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A Pro

Photo © David Bergman

for The Heart Gallery NJ
We’ll show you how!

YOU DON’T NEED

FANCY EQUIPMENT TO
TAKE GREAT PICTURES! PAGE 32

OLYMPUS C-7070 PAGE 42

SONY CYBERSHOT PHOTO ACCESSORY

ROUNDUP
DSC-P200 PAGE 44 • Little Things Make a Big
Difference

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Photo Organizer Software

Compared TOP FOUR for Windows
www.digicamera.com
 VOLUME 9, ISSUE 36

F E A T U R E S
20 FEATURE Accessorize Your Olympus E-300 EVOLT
If you only use the kit lens and built-in flash, you’re missing half the fun!
32 FEATURE Think Like A Pro
To capture great pictures, take your cues from the best
48 FEATURE RAW Power!
How to find the digital diamond in the rough
60 FEATURE Using Pigment Inks in Dye-Based Printers
Open up a whole new world of possibilities in your old printer

R E V I E W S
DEPARTMENTS
12 REVIEW Norazza Digital Cleaning Kit & Norazza Data Destroyer
4 Toolbox
12 REVIEW MediaGear 7in1 USB 2.0 Card Reader
4 Contact Sheet
12 REVIEW Kinetronics Speckgrabber Pro Kit
8 Masthead 12 REVIEW LensPen Digi-Klear Display Cleaning System
9 Cool New Stuff 12 REVIEW Promaster Xtrapower Express Batteries and Charger
12 Photo Gadgetry 12 REVIEW RoadWired MegaMedia, @ttaché, and PV/Pro (page 24)
72 Advertiser Index 12 REVIEW Tenba Travelite S-6 and ProDigital D-10 (page 24)
72 Reader Service 12 REVIEW LowePro Rezo 170AW and Rolling MiniTrekker AV (page 24)
26 REVIEW Konica Minolta magicolor 2430 DL color laser printer
30 REVIEW Archos Portable Media Assistant 430
32 REVIEW Dust Away cleaning system
32 REVIEW d_skin optical disk protectors
38 REVIEW Alienware Area 51 MJ-12m 7700 mobile workstation
40 CAMLAB FujiFilm F10 thin-zoom camera
42 CAMLAB Olympus C-7070 camera
44 CAMLAB Sony CyberShot P200 camera
46 CAMLAB Casio EXILIM EX-750 thin-zoom camera
52 CAMLAB Concord DVx video/still camera
54 CAMLAB Olympus C-5500 camera
56 CAMLAB FujiFilm S3 Pro digital SLR camera
66 CAMLAB Second Look: Epson Perfection 4990 Scanner
C O L U M N S
8 EDITOR David MacNeill
DCM at your service
18 BEGINNER’S MIND Melissa Perenson
Four top photo organizers compared
62 IMAGING WORKSHOP Al Francekevich
Lights, camera, actions!
82 VIEW FINDER Conrad Blickenstorfer
Zoom, zoom

www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 3

 Editor David MacNeil
Vol. 9, No. 36 • October 2005
Publisher
Christopher Perretta
General Manager
Andrew Eisenberg
DCM at your service
Editor-in-Chief

