Digital cameras

Digital technology has a Midas-like ability to revolutionise almost anything it touches, and media from recorded music to movie effects have been transformed with the application of mere 1s and 0s.

The world of photography is no exception and it's rare to come across an image in a magazine these days that hasn't seen a mouse click or two.

But while the digital darkroom has caught on like wildfire, the digital camera hasn't.

On the face of it, a digital camera has some big advantages over its film-using counterpart. Photographs are available for use as soon as they're taken, and they can be transferred to a PC in a matter of seconds, with no loss of quality. There's also plenty of choice, with some 70 models available in the UK from cheap and cheerful snappers to high-end models geared to professionals. So why haven't they taken off?

As ever, the main factor that's limiting digital camera uptake is price and many models cost much, much more than a similarly-specified 35mm camera.

Picture quality is also lacking and while digital camera resolutions are constantly increasing, it's still relatively easy to tell a 'real' photographic print from a digital one.

We've cast our critical eye over 15 digital cameras this month, with prices ranging from an almost spare change (for a digital camera) £99 to a wallet-bursting £859. Read on to find out what we thought.

What does a digital camera do?

Like a regular 35mm camera, a digital camera takes still photographs but rather than store them on film, they're stored electronically as an image file. The obvious advantage of this is that an image file can be read by a computer straight away, bypassing the need for developing and scanning.

This month's How IT Works (p132) explains the workings of a digital camera in more detail but suffice to say that it all boils down to a light-sensitive component called a CCD (charge coupled device) and some kind of storage device, usually a solid-state memory card.

Once you have an image that's been captured digitally, it can be manipulated in any way you choose using a computer and some image-editing software.

This can be as simple as resizing and cropping for printing, correcting the exposure, removing scary red-eye or performing some Stalinesque non-person removal. The neat thing is that because it's all done digitally, no-one will be able to tell.

Convenience is the key here. With a good-quality camera and a decent colour printer, you can be printing out perfect A4 enlargements or e-mailing your snaps around the world just minutes after you've pressed the shutter.

So why don't we all have one?

Despite the undoubted advantages, digital cameras also labour under several enormous burdens.

By far the biggest of these is cost and you can buy a very respectable SLR outfit for the same money as a merely average compact digital camera.

Pound for pound, the image quality of a digital camera is also far lower than that of a film camera since the CCD of even the most expensive model can't match the resolution of a simple strip of film. Since less detail is captured, try blowing up a digitally-acquired image to a size greater than about 6x4in and you'll soon start noticing a degradation in image quality.

Digital camera manufacturers have also tended to shy away from investment in quality lenses and this does little to help image quality either. This situation is changing though. Nikon's digital cameras use Nikkor lenses like those used for its SLR range and other manufacturers are being forced to make changes thanks to high-quality CCDs that aren't so tolerant of poor optics.

Convenience? Rapid access to photographs is all very well but unless you have equally easy access to a PC, they'll be staying in the camera until you get home. It's possible to carry a handful of memory cards around of course, but these are rather costly. This might change once Iomega launches its low-cost Clik disk and drive later this year but don't count on digital camera manufacturers moving to it overnight.

Before you buy

Digital cameras may be a gadget-lover's dream but you shouldn't rush out and buy one without doing a little thinking first.

Why do you want a digital camera?

If you've identified a serious business need that a digital camera will immediately address, then fine. Many estate agents are using digital cameras to take photographs of properties for DTP documents printed out for buyers - an application that saves both time and money.

If you want to try your hand at digital imaging at home, then think seriously about investing in a decent colour flatbed scanner instead. If you have a good 35mm camera, you will be able to digitally manipulate images on your PC for a fraction of the cost of a digital camera.

If you're sick to death of having to fire off a film before waiting a whole hour for your snaps, then a digital camera is obviously the answer to your prayers but don't be fooled into thinking that you can chuck your old camera. Using a digital camera effectively needs some discipline - the photographs you plan to keep need to be stored and indexed on a PC using some suitable software.

