I plum forgot.
The Camcorder tends to focus on the very first item it sees. I once shot a UP PAcer Stack Train from a parking lot. The camera hit on the vehicle next to mine and make the train fuzzy.
Which is one of the things that bugs me when I forget to pre-screen what the camera sees for items between it and the intended target area.
For under $200, I can't reccomend the Canon A540 highly enough. I still use film SLRs regularly, and, coming from that, the A540 is everything I could want in a compact.
For $150 or less, the A530 is nearly as good.
I opted for the A540 mainly because it has shutter speed priority and aperture priority auto-exposure modes, which I regularly use on my film SLRs. With the A530, you're strictly limited to manual if you want some control over the exposure. Manual is also available on the A540, though. Also, both have an easily acessed and extremely important exposure compensation button, a spot meter, and a flash exposure compensation control.
The focal length on both is the 35mm equivalent of a 35mm to 140mm zoom lens, with a maximum aperture of 2.6 on the wide end and 5.5 on the telephoto end. The fastest shutter speed is 1/2000, and the slowest shutter speed is 15 seconds in shutter priority and manual mode(2 seconds in all other modes). ISO speeds go from 80 to 800, although I wouldn't suggest using anything over 200 unless absolutely necessary.
They both also have an optical viewfinder, which I love and is lacking in most other cameras. They also have a manual focus mode, which, unlike other compact cameras I've used, is actually useful. Basically, when you go into manual focus mode, a magnified box pops up in the center of the screen. You focus using the two buttons on the back of the camera, and the magnified box lets you see really easily when it's in focus. This is great since when you're working in close distances(like on a layout), you don't have to let the camera decide for you what it's going to focus on.
If you're looking for a compact camera, I suggest that you look no further than an A530 or A540.
I'll probably be flamed for this, but if you want to take indoor pictures, the Fuji cameras are notorious for the auto-focus feature not functioning accurately in low light levels.
For a camera in the $200 - $250 range, take a look at the midrange cameras in the Canon Powershot series - all the features you need / want at a very affordable price.
Check out this website for unbiased views on ALL digital cameras, plus user reviews ( the Fuji cameras consistently received iffy reviews ) ....
www.dpreview.com
For an f-stop rating, I wouldn't accept anything less than f-8.0. Also, a two second maximum exposure is no where near adequate - IF you do ANY time exposures ( required without a flash ) you're looking at anywhere from 4 - 10 seconds .... Keep looking.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
The Fuji FinePix A360 doesn't seem to have any manual control of aperture or shutter speed.
That alone would not make it a good camera for shooting models.
Ideally you should have:
1) manual control of exposure (able to select smallest aperture to get better depth of field)
2) be able to turn off flash
3) macro focusing
Im buying drinks on the house.
WHEW!
I was handed a crappy camera with no macro. I wanted a camera with Macro. Found a good Macro Camera. But now no zoom. I used a camcorder for that. Now I see Rail Images where windshields shine in the sun and birds (Count the feathers too..) sit on a bridge BEHIND the engine being shot and see that all of my camera stuff is CRAP.
I can make a video of a engine towing a train across 3 feet of track and keep everything reasonably good looking. But I see shots of both camera and camcorders taking trains plus scenery plus maintaining quality through out. The only thing I can think of is to learn how to find this equiptment and get it.
When I take orginal DV video onto the hard disk off the Digital 8 tape and find that one hour of the stuff is 15 GB in size and crunch it down to something useable by the killjoy video hosting sites with Windows Media 11 and it is adequate.
But when I see BIG images taken with BIG cameras with HUGE filesizes one must wonder what we can or cannot do and still stay under 500 dollars. My Local Church has a portable video camera that has a lens approx 6 inches in caliber and about 8 inches deep and the images it can take in real time qualifies for the new so-called HDTV which is what they use. That would be WAY out of a average joe's budget like mine.
Im looking again at the old Pentrax. What you saw in the view finder and fired the shutter was what you got.
So....from what I've read, something like this would acctually do the job.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2475873&Sku=F109-2174
I recently got a copy of that Photoshop CS2. Way better than my old version 5.5. I can't wait till I can sit down and really learn it.
OK .... now THAT's cool !!! Ok, I'll eat my words on the post editing abilities to correct keystoning !!! I don't have those kind of luxuries myself, but I guess I should have realized, in this high-tech world we live in, there surely would be a way to do it !!!
I stand corrected. With THOSE capabilities, your points become much more valid.
Mark,
Looking at your example above, it looks like it shows some barrel distortion. This is actually quite common on wide-angle lenses, although it's not an inherent property of wide angle lenses. It's extremely difficult to take a big, 3d slice of reality and project it onto a flat surface while keeping things straight and parallel.