T
David MacNeill he internet, or more specifically the whizzing through the wind-
Executive Editor web, has forever changed the way you ing two-lanes of Tuscany. Be-
Conrad H. Blickenstorfer and I gather information. Printed fore we launched our
Feature Editor magazines, particularly enthusiast technical own photography maga-
Arthur Bleich publications like Digital Camera, must adapt zine, I used to occasion-
Technical Editor to the new reality or face extinction. ally pick up Outdoor
Bob Shell Where do you go when you want to find Photogra-
Imaging Editor current pricing and availability information pher, just
Al Francekevich
on a new piece of photo equipment? One of to get in-
Contributing Editors the many photography websites, of course. spired to
Ernest Lilley
Kirk Linsky How about when you want to compare an go out-
array of specs from six different laptops? doors
Adventure Photographer / Writer
Jonathan Cox Google them. Want to find the absolute lat- and take
Editor-at-Large est on a firmware update for your digital some pic-
Edison Carter SLR? Visit the manufacturer’s website. tures.
Contributing Writers & Photographers But I’ll wager these quick fix data snip- You’ve told us what you want and so we
Leo Heppner pets are not the only aspects of photogra- are adapting to meet your needs. With this
Beau Hooker phy that interest you. There are times when issue, we’ve replaced the news-oriented De-
Melissa Perenson
Natasha Ryan kicking back in a hammock and reading velopments section with a new section called
Database Management
about some fabulous new piece of gear in Photo Gadgetry. Here you’ll find those little
Prestige Periodical depth is extremely enjoyable — even if it’s things that can make your rig perform the
Advertising Manager something you’ll never be able to afford. way you want it to without costing you a
Linda O’Hara / linda@mobilemg.com Looking at printed samples of what this gear bundle. Beginning next issue, we’ll launch
Advertising Coordinator can do is also rewarding as well as instruc- a new section devoted to photography soft-
Alyssa Guelzow / alyssa@enoblemedia.com tive. And for step-by-step instruction, noth- ware for Windows and Macs — editors, al-
p 415.861.5290 ing beats print for ease of use. bums, special effects, Photoshop plug-ins,
West Coast Advertising Sales Director I read Road & Track, even though I am and so on. You’ll also see more comparative
Chris Connors / cconnors@enoblemedia.com not even slightly interested in buying a new round-ups with clear winners in popular
p 818.223.9880
Ferrari or Porsche. I like my little gray MINI categories. We hope you enjoy these changes
East Coast Advertising Sales Director
Cooper S just fine, but still enjoy the vicar- and that they make the time you spend with
Jeff Adler / jadler@enoblemedia.com
p 201.843.4004 x 102 ious experience of reading about supercars us more relevant and pleasurable. –DM

PHOTO BY DAVID MACNEILL USING OLYMPUS E-300 WITH OLYMPUS ED 11-22MM LENS & FL-36 FLASH
Printed in the United States of America

Digital Camera Magazine is published

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any of the products or claims of service
advertised in the magazine.

8 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com

COOL NEW STUFF
E D I T E D B Y D A V I D M A C N E I L L

STUNNING IN BLACK AND WHITE A SATELLITE PHONE FOR UNDER $500!

Nobody can say we’re not

living in the future now, baby.
You can buy a satellite phone for a
mere $475 and pay only $50 a
month for 120 minutes usable from
anywhere in North America, South
America, Europe, and Asia. The Glob-
alstar Qualcomm GSP-1600 also
switches to standard terrestrial CDMA
or AMPS cellphone mode when you’re
within range of a tower. It can also be
Media Street has released a new archival black and white used as a 9.6 kbps modem if you’re
inkjet system designed by a fine art photographer. This desperate to get online. In satellite
complete printing solution for select Epson printers incor- phone mode, you get 3.75 hours of
porates Media Street’s new Generations QuadBlack pig- talk time and 19 hours of standby.
ment ink set and fine art papers plus special software to One of these and a solar trickle charg-
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mediastreet.com communicator for when you’re off the
beaten track.
CREATIVE TRAVELSOUND 500 globalstar.com
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The vast majority of laptops have crappy speakers driven by
wimpy amplifiers. The TravelSound 500 clips a 4-watt digital
stereo amp and a pair of high-quality speakers directly to SAMSUNG IS IN VOGUE
your display, or it can sit on a desk using its flip-out stand. It
can be powered by 4-AAA batteries, an AC adapter, or from
your USB port. There’s a With trends indicating that women
port for an external sub- outspend men in the gadget de-
woofer and the thing runs partment, Samsung knows that
an impressive 30 on-the-go women desire full-
hours on a set of featured multimedia phones
alkaline batteries. in eye-catching and com-
creative.com pact “fit in my evening
purse” designs. Beginning
FAST USB 20 LAPTOP-CAM February 22, 2005, on the
heels of New York’s Spring
The Creative Live! Ultra for Notebooks has a wide-angle lens Fashion Week, Samsung
that captures video with a 76 degree field of view (almost 50% and VOGUE will debut
wider than the 52 degree view Anna Sui Mobile by
offered by most webcams) Samsung, a limited edi-
and offers true USB 2.0 tion couture phone.
support for video with up Accompanied by an
to twice the frame rate of Anna Sui signature case,
common USB 1.1 cameras. a Sui Rouge #371 lipstick,
creative.com and a designer phone
charm, Anna Sui Mobile
by Samsung is available with
T-Mobile service.
www.AnnasuibySamsung.com

