From the Desk of the Liquid Engineer

Back in 2003, when 3 megapixel point and shoot cameras were considered totally wicked, I bought my first digicam, a Pentax Optio S. I’m not going to pretend I knew what I was doing; I basically just went into a camera store and talked to the salesman for a while about what I wanted to do (occasional snapshots with the ability to make nice prints, small footprint), and that’s what I ended up with. I also bought a giant (for the time) SD card and a nice leather carrying case, so I’m sure the salesman loved me. I used it for years, and it was good. I got great prints with it (as long as I never went over 4×6, which was fine), and we all used it a lot because it was so small and easy to carry. I didn’t pay attention to the digital camera market for years, as I’m far more of a computer hardware/software nerd than an audio-visual person.

Then my camera got stolen, sometime this past spring. I’m still not certain by whom, and I can’t even prove it really happened, but the fact remains that one day it was in my on-campus apartment, and one day it disappeared and I never found it again, even when I moved out. Unless it was struck by the All-Spark one day and came to life and ran off, someone had to have taken it. I didn’t get too upset though; I had some money saved up, and I thought it might be a good opportunity to shop for a new one. (I make no secret of the fact I like expensive tech toys, but once I buy something I pretty much use it until it falls apart/becomes too obsolete to work. I think of my technology as an investment.)

Let me preface everything that follows by saying I’m a digital camera neophyte, and I didn’t really start learning anything about how they work or what separates the good from the bad until mid-late May, so this is at best an expression of my current level of understanding that might be useful to those in a similar situation. At worst, it’s the ranting of someone who’s got no idea what they’re talking about and is completely overwhelmed by the sheer difficulty of picking out a camera and actually feeling like it’s a good camera to buy. If I am understanding something wrongly, please let me know.

After a few days of shopping around the internets, I became convinced I should’ve majored in digital cameras. It’s really amazing(ly frustrating) how complicated these devices are, and picking a good one is sadly not as simple as looking at who has the most megapixels. In fact, this is just about the worst thing to do: witness the Megapixel Myth. I really suggest reading the entire article (it’s not that long) to get a good idea of what I’m talking about, but the short story is more megapixels don’t necessarily mean better pictures, and in fact can lead to worse results if you’re not careful. But since this number is the one most easily graspable in digicam specs, camera manufacturers have made a habit of upping the MPs to make their products more exciting for shoppers with bigger-is-better mindsets, which work in most other product categories, but not consumer-level digital cameras.

Here’s the important bit (that the article goes over in great detail): a sensor inside a digital camera has one photosite for each pixel in an image. So, for a 3 MP image, it’s got roughly three million photosites. The bigger the sensor, the bigger each photosite, allowing the camera to capture more light for better color, better depth-of-field, less noise, etc. Smaller sensors also mean reduced performance/more noise at high ISOs (increased sensitivity of the sensor for faster shutter speeds and/or better performance in low light), because the sensors just aren’t big enough to capture enough data to produce anything that isn’t a noisy mess. Even at low ISOs, you run the risk of seeing less detail in general because the sensor just isn’t big enough to see it. All these new cameras that offer 8-12 megapixels on the cheap tend to use teeny-tiny sensors with even smaller photosites that, because of their size, are nosier, less detailed, shallower, etc. And even then, all these cameras do lots of processing on the raw image in software before the picture is saved to compensate for the tiny sensor. In a lot of cases, a 6 MP camera with a bigger sensor will deliver pictures of much higher quality than a 12 megapixel camera with a sensor roughly the size of two ants standing next to each other. This is how Digital SLRs (those giant professional cameras) work. A 6MP Digital SLR will beat out the latest and greatest picket cam with double the MP count because the DLSR’s sensor is comparatively huge (there are other factors like lenses to consider as well, but this is a big one).

I’m not the only one that’s found themselves boggling over this. Tim Bray, programmer at Sun who’s doing some really cool stuff with Atom and Atom Publishing, chronicles a similar search for a new camera. He eventually settled on a Canon A710 IS.

So the trick, in my humble, frustrated opinion, is to find a camera with a good megapixel-to-sensor-size ratio. As an example, my Pentax had a 1/1.25″ sensor and took beautiful shots because the photosites were comparatively large. The same size sensor is in use today in pocket cams with more than double the MP count, and you can bet they’re noisy as all get out in low-light/large print situations. Even figuring out what the sensor size is on a camera is a challenge: most manufacturers don’t print that kind of information on the box, and you’ve got to go hunting at digital camera review sites, and even when you find the info, it’s hard to understand. Consumer digital cameras express their sensor sizes in fractional inches as shown, and if you’re looking at DSLRs, you’re talking about millimeters squared (though if you’re shopping for a DLSR, you’re probably not reading this). That being said, more megapixels does mean more ability to crop a photo (zoom into one possibly very small area of it and still be able to make a decent print). But again, a small sensor will be limiting here.