By contrast, telephoto lenses tend to have pincusion distortion, whereby straight lines bend in toward the center of the frame rather than away from it.
With Photoshop CS2, these problems are trivial to correct using the "lens correction filter". I suspect that in a few years, you'll see this on more consumer photo editing programs.
Watch how your original image
magically becomes
This works by selectively removing pixels from the image. You do lose some resolution in the process, but as you can see, it does really make straight lines straight. You can also correct what you call keystoning, as I've done a little bit of here. This results from the film(or sensor) not being parallel with the object. It's more apparent with wide angle lenses, though.
Of course, though, since you do lose resolution, it's best to have as much as possible in the first place if you're going to be correcting these problems. This is why I prefer to not use digital zoom.
If you need to have as little distortion as possible, most zoom lenses do have a "sweet spot" between the wide and tele end that is relatively distortion free. You need to find this spot and use it if you don't want distortion.
Crandell,First if I were to meet Bob,I would shake his hand and buy him a cup of coffee as I would you and of course all input is welcome.
Perhaps I need to explain? I find the digital zoom to be a very useful tool for up close and personal pictures such as the coupler picture or perhaps a close up of a added detail part or if I want the attention on the subject and not the background you will see Hollywood use this technique in movies-foreground(actors) hard,background soft...
Like so.
For me that is easier then having to zoom and crop in photo shop and I get the same basic results.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
ben10ben wrote: If digital zoom works for you, that's great, and use it.The point I was trying to make, though, amidst all my other rambling, is that cropping in post processing is the exact same process but affords you much, much more control. In all cases, I would much rather crop with as much resolution as possible available than let camera crop for me.
If digital zoom works for you, that's great, and use it.
The point I was trying to make, though, amidst all my other rambling, is that cropping in post processing is the exact same process but affords you much, much more control. In all cases, I would much rather crop with as much resolution as possible available than let camera crop for me.
Regardless of resolution, all the cropping in the world won't correct a "keystoned" picture. That was the point I was making. When the camera is right face-to-face with the object, you're going to get this .... by moving back and zooming in, this keystoning is eliminated. Granted, there are some cases where a small amount of this keystoning can work to our advantage by making our little models appear larger than life. With no zoom, the object IS taller and wider than what appears to be our view-point. Notice the two pictures of the D&H engine - with no zoom, you can't see the front number-boards, as well you couldn't if you were actually standing beside the real engine. Also if you were standing beside the real engine, it DOES "fall away" to the left and right .... you just can't see that all at once - think about it !!! Look at that same "bent" picture full screen with your nose right up to the screen so you have to move your eyes left to right to see it all - looks "right" now doesn't it ???
It's like taking a left 3/4 shot of a house and then view it from the right, your mind says you should be seeing the RIGHT 3/4 view. This is what we're forgetting - we are not viewing the picture from the same perspective as the camera when it "saw" it.
( Brakie - that boxcar IS zoomed in ! )
If both gentlemen would not mind a go-between in this debate,...?
Brakie, you may be well aware of this, but I think Bob is wanting you to understand that when you use the digital zoom feature, you are forcing the camera to take a smaller portion of what would otherwise be the full field of view that can be imaged by the CCD chip, and to blow that up, not optically, but by filling in the now inserted blank spaces between the pixel images with other spurious data. You and I don't see this on our computer screens, or even on nice glossy 3X5" photographs because the pixels are so small that our eyes can't detect the integrated spurious data. On the other hand, if you were to attempt to blow up that 3X5 and make a wall-sized poster, the process would show that the software has had to guess, or interpolate, and to insert bogus pixel information. Your big poster would look awful, particularly from within 5'. If you stood 12' back from it, thus negating the advantage you wanted by making the poster, you would once again see a pretty nice image because your eye would have an image on it much the same size as the original 3X5 held at arm's length.
The digital zoom robs your image file of real "data" or information that can never be found...it was never recorded by the CCD in the first place. That is because the CCD has a finite dimension in which there is a finite number of pixels in an array. The optical zoom concentrates all the light onto the same number of pixels, but the digital one takes a snap shot that you will never see, telescopes into it wherever the centre of focus is, and blows that up, including the spaces between the pixels where no information can possibly be recorded. Bob is arguing that if you want the best quality in your camera's images, use the optical, not the digital zoom because when you blow the former image up to a poster, assuming that was something you ever wanted to do, you will get much more pixel imagery in a smaller space...less grainy pictures as a result.
