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6+ Megapixel SLRs In recent months, single-lens reflex cameras have been announced/ released offering a staggering 6+ megapixel resolution. They’re claimed, for all intents and purposes, to offer “film” quality. Do they? 32  Silicon Chip www.siliconchip.com.au Here’s what you get in the EOS D60 kit for your not inconsiderable amount of money: the Canon EOS D60 body, shoulder strap, charger, Li-Ion rechargeable battery, various input/output cables and two CDs of PC/Mac photo manipulation software, including Photoshop LE. Notice what’s NOT there? That’s right – a lens! J ust how far can digital camera technology go? And just how good can they get? Recently we had a    (very!) short opportunity to have a look at one of the new breed of high resolution digital cameras. We’re talking serious product here, not your run-of-the-mill digitals which are fast reaching the “free in every packet of cornflakes” stage. OK, slight exaggeration – but you get the drift. While we’ve lusted after several digital cameras in the past year or so, they have been in the 3-4 megapixel range and most have been so-called “compact digitals” – more intended for consumer happy snaps, blown up to no more than postcard size, than for serious users (eg, very keen amateurs, or professionals such as media photographers, wedding/function/PR photographers, and so on). And while 3 or 4 megapixels can give good results, by-and-large they have not been capable of competing with the results from most SLR (single-lens reflex) 35mm film cameras – even relatively inexpensive ones. When you wanted to make a big enlargement, or crop a small section of the image, film has won every time. Then back in March, I heard about three new digital cameras about to come onto the market – the Nikon D100, Fuji S2 and the Canon EOS D60 – which could change all that. All offered more than 6 megapixel resolution, in a physical format akin to the SLRs we’ve used for decades. In fact, like most SLRs, they featured a wide range of interchangeable lenses, either from their own stable or from a myriad of after-market lens suppliers. As it happens, the Nikon and Fuji are based on essentially the same platform and use the same lenses. The Nikon was scheduled for release in July but no firm release date could be obtained for the Fuji. The Canon was first released around March but was in extremely short supply. There was little point in talking to Fuji but we asked both Nikon and Canon to make a review model available. Nikon promised, Canon delivered. So in this brief look at the state-ofthe-art in digital cameras, we only look at the Canon EOS D60. The other two, at least from our research, will be quite similar. The Canon has a slight edge on the other two in resolution – 6.3 mega-pixels effective, versus the Fuji and Nikon’s 6.1 megapixels effective. The sensors in digital cameras have more pixels than actually used – 6.52 in the case of the Canon. There are limitations, mainly optical, on how much of the sensor can be used to produce an image. Affordable? Right from the outset, we have to say that the new high resolution dig- ital SLRs are not for everybody. They are expensive (some might say very!) – and their attachments are expensive. The body kit (as pictured above) for the Canon EOS D60 will set you back more than five thousand dollars. That does NOT include a lens. A zoom lens from Canon’s “EF” family (16-35mm; f2.8) another three grand. Add an electronic flash and you’re nudging the ten thousand dollar mark. That’s serious money – and for that, you have to be a serious photographer. Having said that, there are many serious photographers! Stocks of the EOS D60 are in such short supply world-wide that you’ll almost certainly go on a waiting list. (Lucky, that – it gives you time to save up!). We said before that these cameras were aimed at serious amateurs or professionals. A typical example is sports photography, especially press sports photography. With a camera such as this, a photographer can take his pictures, down-load to a notebook computer and email a selection via mobile phone to anywhere in the world within a few minutes of the action. During the Sydney Olympic Games, there were some reports of photos taken during an event, printed in newspapers and delivered back to Homebush Bay before the spectators had left the First look/review by SILICON CHIP photographer, Ross Tester www.siliconchip.com.au October 2002  33 Top and rear views of the camera, showing the myriad of controls. The dial at far left (in the normal film rewind position) controls the exposure modes, the thumb dial on the right is for exposure speed. The rather confusing two on/off switches above control either camera power (top left) or the quick control dial (centre) immediately underneath. stadium for that event! That’s only possible via the digital route. Just think of the time taken to get the roll(s) of film to a processor (even on site), processing time itself, selection, scanning and despatch to the paper – and you can see why digital is the way to go! That sort of flexibility and speed is worth its weight in gold to a newspaper. Small wonder then that Canon has been showing off the D60 to most, if not all, of the nation’s media groups. Speaking of the Olympic Games, I