What Am I Looking For In A Camera?

I suppose, if I am going to look for the ideal low cost digital camera/video camera I should know what I am looking for, so I thought I would describe some of the attributes I want in a camera, to help clarify for you where I am coming from. So, here is a list, in no particular order;

Resolution: More is better, but not too high, because it will take too long to save the images on the flash card. Since most of these cameras have only digital zoom, 3MP is pretty much the minimum acceptable pixel count, because the pictures almost always need to cropped. More than 5 MP or 6 MP will likely result in the camera taking too long to save the images, and slowing down the rate at which pictures can be taken.

Size: the camera should be small enough to fit into a pocket, and should ideally provide protection for the lens and LCD screen. Most cameras in this category dont provide any protection, but it sure would be nice.

Batteries: Rechargable Li batteries are fine as long as they are relaceable. If a camera has a rechargeable battery, that is not replacable, there is simply no way it will last long enough. The other alternative is to use AA batteries. I have found the Everready Lithium cells to be very good. They are expensive, at around $10 for four, but they do truely last a long time. Of course using hte electronic flash a lot will kill any battery. I used to like the Nickel Hydride batteries, since they hold a lot of power, but they have a lot of internal leakage, by which I mean they run down even when they are not being used, whereas the Lithium cells have almost infinite shelf life, and can still be used for occasional pictures after being carried around in a camera for months. Finally, always, always carry a spare set of batteries, whatever type of batteries you use.

Startup: The camera should be fast to power up. It should not take more than a second or two at the most to get ready to take a picture. Second, a camera should remember which mode it was in when you shut it off, so you don't have to reete it back to the way you want each time. Some variations on this theme are acceptable, but at the least it should remember how the flash was set, and whether it was in still or video mode. Some cameras don't have this problem, because they have actual slide switches to select mode, but these can easily get bumped in a pocket to leave you set in the wrong mode.

Video: The camera should take video at 640x480 resolution, at 30fps, and it should produce either .AVI files or .MOV files. The video bit rate should be between 1Mbps (Megabit per second) and 2Mbps, and the compressor codec should be either MPEG4, or MJPEG, so it will record around an 1 hour/GB (GigaByte) of storage. Under low light conditions, it is permissable lower the actual frame rate and introduce smear, but the sensor should have enough sensitivity and gain to produce results other than a black frame under low light situations. The camera must have sound recording capability, but it can be monoral, and doesn't need to be super high quality, but it must have AGC (automatic gain control), so it won't overload under noisy conditions, like at a motorcycle rally. The CAMP34 is a very interesting camera, but it has no AGC on the audio recordings, and is set much too sensitive for even normal conditions, so it overloads almost all the time.

Video NONOs: On the negative side, don't ever buy a digital video camera that records in Microsoft ASF format. They say they are MPEG4, but the visual results I have seen are poor. All the ASF cameras I have tried pixelate (get blocky) when you move the camera while recording, or when the subject moves. In addition the videos produced by these cameras cannot easily be converted to other formats. To make matters worse, you can't always tell from the packaging. i recenlty looked at an AIPTEK camera, that looked great in the store, but rather than take a risk, I wrote down the details and model number, and looked it up on the web when i got home. Sure enough it recorded in .ASF format, but they don't tell you that on the package. They just say "Records in MPEG4". My general rule is : If the package doesn't say .AVI or .MOV or Quicktime, or DIVX, then don't buy it. MPEG4 is great, but not in a .ASF wrapper.

Viewfinder: Many of the digital cameras I buy have only an LCD display for viewing while recording. Most of these cameras, actually all that I have seen, don't work well in bright sunlight. This is exactly where most videos are taken, so not being able to see what you are taking is a big problem. Ideally, there should always be an optical viewfinder so you can see approximately what you are shooting.

Lens Cover: most of the low cost digital cameras use very tiny lenses, with very small sensors, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to use a removable lens cover that would easily get lost. fortunately most of these cameras solve this problem by putting optical glass in front of the lens that is flat, and can easily be cleaned with a shirt sleeve. you should be careful not to scratch it, but pretty much any soft cloth can be used to wipe away smudges. You should check and clean this glass regularly, because most cameras make it very easy to put your finger prints on the lens cover, which reduces the quality of each picture you take. Of course if you like soft focus pictures, then I guess you don't need to worry about that.

Form Factor: All digital cameras should be able to be set on a table or shelf, without having to prop them up to get them to sit straight. In other words, they should have a flat bottom. Of all the great things about the Digilife DDV-S670, one of the worst was that you could not set it down to take a picture. It would not sit straight, and it did not have a tripod socket. It was designed to be hand held Period. Is this a deal breaker, well no but it was certainly inconvenient.