For our purposes on our computer screens, the resolution is awful compared to even a 1.2 mpix camera. And we both agree, the results are spectacular viewed that way. If you printed a photo based on the resolution on your screen, you would be mightily disappointed. So our printers print photos using a different data set and yield much finer photos.
I hope my intrusion here is not unwelcome...I hate to see two fellows seem to be passing each other in the night and never getting to shake offered hands.
Respectfully,
-Crandell
Ben,As far as cropping I can do that with my camera but,I use photo shop instead.Make no mistake my camera has a lot of settings and other by golly wows I don't use.I use the micro zoom for up close and personal pictures to help answer questions after all one picture is worth a thousand words.
Mark,When I rail fan I either use no zoom or the optical zoom..I only use digital zoom for pictures with no backgrounds and those I want up close and personal.The picture of the Chessie geep I just move the camera closer and use a tad of optical zoom as I did this picture.
Is this zoom or no zoom..
IF you are doing up close and personal pictures of a specific item, digital / optical zoom IS a better option for keeping things in perspective. Using no zoom at all creates a bending of the object at the edges. By moving back and zoming back in on the subject, there is no apparent "bending". The two pictures below illustrate my point. The first picture is no zoom what-so-ever - notice how the body appears to be distorted. The second picture is at full zoom capability of MY camera ( 3X optical + 7X digital for a total of 10X ) - notice how the body lines are now straight and square ....
Remember, this is only for up close pinpoint pictures. IF you are doing ANYTHING with any amount of depth, I would not use the zoom feature as it really compresses the depth of the shot and instead of looking 10 feet deep, it now looks 2 feet deep.
I think we've all gone off on different wave-lengths here. I agree, the close-up picture of the boxcars is fine zoomed in, ONLY because it's a pinpoint shot. Now put some scenery 3 feet behind those boxcars and it's gonna be a pretty crappy picture. We're comparing apples to oranges now.
BRAKIE wrote: Not at all Bob..I find digital zoom works for me for extreme close ups..I like it you don't..Fine by me but,when I find some thing that works I tend to stick with my findings and not listen to every "expert" wind that blows..Your "facts" are OPINIONS not the absolute end all truths.In fact I find your "facts" slanted toward toward your opinion.I suppose if I were to look I could find "experts" slanting toward my findings just as easy.
Not at all Bob..I find digital zoom works for me for extreme close ups..I like it you don't..Fine by me but,when I find some thing that works I tend to stick with my findings and not listen to every "expert" wind that blows..Your "facts" are OPINIONS not the absolute end all truths.In fact I find your "facts" slanted toward toward your opinion.I suppose if I were to look I could find "experts" slanting toward my findings just as easy.
As long as you are happy in your own dillusional world! I challenge you to find one reference where it shows that digital zoom is a good tool to use. I found my references by a quick check with Google. They were just the first ones that I came upon that spelled out the ideas and fallacies in digital zoom.
Find out for yourself - take a photo at the extreme end of your optical zoom. Then from the same position take a shot using the digital zoom. Then crop out the center of the optical zoom image to match the digital image. Compare the two. They will be the same.
If your camera is a 5MP model, then using a digital zoom will give you the middle 2MP of your image. Yes, it may be what you want and suit your needs, but it still is an inferior image pixel wise; a 5MP image does not equal a 2MP one.
These are not opinions, but facts, as backed up by my references. Show us your references.
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
selector wrote:Place a mask over the flasher when you use the macro.
Doh! Hadn't thought of that.
Brakie-Digital zoom, no digital zoom. Heck! I'd be happy with pics like yours. I can see if you where making large format pics or posters with a lot of detail you might not want to use it.
Railphotog wrote: BRAKIE wrote: Sorry Bob,I remain unconvinced that digital zoom is a sales gimmick and "bad" when I get the results I need by using it.As someone (Archie Bunker I think) once said "My mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts".
BRAKIE wrote: Sorry Bob,I remain unconvinced that digital zoom is a sales gimmick and "bad" when I get the results I need by using it.
Sorry Bob,I remain unconvinced that digital zoom is a sales gimmick and "bad" when I get the results I need by using it.
As someone (Archie Bunker I think) once said "My mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts".
After all this picture is ok for answering questions about end results of fixing warp frames and weights on Athearn BB cars..Is it not?
I think where I was getting confused is most cameras I see that advertise a macro function also had large optical zoom capability.10x-12x. I was assuming (you know what that spells) you needed the zoom in macro mode to get a good close up. Now I see I have to balance megapixals,macro, manual F stop and being able to turn the flash off.