was one of those 42,000 “vollies”. At the first event, the Triathlon, I was assigned to media access control, checking the passes of press people wanting to enter restricted areas. We had the photographers “corralled” in a holding area for a short while (much to their angst!) and I was able to have a good look (drool!) at their gear. Even then, a full two years ago, I marvelled at the range of digital cameras (and digital backs for conventional cameras) which many of the world’s leading photographers sported. Sure made my 35mm equipment look sick! Back then, three or four megapixels was pretty much the limit. And back then, I can’t recall any of this class of camera available for less than $10,000 (the top-of-the-line models where somewhere up in the stratosphere!) Imagine how much those photographers would give to get their hands on six megapixels at $5000-ish! Incidentally, the EOS D60 easily 34  Silicon Chip beats Canon’s own “flagship” professional camera, the EOS 1 D, at four megapixels. Admittedly, that is one v-e-r-y tricked up camera with many more professional-type features than the D60. But at more than ten grand for the body alone, it would want to be! Incidentally, some of those long lenses you see used by sports photographers cost many, many times more than the camera itself. The topof-the-range Canon EF lens, which can do an admirable “head & shoulders” from more than a kilometre away, will cost you more than a house. (There is only one such lens in Australia, by the way!). We have, until now, been concentrating on that six megapixel resolution. But of course resolution is only a part of the story. Let’s now have a look at the D60 in detail. What you get Ignoring the fact that there is no film nor film transport mechanism, the EOS Some of the detail available in the LCD screen on top of the camera. It doesn’t all come on at once . . . D60 is in most senses a “traditional” SLR camera. It has a focal-plane shutter, a flip-up mirror, variable shutter speeds, variable exposure settings . . . everything you’d expect to find. Well, with the possible exception of the lens: that’s an option, so you can purchase the one(s) that suit(s) your needs best. (Of course, many purchasers will already have their own selection of lenses). But wait, there’s more! Being totally electronic, there is a whole lot more. First of all, as well as a TTL (through the lens) viewfinder with integral camera data display, there’s a 1.8-inch TFT colour monitor built in. There’s a large LCD panel on the top of the camera which gives a huge range of information in four languages (more on this later). There’s an array of pushbuttons on the rear of the camera along with a quick control dial (there’s also another main dial on the top of the camera). The one thing you can’t do is open up the back of the camera – there’s no need, of course, because there’s no film. One thing this does do is make the body that much more rigid than a standard 35mm. I was intrigued to note the O symbol engraved on the body, which in a film camera shows the exact position of the film for extreme macro photography. Except there’s no film! (Obviously, this symbol in a digital shows the position of the CMOS sensor). A small built-in flash is provided but www.siliconchip.com.au The ZoomBrowser utility is very nice and easy to use. It’s a whole lot quicker to select shots using this utility than opening them in, say, Photoshop. You can instantly enlarge each pic to view it on this “monitor screen.” even more impressive is the camera’s “evaluative through-the-lens” (E-TTL) exposure control when using this flash or one of the Canon Speedlite flash guns. In the time between you pressing the shutter release and when the mirror goes up, the camera fires a brief preflash, evaluates the ambient light and reflected illumination, and calculates the exact flash output needed. Now that’s clever! This pre-flash is also part of the red-eye reduction mechanism. (Redeye occurs when flash light reflects off the blood-filled vessels behind the retina at the back of the eye when the eye’s iris is wide open [ie, in low light situations]. The pre-flash causes the iris to briefly close down, minimising reflected red light). As far as storage is concerned, the EOS D60 accepts Type 1 or Type II CompactFlash cards or even a high capacity Microdrive. With a 128MB CompactFlash card, you can get around 15 shots in RAW format (3072 x 2048; 7.4MB picture size), 48 shots in large, fine format (also 3072 x 2048 but compressed to 2.5MB picture size) and as many as 255 shots in small (1536 x 1024; 0.5MB picture size). RAW format, by the way, is “as she is shot” – a 16-bit RGB-TIFF, for maximum image quality and content. Put in a Microdrive and well, the sky is (almost) the limit, especially with the capacity of Microdrives increasing almost exponentially these days. How big a pic? Our argument against digital cameras has been on the basis of resolution/ enlargement. Let’s look a little more closely at those digital formats and what you can do with them. We said at the outset that these digital cameras were “near film quality”. But what does that mean? At the highest camera resolution, it’s claimed that you could print an A3 size image (420 x 297mm) on photographic paper and it would be very difficult (if not impossible