Add to that that digital SLR cameras have gotten so much cheaper over the last several years. Camera companies just aren’t making prosumer (big sensor/nice lense/etc.) point and shoots like they used to, because they think that anyone who cares that much will just go for one of the “cheap” SLRs. This is faulty logic, as the cheapest pro-cam is still in the 700-800 dollar range, not including the lense(s). Those cameras are are also about the same size as my head–my old Pentax would fit in an Altoids box. While I don’t need something that small, I would like something that would fit in my pants pocket. (I don’t really think the kind of camera I want is so advanced that it needs to be in any way categorized as “pro,” but that just goes to show how much the camera makers have lowered the expectations of consumers.

Why am I worried about all this so much?

As I said before, I view technology as an investment, and I like to feel like I’m getting a good price-performance balance whenever I buy something. I don’t want to spend a couple hundred bucks or more (camera, case, memory, taxes/shipping, etc. adds up quickly) for something that only performs so-so, or with features I can’t even use. What’s the point of having a high ISO camera when the sensor’s so small that every time you try to take pictures in low light you end up with overly noisy garbage, or 12 megapixels when the sensor can only make really nice pictures with quality set to 6 MP? Why even sell a camera with modes that will always produce noisy, grainy, ugly pictures that you’ll never want to keep? Worse yet, those that don’t know any better might just assume it’s their computer/printer/whatever causing the quality issue and drive themselves crazy trying to fix something that can’t be helped. I’ve accepted that I’m not going to be able to get a camera without a movie mode, which I don’t really want, but there’s no reason I should have to settle for mediocre performance in normal situations. I want to just be able to pick up my camera in any situation and take a good picture without having to worry about manual settings, secure in the knowledge I could print an 8×10 if I wanted without it looking like a painting. For the average person, taking good photos should be a brainless or near-brainless activity.

Yeah, right. I’ve also come to accept that whatever camera I get, I will have to learn how to use some of the manual settings (white balance, exposure, iso, scene modes, etc.) to get the best results. Cameras just aren’t smart enough to do it all on their own (e.g.: auto mode), though they can get almost all the way there. For most people, most of the time–myself included, that’s more than good enough.

So, what to buy?

Despite all this (or maybe because of it) I have managed to find a couple good looking cameras with good sensor/MP ratios I’d be happy to own for years to come. I’m going to list them here, but I’d love to hear your recommendations if you’ve got any. I’m still looking around, so I might end up adding more to this list.

• Fujifilm F31fd: Discontinued and rapidly becoming scarce, the F31fd pocket cam was renowned for its 1/1.7″ SuperCCD (a proprietary Fujifilm sensor that’s known for high ISO/low noise performance). It’s got face detection, which I like, but no image stabilization, which worries me since I’ve got shaky hands. Everyone raves about them, though, so I’m seriously considering it, especially since the F50fd (its replacement) is one of those tiny-sensor/big MP things I’ve spent so much time lambasting. Of course, no definitive reviews of the F50fd are out yet because it’s not shipping until October, so no one can say for sure that it’s not a better camera, though initial tests using pre-production models aren’t looking good. I’d love to wait until a good review comes out, but I have a feeling all the F31fds will be gone by then, and I’ll be left feeling stupid.
• Fujifilm S6000fd: this SLR-like bridge-cam uses the same sensor with a newer image processor, as well as some other tweaks that arguably improve image quality–except at very high ISOs, where the F31fd has an edge. It’s also comparatively huge. I wouldn’t even consider it because of it’s size, except for the fact that it’s not being cancelled (yet), has a 10x zoom (compared 3x on the F31fd), and a whole lot of manual controls (that I don’t know how to use, though the zoom ring and rapid-shooting modes are cool). It’s really designed, I think, for those who have moved beyond simple point and shoots, but aren’t ready for the huge investment of a DSLR yet, but I include it here because it’s got stupendous image quality and there’s really not another camera like it on the market. I’m not really there yet, and since photography isn’t a hobby of mine, I may never get there. I do like the idea of a camera that writes RAW files (that is, the raw pixels as taken in by the camera before they’re processed and turned into a JPEG). This would give me the option of correcting any flawed pictures in post-processing (something else I don’t know how to do but might like to learn, or at the very least have someone else do for me). My attraction to this camera really illustrates my point, though: to get the pixel-to-sensor ratio I want, RAW, and a bigger zoom, I find myself looking to buy a camera with tons of features I don’t even know how to use and probably wouldn’t ever need. It really shouldn’t be this hard.

Right now I really like the F31fd, and am coming really close to wanting to buy it. I just wish I had time to see the results from DPR’s f50fd review, whenever it comes down. I’d feel like an idiot spending money on a discontinued camera only to find out its replacement model was better (as unlikely as that is, given the f50fd’s smaller, non SuperCCD sensor and 12MP pixel count).

I wonder how many people skip all this and just get PhotoCDs with their regular film cameras.

[tags]digital photography, digicams, digital cameras, digicam, digital cameras, megapixel, megapixels, prosumer, sensor, pentax, optio s, canon, fuji, fujifilm, s6000fd, fuji s6000fd, fujifilm 6000fd, fuji f31fd, fujifilm f31fd[/tags]

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