It will take 2 AA batteries or a single use battery pack (that looks like two AA hooked together). You can also use a rechargeable pack that you can get with a little recharger unit (or that comes with a dock). It takes SD memory cards. It has several standard modes to select, so it very much point and shoot. It also has a neat timer feature. Just last night we had guests over and wanted to take a group pix. I set it on a tripod, hit the timer button on time, followed but the shutter button. A little red button on the front started flashing slow at first and then fast just before pix was taken. It was perfect for a family shot.
My wife loves the dock. She'll take a bunch of pictures and then put it in the dock and push the transfer button. iPhoto pops up and she hits import. That takes about 10 seconds. A couple of minutes later and all the photos will be in iPhoto. It'll take her about 30 seconds later and she'll have some music picked out for a slide show. We did it just last night, and our guests were stunned.
John On Friday, December 17, 2004, at 09:45 PM, Richard Starr wrote:
I'd like to respond to some of the issues raised during the interesting
discussion of digital cameras. I had trouble posting during the discussion, but
I'll try again.
First, available light, which means low light photography. I find my Canon
Powershot s50, 5 megapixels, is amazingly good shooting indoors without flash.
I see excellent color and reasonable "grain." I shoot a lot of pictures in this
mode. One of the unrecognized advantages of a lot of megapixels is that the
"digital noise" that develops when the signal must be amplified from the sensor
in low light is actually reduced on a high resoluton camera. Digital noise is
very similar to grain in chemical photography. It even looks similar. In film
photography, using a larger format camera reduces that apparent grain size in an
image: compare a shot on 35mm using TriX to a photo on the same film using a 2
1/4 camera. So it is in digital photography.
Some list members comment that they get poor results in low light. Maybe one
reason is that I think you need to set the camera at a higher "film speed" to
get good results. Counting on the automatic exposure feature to choose higher
speed doesn't always work well. The photos I take with my Canon set at 400 film
speed closely resemble the shots I used to print in the darkroom from the Kodak
1000 speed color negative film I loved so well. It is very satisfying.
In fact, it is amazing to me that a little camera in my pocket can do so many
things so well, from grainy low light work to smooth, elegant scenics to pretty
darn good videos. Ten years ago it would have take a shoulder braking bag full
of cameras to do the same work.
Batteries. I used to agree that cameras using AA batteries was the way to go
since you could get power in a pinch at any drug store. I found excellent
aftermarket batteries for my Canon for about $12 each so now I have three. I
have never run out of juice. And they are much smaller than AAs. So look on
the web for the availability of cheap backup batteries before you decide which
camera to buy.
Video. The newer cameras, including my Canon, actually do a pretty good job
with video. Mine can shoot 3 minutes continuously. Ten seconds after it shuts
down, it's ready for another 3 minutes. It's great to have a capable video
camera in my pocket when my 5 year old does something cute and I fill DVDs with
these video snapshots. They must be scaled 225% in Final Cut to fill the
screen, but I think they look better than when displayed on the computer
enlarged on the fly with Quicktime. I think they look as good as the 8mm
movies my parents took and they have good sound. I don't use my DV video camera
much anymore.
Hope this helps.
Rich
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