for most observers) to tell the difference between it and the same scene on an A3 print from 35mm film. In fact, with the processing power available to you in digital format, it could be much better: sharpening, colour correction, special effects, etc are all dramatically easier in digital format. Incidentally, a copy of Adobe Photoshop LE, the “lite” version of the industry-standard image editing program, is included with the box of goodies you get with the camera. We’ll look at the other goodies shortly. Above A3 and the film starts to take over. But then again, how often do you need to enlarge a 35mm negative (or positive) to greater than A3 (that’s about a 16x12 in oldspeak)? Anyone, especially a pro, wanting this type of end result would almost certainly turn to a medium-format film camera. But for your typical postcard-size prints or even 10x8s (250x200mm) or 12x10s (300x250mm), the convenience and flexibility of the hi-res digital wins hands down. Control of your pictures We cannot hope to tell you We know these aren’t particularly exciting shots but they do prove a point! Video monitors and TV screens (left) usually take a fair bit of mucking around to get just right. This shot was taken hand held – I just aimed the camera, zoomed in and pressed the shutter. The D60 did everything else – and did it right! Likewise, the closeup of the brochure at right; again handheld, point and shoot. Auto focus, auto exposure, auto everything. This could be used for archiving purposes. www.siliconchip.com.au October 2002  35 everything about the EOS D60 in this brief review – we didn’t discover them all ourselves in the week or so we had it. Briefly, though, we’ll summarise some of the more important functions: Autofocus: a 3-point autofocus system is built in – you can choose which of the three points you use or let the camera make the decisions for you. Of course, you can also turn AF off and drive the focus yourself. In the past, there has been some criticism of the amount of battery consumed by autofocus. We didn’t find this a problem; we did run the batteries flat by forgetting to turn the camera off, though. (Changing one of the inbuilt settings to auto turn-off after a fixed, settable, time fixed this). Metering: a triple metering system is at your disposal. The camera can use a 35-zone evaluative metering system, partial metering or centre-weighted metering. You can also override the metering system by ±2 stops in half-stop or one-third-stop increments. Or you can have the camera automatically bracket under, normal and over exposure shots for you. Without film to worry about wasting, why not? Shooting modes: there are 11 shooting modes programmed in, set from a single dial. Along with a fully manual mode, you can choose from a fully automatic programmed (AE) mode, shutter priority AE for fast-moving scenes, aperture priority AE when you’re worried about depth of field – and then there are five modes set by dialling up a pictogram: portraits, close-ups, landscapes, sports and night scenes. That might be thought of as shooting for dummies. Maybe so, but gee it’s easy! Shutter speeds: from 1/4000s to 30s plus bulb. Drive modes: you have the choice of a conventional single frame (one frame per shutter release) or continuous shooting (á lá a motor drive – up to eight frames at three frames per second). And there’s a self-timer built in for good measure. White balance: once again, manual control where you make the white point decisions, or seven modes of automatic/preset. Pictograms again make it easy – daylight, overcast, tungsten light, fluorescent light, external flash and a custom mode 36  Silicon Chip Canon’s “PhotoStitch” utility: Not perfect but gee, it’s not bad! We just had to show you this nifty utility which is on the Canon CD. It allows you to join two pics (digital, scanned, downloaded, etc) in a “panorama” mode. It’s very quick and easy to use and while it’s not perfect, it does a commendably good job – almost as if shot with a very wide angle lens! You could in theory keep adding photo after photo after photo! We started with these two building pics, shot from exactly the same spot. Here’s what they would have looked like merely superimposed one on the other. . . And here’s how PhotoStitch joined them. Perspective is a bit strange but otherwise, not a real bad result in smoothing the building lines out. The join is barely visible. plus a fully automatic mode which allows the camera to react to changing lighting conditions during the shoot. LCD Panel The LCD panel on the top of the camera, in conjunction with information in the viewfinder, gives even the most demanding photographer every piece of information they could ever want. Of course there are the things you’d expect: shutter speed, ISO speed, aperture and so on – but there is so much more that we’ve reproduced the manual graphic to show you. It’ll tell you when your battery is low, the mode you’re in, how many shots you’ve taken/have left, exposure info, drive mode . . . there is very little it doesn’t tell you and that is almost certainly taken care of via the rear screen. Viewfinder Much of this information, especially the vital stuff, is repeated in the 20mm viewfinder so you don’t need to take your eye away from the action to see what the camera is doing. The