None of the current consumer grade cameras can touch DSLRs. For example, image quality from an older Canon D30 (3MP) with a reasonable lens will be significantly better than images from the current crop of DigiCams (8MP). While high quality film has significantly better characteristics when compared to the sensors in consumer grade P&S, the printed images will be approximately the same because the quality of the lens in a film P&S bring their quality down to the level of a consumer grade digital cameras.
Note: Digital won't be adequate to people who care about ultimate quality doing large prints (e.g. folks using 8x10 view cameras) for a very long time... but most of us aren't using view cameras.
There have been a lot of articles about the quality of digital images... most of which are filled with hype, speculation, and misinformation. Some of the better pages include: Norman Koren's Digital cameras vs. film, Brad Templeton's Pixels Vs Film, pages in R.N, Clark's Clarkvision.com, and Michael Reichmann's Digital Camera Imagine Quality and Canon 1Ds Field Report. If you are really interesting in understanding image quality track down a copy of Ed Grainger's PhD thesis from Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, and his later papers on subjective quality factor (SQF) and take a look at RLG's Debunking of Specsmanship.
Shooting digitally can be cheaper than using film, even when you include the cost of the digital camera. Digital cameras cost typically 2-4x the equivalent quality film camera. The cost of prints from a digital camera is approximately the same as film cameras (though print film users normally print more images). What's left is film/development charges verses camera media and long term digital storage.
Snapshots/Scrapbook: Most people to take snapshots are using print film. The cost of 36 exposures is around $15 for good quality film and developing. Whether the image is good or not, you pay this cost. So if you shoot a roll of film each month, and several rolls of film for special events / vacation you are spending $300/year. Lets say on each roll of film there are 6 images that you want to put in a scrapbook. For digital media you need something which hold enough images from the time you take the pictures to the time you download them. You can reduce the storage requires by deleting obviously bad pictures. Maybe the digital "film" that came with your camera is enough, but most likely you will spend $100 for a larger storage card. Long term storage really cheap ($0.002/image). But you most likely aren't buying archival storage... studies have shown that the average consumer PC has a significant amount of unused space. Of course you will need to print the images you want for the scrapbook. So 6 images / roll * 20 rolls * $0.39 / print is $46 for a year or printed images. Lets assume you already have a film P&S... and you buy a digital camera ($400), extra storage ($100). The first year the digital camera is more expensive. The second year you have spent approx $600 for either film or digital, and the third year you spent $250 less on digital. That's pretty good.
Serious Amateur Photographers: I assume you already have a film SLR and are using slide film. The cost of 36 exposure slide film plus developing at a good E6 lab is $10. Lets assume that you shot a roll / week, 20 rolls when traveling, and 10 rolls on misc special events... you are at 82 rolls, or $820. In the digital world? Say you spend $2000 for a DSLR body and another $300 for a 1G micro drive. The question is what you do for archival storage. Lets consider two possibilities. The first is that you are shooting max resolution JPG (3mb) and save only your good images (1/6). That's 1.6GB/year. If you have a modern computer you most likely have that much free space. Second option is that you keep 100% of your images in RAW form (10MB), and convert 1/6 of the images to JPG (3MB) for sharing and printing. That's 30GB of data which is less than $30/year. In this world the digital camera pays for it less approx three years.
Scanning: SilverFast.com, Hamrick Software, Tony Sleep Photography, scancafe
Processing: Instant Photoshop, Photoshop Workflow, Out of Gamut: Sharpening in PhotoshopPrinting: atlex.com: printer supplies, Inkjet Solutions for Archival Fine Art Printing, pictopia (affordable large prints)
Tools: tawbaware, Tech #43: PTlens, panoramas, roadstor cd burner, noise ninja
Location: http://wwmx.org/
Web tools: picnik
Sensor Cleaning by Michael Reichmann