What to look for

Buying a digital camera is much like buying a 35mm one and a lot of the features to look out for are common to both. When looking at a digital camera, pick it up and hold it. Not all digital cameras are that comfortable to hold and unless you're happy with the way yours looks and feels, you won't be inclined to use it in public.

Viewfinder

Next, try framing a shot. If the camera has an optical viewfinder, great. If it doesn't, bear in mind that while LCD viewfinders are fine for framing shots and great for viewing them afterwards, they're useless in bright sunlight and can soon drain a set of batteries.

Lens

Unless you're working to a tight budget, your next priority should be a zoom lens. Just as with 35mm compacts, the standard lens on a digital camera generally has around a 38mm equivalent focal length. This makes it very difficult to fill the frame with your subject and show any real detail and a zoom means you can get in much closer. But beware of so-called digital zooms. All they do is crop the picture and blow up the remainder - you'll get the same results by taking your pictures at high resolution and cropping them manually.

Flash

While digital cameras are great at taking pictures in low light conditions (their CCDs are surprisingly sensitive and you can always adjust light levels on your PC), a flash is essential. All of the models reviewed here come with one but it's worth checking to see how many modes are offered.

It should have a red-eye mode and you should be able to turn off or use it for fill-in work. On some cameras, notably Ricoh's, the flash is set to off when you turn the camera on. Although this saves batteries - the flash doesn't have to charge up except when you need it - it can be annoying if you have to wade through menus to turn it on again.

Autofocus

Decent autofocus is vital too. Just as on a compact camera, a fixed focus lens risks blurring some subjects and losing detail. Since no film is involved, a dealer should be happy to let you take a few snaps with a digital camera - try a few with near and distant subjects to assess the autofocus. Some models have slower mechanisms than others and the Canon PowerShot A5 models are particularly tardy.

Storage

With the exception of Sony's Mavica range, digital cameras use solid-state memory cards for storing images. While there's little to choose between the SmartMedia and Compact Flash memory cards, Compact Flash cards appear more robust. On the other hand, only SmartMedia cards can be used in floppy disk adaptors like Fuji's FlashPath device. If you want to add more, both cards are depressingly expensive - around £50 for an 8Mb card.

Image transfer

If a digital camera uses solid-state storage, it will also come with a cable to link to your PC for transferring images. This is a simple way of doing things but the speed of a serial cable means it's not particularly quick to transfer several images, though Kodak also provides USB and infra-red connectivity on its top-line cameras.

A more convenient option is to use a memory card reader. If you've got a notebook PC, then you can use a Type II PC Card adaptor to read CompactFlash cards and many cameras come with one as standard. Parallel and USB port readers are also available for desktop PCs and FlashPath devices provide a handy way to read SmartMedia cards in a floppy disk drive.

The software supplied with a camera also makes a huge difference. We particularly dislike the awkwardness of Casio's QVLink, which makes downloading unnecessarily complex. Kodak, by contrast, supplies a PC Mounter - your computer sees the camera just as an extra disk drive, so you can drag and drop pictures to your hard disk.

Drawbacks

The image quality of any digital camera compares unfavourably to film.

However, as long as you buy a megapixel model (one with at least a million pixels, though the DC200+'s 1152x864 resolution is close enough), you'll be able to print decent images at up to around 7x5in. Lower resolutions than this are best saved for on-screen use.

As it takes time for the image to be registered by the CCD, processed and transferred to the memory card, it's rare for a digital camera to be any good for rapid-fire picture sequences. An exception here is the Nikon CoolPix 950. Part of its impressive price goes towards some 48Mb of internal memory, where pictures can be stored before they are written to card.

Action pictures can be difficult too - there's always a delay between pressing the shutter and actually taking the picture. Small children move quickly enough for this to be an insurmountable difficulty for family snaps.