www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 9

 PHOTO GADGETRY
W
elcome to a new
section we call
Photo Gadgetry. Here we
will look at all the cool
gadgets that you can buy
to make your life easier as
a digital photographer.
(Isn’t that why you got
into photography, to play
with all the cool
gadgets?)
Each issue we will focus
on the most interesting
new accessories to
complement our camera
reviews. To me, and I
suspect to many of you,
it’s those critically
important accessories
that really complete your
quest for great
photography. –LH
12 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
If you’ve got a digital camera, you’ll need
memory cards to shoot pictures. The one
that came in the box is enough for only a
few pictures; you’ll need to get at least an-
other card with more memory. I like
Kingston Technology’s new
Elite Pro Compact Flash and
Secure Digital Cards. They are high
speed rated (66X), which means that you
can shoot faster and take more consecutive
photos than with standard speed rated
cards. Also, when you transfer your photos
to the computer, they will load into the
computer considerably faster. Who has time
to wait transferring hundreds of photos?
Using a Kingston Elite Pro Card will make
your life much easier. Also, it comes with a
lifetime warranty; you should always pur-
chase a card with a lifetime warranty as it
assures you that the product has to be bet-
ter than those that don’t offer it. Kingston
offers memory cards in all popular media
formats; Compact Flash up to 4 Gigs and
Secure Digital up to 1 Gig. With prices of
Memory cards going down almost daily, it
makes dollar sense to purchase a card of at
least 512 MB.
www.kingston.com
To save time transferring captured images,
as well as conserving your camera’s battery
power, I always use a card reader. I have sev-
eral; one for my computer at the office and
www.digicamera.com
Edited by Leo Heppner
one for each of my camera bags for the
road. I use the MediaGear 7-in-4
USB 2.0 Card Reader. It’s inex-
pensive (only $5.95!), fast, compact, reli-
able, features a removable USB cable and
works with all popular memory cards.
www.mymediagear.com
While we’re talking about memory cards,
over time dust, dirt, corrosion and carbon
build-up can occur with your digital cam-
era. This problem can cause faulty camera
operation and corrupted files, meaning
missed photos! To keep your digital cam-
era in the best condition, I use the No-
razza Digital Cleaning Kit. They
make kits for all of the popular cards, just
buy the kit for the type of card(s) you use.
Simply drop the cleaning card into the cam-
era’s media slot and it will clean and polish
the connectors inside the camera. Each kit
is good for up to 20 cleanings and also
comes with those handy moist wipes in foil
pouches to keep your monitor and camera
body clean.
Another useful Norazza product is the
Data Destroyer. I’ve been using it for
a year and it’s wonderful. As we all know,
Identity Theft is a major issue in today’s
world. I’m sure you wouldn’t want an un-

