While I do not usually engage in this sort of comparative reviewing of products nor in the recommending of them, I will make two general observations from my experiences, which need to be taken with a grain of salt since they entail my biases and preferences.
First, even at today's stage in technology, I do not find digital black and white to be all that satisfactory be it captured with a digital camera or scanned in via a scanner. I find that both the monitor displaying and the hard copy printing of digital black & white to be full of problems that result in much additional work to correct or minimize or in less than satisfactory quality. Issues such as the ability of dye based inkjet prints or pigmented inkjet prints to render the images with true rich blacks with little bronzing or metemerism with clean neutral whites without warm or cold color casts, the tendency to emphasize grain structure, aliasing, and noise when rendering the image, and the frequent exhibiting of color artifacts in the form of stray color pixels that appear. To be sure, some of this will be found with B&W film based captures that are scanned and reproduced just as it is with the digital camera captures since these issues seem to revolve around the rendering and reproduction stages rather than the capture stages; but I have found the problems easier to deal with when scanning B&W films and rendering them into monitor displays and prints than is the case with digital camera captures. This is especially true given that there are a number of varying film types and speeds to use that are better for different subjects and scan with differing results with respect to some of the problems mentioned like emphasis of grain structure, aliasing, and noise which is not true for digital camera unless one has an arsenal of different digital cameras to select from that use different sensors in different configurations. However, secondly, for color, I have been quite impressed at the results; and if my experiences are any example, I think that the technology has reached a stage where film versus digital becomes a toss up when comparing small format cameras. I have been using as a personal digital camera which I use for snapshots a Nikon 4300 4 megapixel digital camera. While it is an older model of the point and shoot digital cameras which may not be on the market anymore, I have been quite amazed with the quality of the color images it is able to capture even after those images have been enlarged and printed both full frame at 16 x 20 inches as well as only a cropped section of the frame at 16 X 20 inches. I expected the image to fall apart, display a prominent dot pattern, be soft, and contain numerous color artifacts; this was not the case. The prints did show some of the same sorts of printing problems as B&W when they were made with inkjet printers but did not come off as pronounced as was the case with grayscale images. Unlike the B&W, you did not have to go to as many extraordinary measures to remedy or minimize the printing issues. However, when I had the images enlarged and printed using one of the hybrid printing process like the LED Chromira printer printing to traditional Fuji color photographic paper - gloss or luster - the prints displayed none of the problems that I saw with the inkjet color prints which I made. Thus, I think a 7 megapixel camera should serve you well for color images. I cannot comment on the remarks by others about a deterioration in the quality of current point and shoot digital cameras due to a cheapening ion sensors and sensor design as compared to the older ones like the Nikon 4300. But I can say that professionally I also use a Nikon D100 and a Kodak Pro 14/n and have found that the quality of the image output of the Nikon 4300 is every bit as good, although it will not stand the degree of enlargement of cropped sections as the other cameras and does not have the flexibility that they have with interchangeable lenses. However, the Nikon 4300 cost me new $499 US while the Nikon D-100 cost $1,000 US used and the Kodak Pro 14/n ran $2,400 US used. ----Original Message---- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2005 10:46 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [filmscanners] Compact Cameras > Hi, > > I know this question has been asked in the past (and slightly > off-topic) but times change so I'd thought I'd raise it again. > > I recently read an article about a photographer who started > out with digital (Fujifilm S2 Pro) but then switched to > medium format for colour and to an Olympus XA for 35mm black & white. > > The latter part caught my eye as I use an XA for its size and > portability, albeit with slide film. I like the XA and its > exposure is normally reasonable but always feel restricted by > the lack of manual exposure. (I often use a hand held meter > with my "proper" cameras.) Additionally, although I enjoy > occasional scanning - I have a Minolta Scan Elite - it is > just too time consuming. > > As a result, I have been seriously considering retiring the > XA for one of the latest generation of 7 megapixel digital > compacts like the Canon S70, which not only has manual > controls but can also output in RAW format. > > So my question is this: have digital compacts reached the > stage yet where they can give film compacts like the XA a run > for their money on image quality? I'd be interested in > hearing any experiences list members may have on this. > > (I can't really give a print size for a comparison as I don't > always print my slides but the scanner can produce images > roughtly 3800 x 2500 pixels and the XA lens is surprisingly > sharp for its size.) > > > > Al Bond > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > -------------------------- > Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe > filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) > in the > message title or body -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.10.2 - Release Date: 4/21/2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body