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Mar 3, 2000 Resolution: it's all that's important when buying digital cameras The worst part about writing a book about Digital Cameras ("You wrote a book about Digital Cameras?" "Yes" "And where would I find out about that book?" "Why just click on this link: a link" "Thank you!", "You're welcome") is that people keep asking me "What camera should I buy?" I hate that question. It's so...well it so implies that there's an easy answer to that question, when in fact there's not. Instead there's a whole lot of questions that follow up, all of which lead to a not very satisfactory answer: What are you going to use it for? Okay, so now you've answered those questions, I can tell you what other people think of some camera's that kind of fit into that price range... But the only real answer I can honestly give you today is: Nikon CoolPix 950. Why? Because it's the coolest camera I've ever owned. I can't give you a testament for something I haven't owned. But many people think the CoolPix costs too much (though it's coming down because it will soon be discontinued.) And anyway, I wouldn't buy the camera myself if I was buying a new camera today because I'd want to get a CoolPix 990 or an Olympus C3030. Why? Resolution! Both these cameras have even higher resolution than the CoolPix 950. About 1 million more pixels. Is that important? Several people, much smarter than I, say that for many people having the highest resolution camera isn't important. If all you want to do is put photos on your web page they say, then all you need is 640 x 480. Makes sense, right? I mean, who puts an image larger than 640 x 480 on a web page except someone who wants to show you how good their digital camera is? Well, I guess they are right. But me, I'm going to ignore that advice for three reasons:
Come on! Kodak goes on all these years about film and the importance of preserving memories, and people are going around saying that 640 x 480 is good enough! Three million pixels. That's the minimum you should buy if you're going to buy a digital camera today. Now I know there are really expensive cameras that produce even higher resolution images. But I'm willing to agree that at some point you have to say "I can't afford that!" So I'm really only talking about the sub-$1,000 category. Eventually I think they will reach a point at which I'll be willing to say "I don't need more resolution." Certainly, I think that 6 million is good enough. At that point it'll be about equivalent to the resolution of a 35mm image. Once the $1,000 cameras reach that point I think I'll say "enough is enough," but until then I'll keep looking at new cameras and salivating...and hoping people will buy my book so that I can afford to buy a new camera.
Fuji's new cameras Fuji just announced new "low-priced" cameras that produce an image of 6 million pixels, but cost about the same as the new 3 million pixel cameras other manufacturers are announcing. A giant leap forward, or are they cheating and using interpolation? turns out maybe it's a bit of both. There's already a comparison on the web done using a preproduction camera: A
"Mini-Shootout" of Pro Digital SLRs!
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