The biggest problem with digital cameras, however, is battery life. Displaying pictures on a colour LCD takes a lot of juice, as does writing them to a memory card. The worst offenders are the Ricoh RDC4200 and the Casio QV7000SX, both of which can get through a set of AA batteries in less than half an hour. Since neither of these have an optical viewfinder either, buyers had best invest in some Duracell shares.

Extra features

As you'd expect, the more you pay for a camera, the more facilities it has, though there are certain poor-value exceptions.

Setting the camera to take black-and-white or sepia-tinted snaps is fun but still a gimmick. You gain more flexibility and better results by taking standard shots and manipulating them on your PC.

If you want to stitch together pictures to make a panorama, then packages like Spin Panorama certainly help while Canon and Casio cameras can show an overlay of your last shot on their display, helping you to match up the edges.

Kodak and Nikon also offer connectors for an external flash on their most expensive models, while the special scripting language on Kodak's DC265 lets you program in-camera macros. Also appealing to professionals, the Coolpix 950 shares some of the user interface from Nikon's high-end SLRs, as well as boasting viewfinder dioptre correction that's ideal for glasses wearers.

What else do I need to buy?

While it's possible to use a digital camera on its own, viewing snaps on a TV with the camera's video output, it's hardly ideal. But unless you have a PC, you cut down your options for editing and printing photos, while your only option for long-term storage is to buy more expensive memory cards.

Even the cheapest PC should be quite adequate for simple picture storage and will cope happily with printing.

If you want to really build up your image-editing skills though, a more expensive machine and better software will pay dividends.

Every camera is supplied with a basic image-editing package (Photoshop LE is supplied with the Nikon) and the likes of Picture It or PhotoDeluxe are fine to get you started. A professional image editor like Adobe Photoshop probably isn't worthwhile unless you want to apply lots of sophisticated effects, but upgrading to the full editions of the packages supplied does allow you to use more features.

Finally, you'll need a printer. Dedicated photo printers offer great quality but are expensive to run and only offer images up to 6x4in. An inkjet printer like the Epson Stylus Color 900 - last month's Best Buy - or the HP DeskJet 895CXi are great choices and useful for far more than just printing photographs.

The best all-rounder in our tests was the Agfa ePhoto 1680.

With superb pictures, a high maximum resolution and a 3x optical zoom, it makes a great choice if you really want to get into serious digital imaging. The lack of an optical viewfinder means it can be awkward to use outdoors and will consume batteries but its images look better than those turned out by the cameras closest to it in price.

Kodak's budget DC200+ is about the cheapest camera that turns out good - as opposed to just acceptable - snaps. It's handicapped by the lack of a zoom lens but its competitive price means it's ideal if you want a worthy introduction to digital photography.

At the opposite end of the market, while both the Kodak DC265 and Nikon's CoolPix 950 are extremely desirable, they just don't offer enough extra to justify their hefty price premiums. Both are worth a look if you absolutely must have an external flash connector or Kodak's scripting language but we gulped too much at the cost to give them an unalloyed seal of approval.

OTHER ROUTES TO A DIGITAL IMAGE

If all you want to do is see your family photographs on screen you don't have to invest in a digital camera. With decent models starting at a couple of hundred pounds it is cheaper to find a flatbed scanner and models that are perfectly acceptable for occasional use can be bought for around £60.

A scanner has the advantage of working well with existing photographs coupled with the flexibility to scan objects. What's more, as long as you scan decent-sized originals, you can get really good quality.

A flatbed scanner is less useful for slides or negatives though. Even though you can buy a transparency adaptor for many scanners, you'll still generally be restricted to 600dpi. A dedicated film scanner offers a much higher resolution - 2,400 dpi is common - simply because it uses a smaller and more precise CCD. The quality is good enough to let you make large-scale enlargements from such a scanned image, though with film scanners unusable for anything else, this is at the expense of flexibility.

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