New Photo Camera

[TEK NINJA]

Yeah, for christmas I had originally planned to buy myseld a 19" LCD monitor... Well, I did buy it. The sad thing is that I found out that unless you wanted to pay over a thousand, you can't get a 19" LCD that will do decently for gaming, so I decided to return it and stick with my Sony Trinitron 20".

Instead, I bought myself a Toshiba PDR-5300, 5 megapixel camera (http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/pdr5300.html). I have always considered myself good at taking pictures in general, so here is my chance This could possibly be one of my new hobbies.

I just received it in the mail today, and I am quite happy, it seems to have lots of options, and its smaller than I thought. It even takes movie clips (well, I suppose most digicams do that, but its still cool ). The only disappointment is the fact that the secure digital card is just 16 megs... That doesn't allow me to store many things. At least this camera doesnt require any drivers. You just plug it in the USB port and its detected as a storage media which you can access like a hard drive... I have experienced the software that comes with Kodak digicams, and that was the most annoying thing ever.

Hopefully I will be posting good pics on your forum soon

In the meantime, heres a pic of Mr Cat I took with my 0.3 megapixel mobile webcam:

 

[TEK NINJA]

I tried, as an experiment, to re-do an image I saw in the "Show off your best pics!" thread which I thought looked good, here's what I got:

 

[TEK NINJA]

The moon at night. 8 seconds exposure time, no tripod.

 

[thr33face]

i would really suggest a tripod

an do some mycros, i love macros

 

[TEK NINJA]

Micros, macros?

 

[Da PlaN-R]

if you can get a tripod get a rock or something and set it to wait a few seconds after pressing the shutter and then leave it to expose sitting still (thats how i did this for exposures of about 20 seconds while waiting for lightning):

and the first pic could have had a slightly lower ISO number

and get yourself more memory. i think you could have gotten yourself a slightly better camera though. megapixels aren't everything for iamge quality

 

[TEK NINJA]

I doubt you can get a much better camera for this price... Anyhow, it seems quite good, I've managed to take better pics... I do plan to get a tripod and better memory as welll... With this I can only take 6 pics at full quality, so I plan to buy a 256 meg stick.

 

[MasterOfNone]

Originally posted by TEK NINJA
I doubt you can get a much better camera for this price... Anyhow, it seems quite good, I've managed to take better pics... I do plan to get a tripod and better memory as welll... With this I can only take 6 pics at full quality, so I plan to buy a 256 meg stick.

I don't like to bag on someone's purchase, but did you even read the review for the camera? As it was just said, "megapixels aren't everything for image quality".

Here's a part of the conclusion for your camera, in the review you linked to:

As they say, size isn't everything and, in the case of the PDR-5300, the 5-megapixel imager is not able to overcome the color balance and shooting performance issues we experienced; we honestly can't recommend this camera. If you're looking for an under-$400 family digicam capable of producing consistently good results, we suggest that you consider the recently-reviewed Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC43, the KODAK EasyShare DX6440, or the Minolta DiMAGE G500

Take a look at the sample pics and you'll see what Steve is talking about. When you get right down to it, what really matters is that you like the camera and accept it for it's weaknesses as well as it's strengths. Come to think of it, that sounds like dating advice.....

Just remember though, not one camera in a single configuration can do everything well. That's why some people who are serious about photography buy dSLR's with lens interchangability, and others buy Prosumer or lower grade cameras with fixed lenses.

 

[agentzero9]

Originally posted by TEK NINJA
I doubt you can get a much better camera for this price... .

When you say "much better" I assume you are thinking along the lines of "a 5 megapixel camera for this price."


That isn't the way you want to look at a camera purchase. You don't want to think of getting "x megapixels for this amount of money." What's better is to think of "this kind of picture quality for this amonut of money."

"That kind of picture quality" can only be determined by looking at full-sized images on the web, not by anything the manufactuer says or by the amount of megapixels.

More megapixels often does not mean you are getting a higher quality image, and in many cases it means just the opposite and you are getting a worse quality image.

I have not seen full sized images from the Toshiba so I can't make a judgement about the picture quality. Heck it may be a steal and have good resolution and excellent picture quality when compared to the cameras in the same price range.

However more often I have found that you get what you pay for. The high megapixel cameras that are cheap are usually just that. More often than not the image quality is not as good as the lower megapixel cameras that have the same price points. There are always exceptions to the rule but it's just something to keep in mind.

 

[[TQ]]

More megapixels often does not mean you are getting a higher quality image, and in many cases it means just the opposite and you are getting a worse quality image.

....

 

[agentzero9]

Originally posted by [TQ]


....

