Re: paleonet Digital photography again

[Stefan Bengtson <stefan.bengtson@xxxxxx>]

At 12:46 -0500 2001-10-23, Frank Holterhoff wrote:
>A while back (+/- a year ago?) there was a thread concerning digital
>photography of fossils, which I saved at the time but subsequently lost
>part of.  In the part I still have there is a favorable reference
>specifically to the Nikon Coolpix 990, and also to comparable Olympus &
>Sony models.  I seem to recall that in this discussion a couple other
>people also recommended a specific Olympus model that gave them
>particularly good results.  Anyone remember which one it was (or have
>another recommendation), or might the principals of the original
>discussion repeat those recommendations?  Thanks!

The recommendations we gave a year ago are already dated, but there's 
a splendid site which contains thorough and up-to-date reviews of 
digital cameras:

http://www.steves-digicams.com/

I've been using a Minolta Dimâge 7 for some months now, in the field 
as well as in the lab, and I can strongly recommend it. The 
resolution is >5 megapixels (sufficient for almost all purposes), the 
images are high-quality, and the lens has an impressive zoom factor 
of 7 and a good macro capability. As all digital cameras, it devours 
batteries, but with two sets of rechargeable batteries to swap 
between, I have yet to be out of power. (Obviously, if you have to 
spend a month in the field without an electric outlet in your tent 
you may have to stock up with more batteries.)

The Minolta range finder is an LCD display, which means that it works 
more-or-less as a single-lens reflex camera, i.e. no parallax. It's 
surprisingly easy to use the range finder, but one gripe I have with 
the camera is that the manual focus is a bit flimsy and easy to shift 
accidentally. The automatic focus is so good, however, that it is 
what you use in almost all circumstances, even for macro. In general, 
the camera is very convenient to use. There are lots of options, but 
the controls are quite logical and intuitive, unlike those of some 
other cameras on the market.

You will find a detailed review of Minolta at
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_reviews/dimage7.html

What I miss with the Minolta is exchangeable lenses, but that's the 
case with most consumer-priced digital cameras. To get a digital 
system camera, you still have to pay a several times higher price.

As with all hand-carried consumer-priced cameras, you don't get a 
true 3-channel (RGB, red-green-blue) registration of each pixel, but 
the camera uses a filter colour mosaic and interpolates the colours 
for each pixel. This makes it less useful for the kind of 
manipulations I described in a Palaeontologia Electronica article 
last year 
(http://palaeo-electronica.org/2000_1/fossils/issue1_00.htm), but 
it's an unavoidable limitation of present technology.

Stefan
-- 
Stefan Bengtson
Senior Curator (invertebrate fossils)
Swedish Museum of Natural History
Department of Palaeozoology
Box 50007
SE-104 05 Stockholm
Sweden

tel. +46-8 5195 4220
      +46-8 732 5218 (home)
fax  +46-8 5195 4184
e-mail Stefan.Bengtson@nrm.se