I was playing with my film camera last night now that I found the manual. The bad thing is I can turn the flash off in every mode EXCEPT close up.
I used a cheap digital about a year ago and saw there was a point where the digital zoom made for some real crappy pics at a certain point but that was a REAL cheap camera.
ben10ben wrote: This is not quite correct-you need to go from the nodal point of the optical system, which is more or less the optical center of a lens system. On most camera lenses, this is the place in the lens system where the aperture is physically located. All of this also assumes that you're focused at infinity. Things sort of tend to break down as you focus closer than infinity. When the nodal point of the optics is one half the focal length past the infinity position(i.e. 75mm on a 50mm lens), you lose one stop of light. An f4 lens becomes an f5.6 lens. When the nodal point is twice the focal length from the film plane(i.e. 100mm on a 50mm lens), you lose two stops of light. This is because the image projected by the lens is being spread out over a greater area. If you remember back to slide projectors or overhead projectors, the image got dimmer as you moved the projector farther away from the screen. This is the same phenomenon...
This is not quite correct-you need to go from the nodal point of the optical system, which is more or less the optical center of a lens system. On most camera lenses, this is the place in the lens system where the aperture is physically located.
All of this also assumes that you're focused at infinity. Things sort of tend to break down as you focus closer than infinity. When the nodal point of the optics is one half the focal length past the infinity position(i.e. 75mm on a 50mm lens), you lose one stop of light. An f4 lens becomes an f5.6 lens. When the nodal point is twice the focal length from the film plane(i.e. 100mm on a 50mm lens), you lose two stops of light. This is because the image projected by the lens is being spread out over a greater area. If you remember back to slide projectors or overhead projectors, the image got dimmer as you moved the projector farther away from the screen. This is the same phenomenon...
Partly right. A multiple element lens, which is what we are talking about, will have two nodes in each element. Where they are equidistant from each other in the centre of the optical path is where the defining aperture ought to be. In telescopes, this is not always the case, and this is where my familiarity with optical systems diverges from the construction of complex lens systems for cameras. In fact, we stop down telescope apertures routinely to eliminate distortions from the primary mirrors or other elements, distortions such as coma at the edges of the field of view. These aperture devices are always placed at the front of the optical tube, and most certainly do affect the focal length of the system.
I appreciate your pointing out that there is a difference between systems which are meant to focus rays that are effectively from infinity from those that are designed to focus down to mere centimeters. It wasn't the point of my post, since all I offered to do was to explain how a novice could calculate for herself what the f-ratio of a system is using readily available information. I didn't want us to get into the weeds so much.
I think with most compact line these days, you can only get about 3X optical and that's enough for general work. The key is use a tripod, good lighting and correct exposure & focus adjustments. I got a Sony N1 and they get pretty complicated these days with almost SLR adjustment capability but not the optical quality. I think light sensitivity is also important for close-ups in less than ideal lighting condition especially for models because lighting is one of the hardest part.
I also take photos of planes because I also collect die-cast planes and I really wish I can afford an digital SLR because of the higher optical zoom and general optical quality. General rule of thumb is the bigger the lenz the better the quality.
So I think you can get the biggest lenz you can afford! Forget about the bells and whistle if it's just for modeling photography. My brother got the latest canon with facial and human recognition, I mean it cool, it will actually recognise a face or a person as they walking by and automatically focus on their face but the thing is, it's just cool, he keeps complaining about the photo quality because it's still got a small lenz.
Ben,I still use my"musical chime" when my camera is turn on..I found that saves me from accidentally turning the camera on and not knowing I did so and get the expected result of ending up with dead batteries.This happen once last summer after I turn that "annoying" musical chime off.
I would like to see you crop that T&OC station glass from a full picture..That glass is about 12 foot off the ground.
If you need to crop(which is all digital zoom is) do it in post processing. That way you can change the framing at the same time, which will ultimately give you better results. If you let the camera crop for you, you'll probably still want to adjust the framing, so you haven't saved yourself any work plus lost a whole bunch of resolution that can never be recovered.
The first thing I did when I got my Canon digicam a few weeks ago was go into the menu and turn off the digital zoom, along with the focus assist beam, redeye reduction, fake shutter sound, beeps, and all the other gimmicks camera manufacturers think are cute. I suggest that everyone else do the same.
Well,I for one don't believe everything I read on forums or the Internet especially when I got the close ups I need to answer questions nor do I take everything "experts" say as the only "truth" as I found-and I am sure you have notice- most "experts" change with every wind that blows..In other words what is frown upon today will be acceptable later.Even all that glibly gook you posted will change and then all those "experts" will sing and dance the newest tune.
