Big picture, big payoff?
Eight-megapixel cameras are now available for less than $750. Here's a look at four models. Photos: 8-megapixel milestone
Too easy? All right, then, answer this: Why are so many people convinced that more megapixels means a better digital camera?
Within three years, camera companies rolled out 4-megapixel cameras, then 5, 6 and 7. Now, if you can believe it, 8-megapixel consumer cameras are available for less than $600.
Let's get one thing straight: The number of megapixels is a measure of how many dots make up a digital photo, not a photo's quality. An 8-megapixel photo can look just as bad as a 3-megapixel one--just much, much bigger.
The problem with this digicam arms race is that more megapixels mean bigger files. You need a much bigger memory card, you'll pay more for the camera (for its faster-processing circuitry) and you'll have to wait a lot longer for those giant files to download to your computer. Once there, they also take longer to transfer, open and edit.
All right. Now that you've been given The Lecture, it's only fair to acknowledge that more megapixels do come in handy in three situations. First, an 8-megapixel photo has enough resolution for giant prints--20-inch-by-30-inch posters, for example. Second, more megapixels give you the freedom to crop out a huge amount of a photo to isolate the really good stuff while still leaving enough pixels to make reasonably sized prints.
Third--and let's be honest here--it's fun to blow people away by telling them you have an 8-megapixel camera.
Five big-name camera companies make 8-megapixel models under $800: Nikon, Olympus, Konica Minolta, Canon and Sony. (Sony declined to provide a camera for evaluation in this roundup, saying that its entry has reached the end of its life cycle.)
Fortunately, these companies didn't just slap 8-megapixel sensors into so-so cameras. Each company also incorporated excellent lenses, fast circuitry and other hallmarks of high-end cameras. In other words, these cameras give you eight good megapixels.
All of these cameras are heavyish, black and fairly bulky; if you want one of those slim, silver-credit-card cams, forget it. Each offers full manual controls, a pop-up flash and a detached, easy-to-lose lens cap. Each can capture photos in either the JPEG format or what advanced shutterbugs call RAW format--huge, 13MB files that when transferred to a program like Photoshop or iMovie can be miraculously "reshot" with different exposure, white balance and other settings, right on the computer.
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Three models in this review--the Nikon, the Minolta and the Canon--fall halfway between traditional consumer cameras and more professional models. They offer powerful 7x to 10x zoom lenses that can bring you much closer to the soccer field or the school play than the usual 3x zoom. All three feature liquid crystal display screens that flip out from the camera body and rotate, making overhead, ground-level and self-portrait shots much easier. (As a bonus, the screen is protected when it is snapped shut against the camera back.)
Note, too, that when you peer into the eyepiece viewfinder of those three cameras, you don't actually see out the lens. Instead, you see another tiny LCD screen (an EVF, or electronic viewfinder)--an approach loved and loathed by various shutterbug factions.
You can expect exceptional photos from all four cameras, far superior to what you get
from a $300 consumer camera. (You can see some samples at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/video/technology/iguana.mov. Here's what else you can expect. Konica Minolta DImage A200At $587, this is the least expensive 8-megapixeler. (These prices come from Shopping.com, which identifies the lowest price from a highly rated store.) It's also among the smallest and lightest, yet the rubberized, hand-turnable zoom ring makes it feel precise and professional.
This model gets brownie points for its exceptionally clear menu system, its comfortable body design and an antishake feature that does wonders for slow-shutter and fully zoomed-in shots. (The Nikon has a similar feature.)
If you want to take movies with your camera, this is the one to get. It can capture TV-size, TV-smooth movies up to 15 minutes long. Better yet, the autofocus and that awesome zoom ring operate while you're recording, which is unusual for a digital still camera.
Subtract a few points, though, for the flash, which doesn't pop up by itself (you have to haul it up manually), the lack of a printed manual and the limited number of canned presets such as Portrait, Sports, Night and Sunset (in fact, that's the whole list). And the A200's viewfinders turn grainy and are slow to focus indoors at night, in large part because the camera lacks an autofocus assist lamp, which helps a camera focus in dim light.