Flash Cards: Don't buy the cheapest flash card you can find. In particular, I don't like PQI brand, because when I bought one, it had such a slow write time it failed to even work. As Forrest Gump would say, "Cheap Is as Cheap Does". You get what you pay for, except when you get less than what you pay for. Look for name brand cards to go on sale. I have had found Lexar cards to work ok, but for some cameras, you will need to buy faster cards. Be careful about speed ratings too, PQI likes to rate some of theirs at 60X, whatever that means. A speed rating should be in MB/Sec. 6 MB/Sec to 10 MB/Sec should be fast enough for most video work, unless you are buying a very high end camera that specifically says it needs more.

Production: So now that you have a small digital camera that can take videos, what are you going to do with all those video you are shooting? Well, the obvious answer is to burn them onto DVDs. You can play them on your computer, but it is a lot easier to share them with friends if you can put them into their DVD player.

Platform: My prefered video production system is a Macintosh. Now I can hear you already saying things like "oh, those are too expensive", and there was a time when that was true, but Apple has done a lot to bring the price of a Macintosh down to the common man (or woman). I have been using a Macintosh for video production since they came out with the original iMac DV, which ran at 400MHz. Think about it, if you can do video production on a 400 MHz Mac, then any Mac that you can get today at any speed is capable of the same thing. You are not likely to even be able to find a Mac that slow. Now it is true that a modern Mac with a 1 GHz processor running OS X with at least 512MB of memory will make things a lot easier, but even that should be available for about $500, which is the bottom end price wize of PCs, which won't come with any software, or will come with software that doesn't really work well. New macintosh computers today like the Mac mini come with all the software you will need to not only do video production, but most other common home tasks as well. You know you want it, now is the time.

Price: Back to digital cameras, I prefer to stic with digital cameras that fall into the under $200 price category. There are quite a few cameras to choose from, and while i haven't found the perfect one yet, I don't think it is too far off. Now if I could just get some camera manufacturers to read this blog, i might actually get what i want.

CAMP34 by i.Parris

Here is another very interesting camera. This is the latest digital video camera that I have purchased that I am still using. The CAMP34 is a very compact unit, that had a 2.5 inch display. Like the DDV-S670 and the iJoy, it has no optical view finder, so you are stuck using the built in screen, which can be a problem in bright sunlight. The screen is a little better than the DDV-S670, so it is somewhat more usable outdoors. The CAMP34 claims to have a 6MP sensor, though it acts more like a 2MP camera in terms of resolution. Perhaps the biggest weakness in the CAMP34 is it's fixed focus lens, or perhaps it's optics. I have found none of it's pictures to be very sharp. They always seem to be a little blurry. I don't know if this is because of the higher resolution sensor makes everything look soft, or whether the camera just isn't in focus. The pictures it takes are ok, but they just aren't very sharp. I think I must have gotten an early, perhaps pre-release model, since none of it's buttons are labeled. I had to read the manual and memorize their functions. Not a big deal, probably later samples will have labeling. Like the iJoy, the lens flips inside to protect it. This is very handy, since I tend to keep my cameras in a pocket, and on a motorcycle, you never know what kind of junk will end up in there with it, so it is very handy to have the lens protected.

Like all of the cameras I have been looking at, the CAMP34 can be an MP3 player, but I am convinced that Apple and their iPod don't have anything to worry about from the CAMP34. I have yet to see digital camera with an MP3 player function that is more than just barely usable. Come to think of it, most MP3 players that are supposed to be just MP3 players are generally just barely usable. I know many of you won't agree with me, but I view most consumers as "penny wise and pound foolish", they save money, but get even less than their money's worth.

The CAMP34 charges from the included USB II cable. It includes a nice little flexy tripod, stereo headphones and a video out cable for connection to the TV, which I haven't tried. I bought mine from GEEKS.COM, which you can find at the link above.

Conclusion: All in all, the CAMP34 is ok, it has good battery life, though the battery is not replacable. It works with a Macintosh, search the web for the FFMPEGX and MovieGate software. It is fairly rugged, and take ok pictures. It's fixed focus lens is probably it's greatest weakness. The flip inside lens protects the optics well, though the plastic body shows wear pretty quickly.