TQ I don't know where to start. I can't do the subject justice if I tried to explain that here. There is allot to understand and allot of it has to do with physics. However I will try to give you a basic idea of IQ.

Image quality is a result of 4 main components: lens, sensor size, pixel count, software processing. If either of these elements has shortcommings then the images will come out worse.


The sensor and the pixel count are the two major components that effect the amount of grain the photos (although, the internal processing also plays a LARGE amount).


Try to think of it this way. Think about putting salt in your food. Think of the pixels (i.e. megapixels) as the salt, and think of the food as the image sensor.

Now, for a given amount of food, there is a certain amount of salt that makes just the right amount of seasoning.

Thus, for a given sensor size, there is an optimal amount of pixels (more pixels for that sensor size and the image quality gets worse, less pixels for that sensor size and you are not getting as much resolution as you could be - the sensor is not living up to its full potential).

If you want to use more salt (more pixels) you need more food (a larger sensor) to balance out the increased amount of salt. More salt is only better if you have more food, more salt by itself is not better (the food is too salty).

However, from the camera manufacturer's point of view, it is very cheap to throw a ton of pixels in a tiny sensor. It is much more expensive to increase the sensor size so the sensor is actually large enough to "handle" the pixels.

Camera manufactures today are giving are more pixels without more sensor (i.e. a larger sensor). This produces unpleasant results in the images as the amount of pixels does not correctly match the sensor size. Thus, it is often the case where a 2mp camera will produce cleaner images than a 3mp camera, or a 4mp camera will produce cleaner images than a 8mp camera, and so on and so on. However, the only thing you know when buying a camera is the megapixels, which is only 1/2 the story. The key to avoiding the marketing team is, before buying your camera, download full-sized samples on the web from both the camera you are interested in and the compeition to see if the picture quality will meet your particular needs.

 

[TEK NINJA]

Originally posted by agentzero9
TQ I don't know where to start. I can't do the subject justice if I tried to explain that here. There is allot to understand and allot of it has to do with physics. However I will try to give you a basic idea of IQ.

Image quality is a result of 4 main components: lens, sensor size, pixel count, software processing. If either of these elements has shortcommings then the images will come out worse.

The sensor and the pixel count are the two major components that effect the amount of grain the photos (although, the internal processing also plays a LARGE amount).

Try to think of it this way. Think about putting salt in your food. Think of the pixels (i.e. megapixels) as the salt, and think of the food as the image sensor.

Now, for a given amount of food, there is a certain amount of salt that makes just the right amount of seasoning.

Thus, for a given sensor size, there is an optimal amount of pixels (more pixels for that sensor size and the image quality gets worse, less pixels for that sensor size and you are not getting as much resolution as you could be - the sensor is not living up to its full potential).

If you want to use more salt (more pixels) you need more food (a larger sensor) to balance out the increased amount of salt. More salt is only better if you have more food, more salt by itself is not better (the food is too salty).

However, from the camera manufacturer's point of view, it is very cheap to throw a ton of pixels in a tiny sensor. It is much more expensive to increase the sensor size so the sensor is actually large enough to "handle" the pixels.

Camera manufactures today are giving are more pixels without more sensor (i.e. a larger sensor). This produces unpleasant results in the images as the amount of pixels does not correctly match the sensor size. Thus, it is often the case where a 2mp camera will produce cleaner images than a 3mp camera, or a 4mp camera will produce cleaner images than a 8mp camera, and so on and so on. However, the only thing you know when buying a camera is the megapixels, which is only 1/2 the story. The key to avoiding the marketing team is, before buying your camera, download full-sized samples on the web from both the camera you are interested in and the compeition to see if the picture quality will meet your particular needs.

I did read reviews. Most seemed to portray the camera well. From my personal experience it does a good job, I like it... I have seen 3 comments posted on a forum too, but they seemed to come from people who had no clue what they were talking about: "This camera only makes dark pictures!".

This camera has an all glass lens system, a 5 megapixel sensor allowing 2560x1920 images (it is a 4:3 ratio which is nice). As for software processing, it has tons of options and even has a flash correction system which gives images taken with the flash a better look.

Now, what do you find wrong with this camera, have you even tried it?

By the way, I like spicy food.

 

[agentzero9]

Tek, I was not talking about your camera in particular I was simply trying to explain my previous comments to TQ who seemd to not quite understand how a camera with less megapixels can have a better image quality than a camera with more megapixels.

I have not seen images from your camera, nor do I know how well it performs, and I have not made judgements about it.

It would have been better if TQ made a new post but he asked the question in this thread so I responded to him in this thread.