Canon PowerShot Pro 1Canon's octamegapixel camera is also compact--except for the LCD screen, that is; it's 2 inches diagonally, a lot nicer than the 1.8-inch screens of its rivals. The PowerShot's price is nice, too (about $635), the illuminated top-mounted LCD status screen is helpful and the photos are absolutely terrific. To its further credit, Canon is the only company that includes a memory card (a 64-megger).
With due respect, though, the most fitting adjective for this camera is annoying. The nano-dial that turns the camera on and off requires thumbs the size of Barbie's. And when you half-press to focus, the image on the screen freezes momentarily-and frustratingly. (The Nikon also exhibits this quirk.)
Worst of all, though, is the electronic zoom ring: The zooming lags behind your turning, which can drive you crazy.
The PowerShot Pro has plenty of great features and, in good light, takes excellent pictures. But certain aspects of it can get on your nerves.
Nikon Coolpix 8800What a list of great features! Crystal-clear close-ups 1.2 inches from the subject; truly helpful image stabilization; a wireless remote control for self-portraits and shakeless shutter presses; 15 preprogrammed scene modes; 30-frames-per-second movie recording, with zoom (30-second length limit); and a best-in-class 10x optical zoom, which makes this model what a Nikon spokesman calls "the uber soccer camera." (Nikon also offers the Coolpix 8400, which lacks the 10x zoom and the vibration damper and costs about $80 less.)
Unfortunately, the list of disappointments
is equally stunning. For starters, this Coolpix (about $725) is the only 8-megapixel camera without a zoom ring. To zoom in and out (and noisily at that), you have to hold down the + and - buttons, which feels so 3-megapixel.Second, the manual-focus system cries out for a rethink. The operation requires both hands, the screen doesn't magnify the image to help you out and the on-screen scale doesn't display actual distances.
Finally, this camera falls to its knees in dim light. Its autofocus often flails helplessly indoors, zooming futilely in and out; if the subject is more than five feet away, the autofocus assist lamp just twiddles its thumbs. If birthday parties and Thanksgiving dinners are among the scenes you hope to immortalize, you'll find Coolpix distinctly uncool.
Olympus Evolt E300This is one big, weird-looking camera. Because light is mirrored off to the side, the usual hump over the lens (where a prism usually sits) is missing, so the Evolt looks as if it has been scalped.
The Evolt isn't in the same category as the cameras described above. It's a digital single-lens-reflex camera, which means that you can't preview the picture on the screen; you have to compose your photo by peering through the glass eyepiece (although that's a wonderful, bright, professional-feeling experience). You don't get movies or sound, a tilt-and-swivel screen, a powerful zoom or a remote control. A digital SLR is a pure, unadulterated still-photo machine, with fast focusing, fast start-up time, a catalog of available lenses, days-long battery life and practically no shutter lag (the delay after you press the shutter button).
No wonder, then, that the Evolt easily outshoots its three more compact, more consumer-oriented rivals, even though its price is in the same ballpark ($723 after a $100 rebate that's good through March 31).
The colors pop, autofocus can't miss and the flash pops up so high your subjects' likelihood of having red eye is next to nil. There's even an ultrasonic vibrator inside that shakes dust off the sensor each time you turn the camera on.
Now, there are better digital SLRs. The widely adored Nikon D70, for example, has zero start-up time and takes sharper photos than the Evolt. But it will cost you at least $900, with lens, and that's after a $200 rebate. (Just a few days ago, Canon unveiled a new superfast, sub-$1,000, 8-megapixel digital SLR of its own, called the EOS 350D.)
The bottom lineIf you're like most people whose photographic ambitions involve birthdays, weddings, soccer games, holidays and children, here's the cold, hard truth: eight megapixels is three or four megapixels too many.
But if you foresee having to print out posters or heavily cropped 8 by 10s, the Olympus Evolt E300 is clearly the sharpest shooter of the bunch. Of course, buying it involves giving up delicious features such as digital movies and the ability to compose your photos on the screen.
If you're not prepared to make those sacrifices, then consider the Konica Minolta Dimage A200. It offers great photos, superb movie capture and a minimum of annoyances, all in a relatively small, inexpensive package.
Either way, these cameras ought to tide you over at least until the 24-megapixel models come out.
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