Do You Know The Difference in Digital Cameras?

It is hard to keep up with the new age of cameras.  There are so many types and in some ways, so few types.

It used to be you had 35 mm cameras, some large format cameras and some instant film cameras.  You have TONS more options than that anymore.

Now we have entered into the age of DIGITAL Cameras.  Sure they have been around now a few years.  But what you may not have noticed is that they have been slowly compressing the market and trying to become that ONE perfect camera.  More than likely we will never get there, but we are surely getting closer.

So what do I mean that all cameras are trying to be ONE camera?  Well, when digital cameras came out frankly they weren’t very good.  They didn’t have very many pixels.  Those are the dots that make up the picture.  Now the technology has improved so rapidly that you find professional photographers everywhere using digital cameras for almost all of their needs.  That should tell you something.

Also, along the way the camera designers realized that it wouldn’t be that much harder to add movie capability to their digital camera design.  The problem here is that this is exactly equivalent to taking a bazillion pictures (yes that is a real term) instead of just one.  So the memory requirements skyrocketed.

Memory requirements?  What’s that?  Well you gotta store those ones and zeroes somewhere.  Early digital cameras stored the picture in internal memory.  That would be just an integrated circuit (IC) on the circuit board.

That is great but you want to be able to add more storage fast.  And the only way to get the pictures off those earlier cameras was to hook it up to your computer.  Enter memory cards.

There are several types of memory cards.  Buzz words fill the room. SD Cards, MMC Cards, Compact Flash Cards, Memory Sticks…the list goes on.  Each company has a card they like the best and that changes over time.  Cards are getting smaller and the memory inside them continues to go up.

So now we have digital cameras that have virtually unlimited storage because if you run out, then you can just plug in another SD card, SDHC card or whatever type your camera has to keep taking pictures or movies.  You can take the pictures off the card when you get to your computer.

Most laptops now have a multi-card reader built in so you can handle the vast array of memory cards that are out there.  Or you can buy a multi-card reader to plug into your computer.  Your choice. You can usually still download the picture from the camera off the card directly too if you have the proper cable for it.

Enter HD (High Definition) cameras.  Lately  HD has become more popular and is showing up in the smallest of cameras.  I personally have a camera (Kodak Zi8) now that looks more like a pocket calculator than a camera and it is a full HD 1280p video camera as well as a still camera.  You can put 32 GB SDHC cards in it and take HOURS of HD movies.  I love this little machine.

So what is the down side?  Many if not MOST of those mini-HD cameras don’t have moveable high quality optics.  That means that zooming is all done electronically.  Essentially when you zoom in you throw pixels away and duplicate others.  So the further you zoom in the grainier the picture gets.  Nevertheless, the new digital cameras are amazing.

Imagine, an HD camera that takes both stills and movies and literally fits in your shirt pocket.  It runs for days on a rechargeable battery.

Another limitation of the smaller cameras is that they are difficult to hold steady.  So picture jitter is more common.  The manufacturers of these digital movie cameras put a anti-vibration algorithm inside to help compensate but it sure isn’t a steady cam!

Most of the professional HD cameras which DO have moveable high quality lenses also take movies.  These are much more a no compromise solution.  But they also lose the advantage of size and low cost.  Some of these monsters cost in the multi thousands of dollars whereas my little shirt pocket model was about $200.

And of course this discussion didn’t even include the same kind of transition that movie cameras have gone through.  8 mm film movie cameras, leading to VHS tape (and Beta) and then into smaller mediums of tapes such as the DVC tapes, and others.  Then some movie cameras went digital onto tape.  Soon there were movie cameras that recorded directly to CDs or DVDs.  A few even recorded to very small hard drives similar to what would be found in your laptop computer. Then THEY went to cards.  So now you have cameras that are handheld movie cameras that run with pretty much the same circuitry and results and the digital still cameras that now do movies too.

So now are you seeing how all these cameras are trying to become ONE?  The biggest difference for you is the lenses (optics), size related to the format of the case and the price you are willing to pay.

Yes it is an exciting time and our picture taking gadgets just get better and better.