Rating: **1/2 out of 5

Digilife DDV-S670

Here is another of the digital video cameras in my collection. This is the DDV-S670. What a wonderful name. Here is the Digilife page for the DDV-S670

The 670 is a very interesting camera. It looks and acts somewhat like a cell phone, you unfold it, which automatically turns it on. you normally hold it horizontally to take pictures landscape, but you have tohold it vertical when you take video, or you will have ot watch your videos while laying down. The display swivels so you can take pictures of yourself. There is a three position focus selector, landscape, groups and portraits. This works pretty well, you just have to remember to select the right one before snapping the picture, or it will be blurry. Mostly this was a problem when i wanted to take a picture os something fairly close, and I forgot to select the right mode. This is a common problem with these fixed focus cameras, you just have to have a brain. The 670 runs off of an NP-60 Li battery, which was easy to get at Fry's Electronics for around $20. It is very worth while to have a spare battery, even though the battery life of this camera is very good. I could record over an hour of video on a charge.

The 670 does have one peculiarity that could drive you nuts. It defaults to being a video camera, so when my wife tried to take pictures with it, she was always taking video of peoples feet, because she didn't realize she needed to select photo mode. She would think she was taking a picture, and the camera would continue to record video of whatever she was pointing it at. This is a shortcoming that some cameras overcome by defaulting to the last mode you were in when you turn them off. I'm sure she would have learned to use it eventually, but it was my camera, so she only touched it occasionally.

The one fairly serious weakness of the 670 is that since it uses only the LCD screen for viewing while taking photos or video, it can be very difficult to video in bright light, since you can't really see the screen under daylight conditions. This would tend to imply it was best used indoors. Indoors, it worked ok in normal room light, but if the light level is low, it has no night mode, so basically you just get a dark screen. unlike the iJoy, it uses the traditional electronic flash, so youcan't use the flash while recording video, just photos.

Video recording was at 640x480, and claims to be 30fps, but I think it drops at lower light levels, producing the expected smearing.

The 670 has a digital zoom, which was mostly useless. Like many digital zooms today, it would just throw away parts of the picture to pretend to zoom, resulting in no more actual detail in the image than if you did not use the zoom. It had the same problem when using video, the image would just get more pixely when you zoomed. Some of the more modern cameras are starting to use simulated optical zoom when you are shooting video. What they do is use all the pixels of the sensor and downsample to 640x480 to save, so when you szom, it just uses a smaller portion of the sensor, but it is still using more than a 640x480 portion of the sensor, so the video quality is still good. For the technically inclinded, it is a question of whether you zoom before you downsample or not. Older cameras downsample then crop to zoom, newer cameras crop to zoom then downsample. The difference is night and day, newer cameras can zoom digitally and actually get more detail in the resulting image as you zoom, just like a real optical zoom. Isn't technology wonderful.

Dispite it's limitations, I liked the 670 a lot. It protected it's screen by folding up. It had good battery life, and used a battery you could actually buy. The image quality was decent, probably around 3MP, though they advertized 6MP. The color quality was good. It was lots of fun to use, and best of all it records in AVI format, so it can be converted to work with the macintosh. You can get a little more than an hour of video recording on a 1GIG SD card.

Conclusion: All in all, I think this is decent camera, it has good battery life, it works with a Macintosh, search the web for the FFMPEGX and MovieGate software. It is rugged, and take pretty good pictures. It also has three focus positions, which makes it more generally useful that some of the other fixed cameras I have tried.

Rating: *** out of 5

i-JOY by MobiDV H12

I bought the iJoy while I was on a business trip in California. I saw a Fry's Electronics ad, and it looked interesting. retails for something around $200, but was on sale for $99. Right in my price range. I went to Fry's to look for it, and found it in the video camera area, instead of in the digital camera area. It is billed as a video camera, so I guess that makes sense.

You can read a review by someone else on the iJoy here. (The page is slow to load, but has lots of pictures.)

Anyway, The first words out of the sales person's mouth I spoke with were; "The battery only lasts 30 minutes". To which I responded; "Thank you", ignoring them completely. I should have listened. You see, I had recently bought a DDV-S670 which uses an NP-60 Li battery, and it seems to have pretty good battery life, running around an hour on a charge when taking stills or video. So, when I saw the iJoy, I figured that it would have a similar battery, and similar performance. Big mistake. The iJoy uses a 3.7 volt 780mAh Li battery, that thinks it is about out of energy after 10 to 15 minutes of recording. (The DDV-S670 has a 3.7 vold 1050mAh Li battery.) In fact the iJoy only shows full for a couple of minutes after charging, so I suspect the camera simply doesn't fully charge the battery completely. By the way, I tried to get another batter, so I could have a spare. It is supposed to use a Nokia N7210 battery, but I couldn't find one at Fry's, no luck there.