viewfinder has a –3.0 to +1.0 dioptre adjustment to cater for most eyesight. Software We’ve already mentioned Photo-shop Lite – but there are other goodies. Whether you work in Windows or Mac, there is software to make your life easy: ZoomBrowser EX (Win) or Image-Browser (Mac) allow you to download, catalog and print your digital pictures. www.siliconchip.com.au How much resolution do you need? We've been extolling the virtues of 6+ megapixel resolution – but obviously that comes at a (significant) price. Resolution determines image quality – the higher the resolution, the better the final print. It should be fairly obvious that higher resolution packs more detail into the image than lower resolution. The higher the number of megapixels, the higher the resolution. First of all, let’s look at that term, megapixels. Mega means, naturally, millions of, and pixel is an abbreviation for “picture element”. In the camera, the image sensor doesn’t work as a single unit. Instead, it’s divided into (usually) millions of individual sensors, each able to react independently to changes in light level (shades) and colours (hues). Each one of these is called a pixel – and the more pixels in that image sensor, the better the resolution, because more information is provided in the image. How can you work out what reso- lution you really need? To produce a very good (photo-quality) print, you generally need around 300ppi (pixels per inch – yes, it's usually expressed in imperial measurement). You can get away with less (sometimes 200ppi is used) but quality drops away quite quickly. It’s not too difficult to work out how many megapixels you need. Once again, we need to work in inches. And all this assumes you are using the total area of the sensor for your enlargement. If you are cropping (choosing only a certain section of the image to enlarge and discarding the rest) these figures get blown right out of the water! Say you want a high quality, 10x8 print, so you’d choose 300ppi resolution. Multiply both dimensions of the print by 300: 10 x 300= 3000, 8 x 300= 2400. Therefore, your camera needs to produce an image 3000x2400 pixels. Can it? Multiply the 3000 by 2400 and you come up with 7,200,000 or 7.2 megapixels – even beyond the 6.3 megapixel Canon. Of course, if you are prepared to settle for 200ppi in the final print, the equation becomes 2000 x 1600 or 3.2megapixels. Perhaps now you can understand why many of those “point'n'shoot” cameras with only a few hundred kilopixels or so produce less-than-satisfactory prints – at virtually any size! So how does the claim for 16x12 inch from 6.3Mp work out? Theoretically, even at 200ppi that’s 3200 x 2400 or 7.7Mp. The answer is in the processing – either within the camera itself, the output device (the digital printer at your local processor’s) or in your computer. Many cameras and most photo-manipulation software have the capacity to “interpolate”, manufacturing information from the pixels around it and sort-of “filling in the gaps” with similar information. It’s not perfect, but these days is capable of surprisingly good results if you don’t push it too far. PhotoStitch lets you merge several images together to form one continuous panoramic photo. This software isn’t limited to the digital pics from the D60 – it will work with files from any source (even document scans). useful for the large RAW files. It also lets you remotely control the camera (with your PC) to shoot single frame, timer and interval timer (eg, time lapse or unattended). But would you leave your D60 unattended? I know I wouldn’t! The package also includes the cables you’re going to need such as a USB port connector, video out (did we mention that the D60 can output to a video monitor?) and power adaptor. RemoteCapture You can save images direct to your computer rather than the Compact-Flash or Microdrive. This is really Just for comparison, the same setup done under our Balcar studio flash with the D60 (left) and my trusty old (very old!) Minolta SRT-101 using Fuji Sensia 35mm film, f16, 1/60sec. Shadowing is more pronounced on the Canon. www.siliconchip.com.au Power A rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack is included which is claimed will give a capacity of between 400 and 620 frames, depending on the temperature and whether or not the flash is used. With the review sample, a battery grip was supplied which takes a second battery, doubling the number of shots. The grip also makes handling the camera in vertical mode much easier. But it will set you back another $280 or so. One thing we didn’t like: with the battery grip in place and the 16-28mm lens fitted, the camera was front-heavy and always fell forward onto the front edge of the lens. Not a big problem, just something to keep in mind. And while on the subject of gripes, the lens cap could not be made captive in any way – and with a lens of this value, you don’t want to lose the lens cap. OK, let’s cut to the chase We’ve told you all about the camera and what it will do. About the only October 2002  37    In most cases, the 8 or 16 megabyte (MB) card that came with your camera won’t cut it. Get the highest capacity removable storage card within your budget. For most occasions, a 128MB card will suffice. Rapidly falling prices are making these cards very affordable – having more capacity than you think you’ll need lets you concentrate on taking pictures and not filling up the card. thing we haven’t talked about is what it did for us! In one word, everything. Everything that we wanted it to do, it did. We put it through its paces in various modes – as a studio camera (attached to the same Balcar studio flash we use for all our 35mm film photography); as a portrait camera (with flash and without); as a function/event camera (I shot my surf club presentation night with it!); even as a happy snap camera taking various scenes outdoors. I was tempted to take it along to the State of Origin league match but wiser counsel prevailed . . . Just for the hell of it, we even shot things like a computer monitor and a printed page in extreme close-up to see how the autofocus and auto-exposure coped (it did!). And we also took it to one of our advertisers who had some bits and pieces he wanted us to see in a very dimly-lit room. No dramas! Now all this of course only scratched the surface as far as the capabilities of the D60 are concerned. We would have loved to have it for another month (or 50!) to really play with it – but what it did do more than convinced us that it was more than capable of being a very, very versatile workhorse. Our verdict: more than acceptable. It’s a not-so-little ripper, even if you almost have to mortgage the farm to buy it. We said it wasn’t the camera for everyone. But for serious users who want to go the digital route, spec-wise the Canon outperforms the Nikon and Fuji “equivalents”; practically, there does-n’t appear to be too much between them (even though we haven’t played with the others) and, looking at reported/likely street pricing, the Canon is a little more keenly priced. Not much – but it could be a couple of hundred in your pocket. By the way, if you are interested in seeing the D60 stacked up against other cameras, Google EOS D60 (and/ or Nikon D100/Fuji S2) and you’ll be swamped. SC 10. Get an external card reader. More info: Digital Camera Tips from SanDisk* While the basic principles of photography still apply, digital cameras have their own unique characteristics that differ from traditional film cameras. To compile this advice, SanDisk enlisted the help of Rick Sammon, host of the Digital Photography Workshop on the US DIY Television Network, photography instructor at leading photo learning workshops around the US and author of 21 books on photography. Here are Rick’s 10 tips for taking better pictures with a digital camera: 1: Move in closer.    Most pictures will benefit if you take a few steps forward. Having your subject fill most the frame helps your viewer understand your photo and provides details that are often more interesting than an overall view. To get the clearest picture, use the camera’s optical zoom if you can’t move closer to your subject. 2: Use your viewfinder, not the LCD    A digital camera’s LCD screen uses lots of battery power so to maximize battery life, use the camera’s viewfinder. 3: Anticipate the moment.    Most point-and-shoot digital cameras have an inherent delay between pressing the shutter button and when the camera takes the picture. Try to anticipate the action and always be ready to shoot. 4: Use available light when possible.    Indoors, the mood created by natural light is lost with a flash. Whenever possible, position a subject by a door or window and avoid using the on-camera flash. 5.Shoot at the highest resolution available.    If you want to print your images or enlarge a part of the image, you’ll get the best results from a larger file. You can always decrease the resolution of the image on your computer to email them but starting off with a low-resolution image does not give you the flexibility to print your picture. 6.Take as many pictures as possible.    The more images you take, the better your chances are of getting that special shot. Because you don’t incur any costs until you print your images, take as many shots as you can. 7.Delete unwanted images ‘on-the-fly.’    Immediately deleting images you don’t want minimises the task of deleting images because you’re running out of storage capacity. When in doubt, save the image until you can view it on your computer monitor. 8. Use rechargeable batteries. Digital cameras are notorious for consuming batteries. Consider investing in an extra rechargeable battery. You can continue to take pictures while the other set is charging. 9.Think big.    One of the easiest and fastest ways to transfer images between the camera and computer is to use a card reader. This is often faster than using the transfer cable included with your camera. In addition, if your camera does not have a docking/recharging station, the card readers avoid tying up your camera and draining its batteries when it is left on for long periods of time while transferring images. * SanDisk (www.sandisk.com) is the world leader in removable storage media used in digital cameras, including the “CompactFlash” used in the Canon EOS D60. 38  Silicon Chip www.canon.com.au Acknowledgement: Our thanks to Alan Brightman of Canon Australia for his assistance in supplying the review EOS D60 (and also a 5-minute ogle at the EOS-1D!). Also thanks to SanDisk for the use of their Digital Photography Guide. www.siliconchip.com.au