Of course for years they sold 35mm zoom lenses by the thousands to professional photographers as well as amateurs.But,hey we mere mortals can't remember buying zoom lenses for our 35mm cameras.
As a parting zoom shot.
BRAKIE wrote: Bob,Sadly that's your bais opinion.I see nothing wrong with these zoomed pictures..
Bob,Sadly that's your bais opinion.I see nothing wrong with these zoomed pictures..
Biased opinion based on fact and years of experience. I've been into photography for over 40 years, and am on my seventh digtal camera (currently own three).
Seems there are others who share my bias. A quick Google search for "digital zoom" turned up many items, some with examples. Here are a few at random:
"Digital zoomFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Digital zoom is a method of decreasing (narrowing) the apparent angle of view of a digital photographic or video image. Digital zoom is accomplished by cropping an image down to a centered area with the same aspect ratio as the original, and usually also interpolating the result back up to the pixel dimensions of the original. It is accomplished electronically, without any adjustment of the camera's optics, and no optical resolution is gained in the process.
Because interpolation disturbs the original pixel layout of the image, as captured by the camera's image sensor, it is usually considered detrimental to image quality. The results of digital zoom are, however, sometimes superior to the results of manual cropping and resizing (interpolation) in post-production. This is because the camera may apply its interpolation before performing lossy image compression, thereby preserving small details that would otherwise be lost. For cameras that save images in a raw format, however, resizing in post-production will yield results equal or superior to digital zoom.
============================
What's the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom?
It's important to understand this difference, as you could end up mighty disappointed with the results if you get one rather than the other. Optical zoom is similar to what you'll find in a regular 35mm camera: When you push the button to zoom in or out, physical lens elements move inside the camera, to achieve the desired effect.
Digital zoom, on the other hand, has no moving parts. Using the "electronic brain" within the camera instead, the camera takes a look at what it's "looking at", and digitally zooms in, usually two or three times closer.
The problem with digital zoom is that you lose quality when you do this -- your images will tend to be more "pixelated" than the same image taken with an optical zoom camera. This is due to the "interpolation" the camera uses, which is a nice way of saying that it makes a guess about how the picture should look while zoomed in. Having optical AND digital zoom on a camera isn't bad, but I'd try to avoid cameras with only digital zoom, myself.
==================================
These websites show examples of the effects of digital zoom:
http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/key=digital+zoom
http://cameras.about.com/od/cameratips/l/blopticaldigitl.htm
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http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-interpolation.htm
NOTE ON OPTICAL vs. DIGITAL ZOOMMany compact digital cameras can perform both an optical and a digital zoom. A camera performs an optical zoom by moving the zoom lens so that it increases the magnification of light before it even reaches the digital sensor. In contrast, a digital zoom degrades quality by simply interpolating the image-- after it has been acquired at the sensor.
Even though the photo with digital zoom contains the same number of pixels, the detail is clearly far less than with optical zoom. Digital zoom should be almost entirely avoided, unless it helps to visualize a distant object on your camera's LCD preview screen. Alternatively, if you regularly shoot in JPEG and plan on cropping and enlarging the photo afterwards, digital zoom at least has the benefit of performing the interpolation before any compression artifacts set in. If you find you are needing digital zoom too frequently, purchase a teleconverter add-on, or better yet: a lens with a longer focal length.
Optical vs. Digital Zoom: Choosing a Digital Camera (part 3)by Andrea Steed (Nov 26, 2004)
Digital camera advertisements will boast about both optical and digital zoom. However, these are very different and the numbers can be misleading, so it's important to know which zoom will really give you quality results.
Optical zoom lenses actually "move" you closer to the subject of the photograph without sacrificing quality. The higher the optical zoom rating on a camera, the farther away you can be to take a photograph and still get a clear, close-up image. The concept of optical zoom essentially the same as the zoom on a film (non-digital) camera. Optical zoom is the number you want to pay close attention to--it's the zoom that will give you the quality results you want.
Digital zoom on the other hand is not bringing you closer to the item. Rather, the camera crops the entire image, and then digitally enlarges to the size of the viewfinder the portion you want to zoom in on. This results in a loss of quality, and is no different than cropping and enlarging an image with editing software. The benefit of using image-editing software instead of the digital zoom on a camera is that you can decide how much to crop, and how much to enlarge the image to where the quality is acceptable to you. When you use digital zoom on the camera, the image quality is irreversibly lost."
So do whatever suits you best. If it works for you and you're happy, shoot away. Just be aware of what you are actually getting when you use digital zoom - a camera makers' gimmick!