The photo illustrated here is one of my favorite examples of what you can do with a good digital camera.

Digital imaging on the cheap, Part 2: A good digital camera from Kodak and a way to use a film camera for digital pictures

Oct. 15, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   Digital cameras take pictures without using film. Some day, all cameras will work that way.
   Most professional photographers would tell you the day when all cameras are digital is a long way off. But they'd be wrong.
   Digital cameras are so good these days you'd have a hard time telling a standard photo from a digital one.
   And professionals probably would have a hard time, too.
   During the last 12 months, really good digital cameras have tended to cost $500 or more. That's a lot of money.
   By Christmas, I expect prices to fall to half that amount for the same quality.
   When you're shopping for a digital camera, pay a lot of attention to the quality of the lens. Cheap cameras sometimes have plastic lenses, and the pictures they take aren't very good. Paying $200 or $300 for a digital camera you'll use for three years is less expensive than paying $50 for one you'll use for two months and then $100 for one you'll use for a year and then $200 for one you should have bought anyway. And you'll have better pictures right from the start.
   The photo illustrated here is one of my favorite examples of what you can do with a good digital camera. The picture was taken by a Kodak DC280, which costs less than $500. My brother Robert, a talented digital photographer, took the photo during a cruise in the Gulf of Mexico.
   There are two versions of the photo -- a small version that you see on this page and a full-size version that shows you the amazing detail in the original Kodak digital picture. (Click on the smaller photo to load the larger one.) The full-size image, after I cropped it for artistic reasons, is 1,731 pixels by 1,018 pixels (1731 X 1018, in typical computer lingo).
   Just as impressive as the detail is the color rendition and the retention of true blacks in darker areas. Most computer monitors cannot show true black because they are not adjusted right. Before viewing the large version of the picture on my Web site, make sure your monitor is adjusted for proper white level and black level. (These are also called, incorrectly, brightness and contrast.) I tell you how to adjust the two controls in this article: Monitor madness: Brightness' and 'Contrast' actually control something else. If you'e too busy to read it right now, do this: Find a totally black background, then adjust the contrast all the way up and turn the brightness down until the black areas look truly black and not gray.)
   I'm a big fan of Kodak's digital cameras, but there are others that are excellent, too. Olympus and Nikon also make good ones that meet my basic requirements of reasonably good resolution (the amount of detail), good performance in low light and high quality lenses.
   But if you already have a good camera, why buy another one just to take digital pictures? Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of upgrading from a cheap film camera to a good digital camera, but I can't see why anyone would want to downgrade from a good film camera to a cheap digital one.
   This is especially true because you can use your good-quality film camera -- especially if you have a 35mm camera with interchangeable lenses -- to take digital images. The idea is simple: You take your pictures the same way as always, then have them developed and scanned. Scanners create a digital image out of a film image.
   Kodak does this for you in three ways, and there are other companies that do it, too. I've only dealt with Kodak's method, so I can't vouch for any of the others.
   Here's how Kodak's Picture CD system works. You drop off your film as before, but you specify digital prints in addition to regular prints. Kodak puts the digital ones on a CD. They're standard JPEG images, in case you want to use your own image viewer and image editor to view and edit them. But you might not need to, because each Picture CD contains the latest Kodak software for displaying, editing and printing the pictures on the CD.
   What's even better is the way Kodak's software keeps track of all the other Picture CDs you've displayed. It will prompt you to put one of the other CDs into your CD drive if you decide to view or print a picture from any other Picture CD.
   We pay about $20 to have a single roll of 35mm film developed into standard prints and a Picture CD. I didn't check to see if I could get a better price.
   Picture CD digital photos are exceptionally well scanned. (Kodak scans the negatives, not the prints.) They have a resolution of 1536 X 1024, which is fine for viewing on the screen or for making 5-inch by 4-inch prints on an ink-jet printer. If you want to make larger prints, you'll want to use Kodak's more expensive Photo CD service. Photo drop-off locations such as supermarkets don't offer Photo CD processing. You'll have to check a camera or photo-finishing shop.
   Kodak also has a third service that creates low-resolution images and places them on floppy disks or on a Web site where you can get them by downloading. I didn't try it. The image resolution is too low for serious work.
   The photo above is a sample Picture CD image, a photo I took of my granddaughter Holly. (Click on the smaller photo to load the larger one.) If you compare the Kodak DC280 photo with the Picture CD digital image, using the full-sizse versions of each, you'll note that the Kodak digital camera image has better resolution but seems a little softer in overall impact. This is typical of digital originals when compared with scans. Neither is more realistic than the other; they simply have different "personalities" on the screen.
   Next: Scanner tips your mother never told you.