The iJoy is a fixed focus camera, and unlike some low cost cameras, it doesn't have a macro selector, so you get what you get. Overall, given the fairly wide lens, this arrangement works ok. Next to the lens, you will see the flash, which consists of two high intensity white LEDs. These can be used for flash stills, constant illumination while videoing, and as a flash light to help you see where you are going. They work fairly well in very low light, but in normal room light, they don't seem to have any effect for flash fill, so don't bother. By the way, my comments on the short battery life, wee not because of the LED flash, I did not normally use it, and the problem is not related to the flash.

In terms of features, it has lots.

Under Photo Basic settings you can manually control exposure, use center, central, or averaging light meter, manually select shutter speed, which is interesting since it is fixed apature, so you are really just adjusting exposure. You can adjust image size and image quality. Neither of these last tow have much effect on the actual results, but you can do it. Under Advanced settings you can set effects None/red/green/blue filter or Sepia, ISO speed 100/200/400, burst mode on/off. Self timer on/off anddate stamp on/off.

Under Video settings, there are similar adjustments, along with a setting to prefer faster shutter rate for sports, or more light for night time shooting.

It all seems like a pretty sophisticated camera, I wish it was as good as it appears. Of course I don't want to forget to mention that it is an MP3 player, and a voice recorder, as well as a flash light. Seems the only thing they left out is the FM radio.

I suppose by now you are wondering what kind of pictures it takes. Well, here is a simple picture taken out my office window;



Click the image to the right to see the 1024x768 version.

Stills: This photo was originally 2MP, and has been resized down to 1024x768. It isn't too bad, though it seems a little dark and flat. It claims to take pictures up to 5MP, but they are just doing some pixel expanding in the camera, and the actual resolution is still only 2MP. I would call it usable for stills.

Video: I don't have an example for you, because this camera uses the dreaded Microsoft ASF formatted version of MPEG4, which can not be easily used on any web site I know of. I'm sure many of you will correct me as soon as I post this. I can tell you that it takes 640x480 video at 15fps, at least in decent light. With low light, the frame rate slows to allow more light accumulation. In very low light, there is lots of visible smearing with motion, something which consider acceptable. The video quality was ok, it even simulates optical zoom, using the extra resolution of the sensor to prevent image degradation while zooming, at least up to about 2.4X. beyond that, the video image degrades because of resolution loss.

Conclusion: All in all, even with a file format of .ASF. Videos can be played on the Macintosh with VLC. I would consider this camera worthy, if it had decent battery life. It doesn't, so I can't even recommend it to my Windows only friends.

Rating: ** out of 5

My Digital Cameras

This is a new blog that will contain experiences, views, opinions and reviews, both personal and subjective, on the digital cameras I purchase. I tend to buy a lot of cameras, so there should be new stuff appearing on this blog fairly often.

The kind of cameras I buy are generally the small low cost digital video cameras, that record onto some kind of flash memory. You see I am on a quest to find the perfect portable digital camera. It is a quest that I don't believe will be successful for a while, but will be at least entertaining along the way.

I thought I would begin this blog with a picture of me. Taken with the iJoy by MobiDV. It isn't very good, but it is all I could come up with on short notice.

About Me: I am 55 this year, and I have been a tech nerd since highschool. I am a software manager by profession. I have spent many years as a software developer, using an obscure language called Forth. Some of you might know me by some of my earlier projects, like F-PC and Win32Forth. I have been interested in photography for most of my life, and owned many cameras during that time. The last few years, I have been riding motorcycles, and had a desire to always have a camera with me to photograph the various events I attend. Thus began a quest with no forseeable end, as I search for the ideal pocketable digital camera with decent video capability.

I should also mention that I am an Apple snob. I used and developed software for PCs, but I prefer Macintosh computers. This leads me to have a serious dislike for any digital cmaera that produces ASF (Microsoft specific) files that cannot easily be manipulated on a Macintosh. Yes, I do know that programs like VLC allow some ASF files to be viewed on a Mac, but I want to make DVDs and web videos that most people can read, including Macintosh owners. So, I prefer Quicktime compatible cameras, and AVI compatible cmaeras that produce files that can be converted to a format that is useful on a Macintosh.

The bigest complaint I have with the packaging of many digital cameras, is that you can't tell by reading the package if they produce .AVI files, or .ASF files. They all say they produce MPEG4, but as many of you know, one person's MPEG4 is another person's unreadable, useless .ASF file.