Re: [Hampshire] digital cameras

"Gordon Scott" <gordon@???> said:
> FWIW, I'm a huge fan of Olympus. They're great cameras, mount as USB
> mass storage and have always been very reliable.

I was looking at some Olympus cameras on Saturday. The one with a
proper zoom lens was certainly better than the compact. I have to
decide whether I would make enough use of such a thing to justify
the extra cost. However, I was not convinced that the compact gave
any better results than a cheaper Fugifilm compact.

> Depth of field should not be a problem given half-decent lighting. I've
> been known to use a cheap (about a tenner) halogen floodlight

It is safe to assume that extra lighting of any kind would not be
allowed in a record office.

> As I understand it, Peter (or Peter's wife) has a specific need, and
> it's not 'just' for an A3 print. I understand that the need is for
> detailed study on the texts and other marking on old documents, "some of
> which are larger than A3" and he/she or other studiers are likely to be
> looking at these documents at significan magnification. I believe his
> reasoning for 10M is because that's the resolution he needs to resolve
> the detail.

No wife, unfortunately! It is not so much detailed study on markings
as being able to cope with sizes from a few square inches (with
small writing) up to larger than A3 (usually with reasonably sized
writing, unless something's been inserted between the lines). So,
the need is for a macro mode for the small documents and good
resolution even for the large ones. I would prefer to avoid having
to join sections together later, but that would be a matter of
judgement at the time as to how clear the writing is on any given
item.

Stephen Davies <stephen.davies@???> said:
> The main reason for poor quality of images is mainly down to the optical
> quality of the lens. Many compact Digital Cameras are very challenged
> optically.

Having now tried a few, I would agree with that!

> Camera memory cards are formatted FAT32 so can easily be read & written
> by Linux.

Thank you! I thought that might be the case, but was not sure. I
have seen a USB connector for about 10 pounds that will accept 9
types of card. So, I do not have to worry about whether any
particular camera will talk to a Linux system: that had been my main
concern. Also, with every camera I have seen, deleting images is
slow and clumsy. That would be much faster with direct access to the
card.

> For the type of work ( Document Copying), a 6.1Mb DSLR with a decent
> lens will work fine.

Too expensive for my purposes, I think. I'm not aiming for Royal
Photographic Society Associateship, or even membership. I just want
images that I can read later rather than spend a lot of time doing
so in the record office. This is not neat typescript: think rather
of a faded, worn, dirty document consisting of lawyer's jargon
written in abbreviated mediaeval Latin with a quill pen by a bored
scribe who just wants to get finished quickly (to be fair, they're
not all as bad as that, and many of the problems I have had in the
past have been from prints from poor quality microfilm). On the
other hand, if I'm getting a camera anyway, it might as well be a
decent one that I can use for other things as well. At the moment,
I'm not sure that I would make much use of it, though.

> cameras then yes, use the CD but the CCD quality on some cameras is not
> up to the sort of accurate focussing the macro photography demands.

I saw one (expensive) compact with a super macro mode. It could
focus down to 2-3 cm: the result was like having a camera attached
to a low power microscope.

Peter.