scrupulous person to obtain your person-
al files and images from your discarded CDs
and DVDs. The handy Data Destroyer cre-
ates a pattern on both sides of the CD or
DVD, rendering it useless. It’s simple to op-
erate, just load your disk into the unit and
it’ll automatically feed itself though. It only
takes seconds to operate. It looks good on
your desktop and it doesn’t take up too
much space. It’s affordable insurance from
potential problems and it’s easier and safer
to use than shears.
www.norazza.com
While we’re talking about cleaning cam-
eras, you should check out Kinetron-
ics’ Speckgrabber Pro Kit. This
handy device will safely remove those pesky
dust specks from optics, films, glass, SLR
mirrors, electro optical devices and other
delicate surfaces. Kinetronics created this
new tool to facilitate the removal of small
particles by attaching a tiny rubberized tip
to a thin rod with a rubberized handle. With
just a gentle touch small particles are cap-
tured by the surface of this amazing mate-
rial. The kit includes a bottle of cleaning
solution and their fine Anti-Static Tiger
Cloth. Although the literature says that it’s
good for cleaning CCDs, I would avoid
touching the CCD with any product in fear
of damaging the unit.
www.kinetronics.com
To wrap up our discussion of cleaning de-
vices for this issue, I recommend the use of
LensPen’s new Digi-Klear Dig-
ital Display Cleaning System.
As you may be aware, the original LensPen
has been available for several years. I have
found that this fantastic product works the
best for keeping your lenses and filters clean.
Now with Digi-Klear (comes in silver in-
stead of black color), they wisely altered the
shape of the cleaning tip to safely and ef-
fectively clean the corners of monitors (the
tip now has a semi-triangular shape). The
unique self-replenishing tip (you rotate its
cap on the cleaning tip after each use) and
cleaning compound will not spill or dry up.
LensPen also has a smaller version of the
original, named miniPro for small optical
lenses such as those on point and shoots.
There’s even their new cell-Klear, utilizing
a tiny cleaning tip, for cell phone lenses.
What will the guys at Parkside Optical think
of next?
www.lenspen.com
Now that we’re using digital cameras, we’re
in the battery business whether we like it
or not. You have AAs for cameras, flashes,
camera grips, meters, PDAs and the list goes
on and on. Rechargeable batteries and
chargers have improved immensely during
the past few years, from the standard Ni-
Cads from years ago to the latest and far su-
perior Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH)
rechargeable batteries and fast chargers. The
folks from Promaster has just released their
new XtraPower EXPRESS 4 Ni-
MH Batteries and Charger. This
new charger uses smart controlled charg-
ing technology. Most chargers require that
you charge batteries in pairs or four at one
time. The 4-channel charging system in the
XtraPower EXPRESS allows you to charge
www.digicamera.com
1, 2, 3 or 4 cells at a time. The charger au-
tomatically recognizes the capacity of the
battery you have inserted in each slot, in-
dividually tests the integrity of each cell and
then charges each battery individually un-
til it has reached its maximum capacity. The
charger fully charges your Ni-MH batter-
ies in just minutes. Most fast chargers claim
that your batteries are ready when they have
been charged to just 80% of their capacity.
The Promaster charger will continue to
charge until your batteries reach 95% ca-
pacity before reverting to the trickle charge
mode. You’ll get almost 20% more power
from your batteries with every charge. I
have personally experienced this; recently
I charged my AAs in another brand of
smart charger (name withheld) ‘til it indi-
cated a full charge, then I transferred the
batteries to the Promaster charger and it
continued charging for about 10 minutes
longer! This charger will fully charge your
AA Ni-MH batteries in less than 20 min-
utes. Also, most fast chargers cause your
batteries to get very hot. In time, the extra
heat can destroy the life of your batteries.
The Promaster charger utilizes a fan that
keeps everything cool, a useful trick that
works. The charger is packaged with 4-2400
mAh high capacity AA cells.
www.promaster.com
You’ll need to carry your expensive digital
cameras and other equipment in the field,
whether you’re shooting a child’s birthday
party or the CEO of a corporation. I own
many bags and they all serve a particular
purpose. If I’m bringing my laptop to a
DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 13
 PHOTO GADGETRY Edited by Leo Heppner

pact camera, PDA, cell phone and more. It

sports two separate sections for files and up
to 8 x 11 photos. And it’s a beauty too; black
Ballistic nylon that’s good looking, cleans
well and smooth to the touch. It’s got a slim
profile and the contoured 4-layered shoul-
der pad with moisture-wicking mesh and
friction overlays helps keep the bag on your
shoulder. It’s the most comfortable strap I
have ever used! Its overall size is 15”L x
12”H x 7”D; it’s plenty large but not an
overkill. The folks at RoadWired really have
a winner here.

If you don’t need the larger size and abun-

dance of pockets of the MegaMedia because
you’re only carrying a laptop, power sup-
ply, card reader, cables, and a few other
items, then the Roadwired Stan-
dard @ttaché will be a fine choice. It
has the same basic design, quality materi-
als and construction, but with a substan-
tially thinner profile.
www.roadwired.com

If you don’t need to carry your laptop but

instead want to bring a modest DSLR sys-
tem, I urge you to try Tenba’s Trav-
elite S-6 Bag. Travelite series repre-
sents Tenba’s newest entry into the popular
photo shoot, I’m carrying it in Road-
Wired’s MegaMedia Bag. You
won’t believe how much equipment that
this bag can carry! With 36 different com-
partments and pockets, it will let you bring
your laptop, power supply, cables, mouse,
card reader, files, pens, memory cards, com-
priced camera bag market and it’s a good
one. The bag has lots of welcomed features,
built like a brick and priced right. The S-6
will carry up to two camera bodies, four
lenses and a small flash. The external di-
mensions are 9.75”L x 14”W x 7.5”D. The
Tenba DuraTek black exterior fabric is
rugged yet soft to the touch and the interi-
or fabric of light gray colored SofTek is soft
so it allows the padded dividers with hook
and loop material to be attached virtually
14 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com
anywhere inside the bag. There’s plenty of
pockets with mesh material to hold mem-
ory cards, cables, filters and others small
items. The removable and adjustable strap
sports a massive non-slip pad. You can’t go
wrong with Tenba’s new series.
www.tenbagear.com
For those who want to travel even lighter,
you’ll enjoy the new LowePro Rezo
170 AW. First of all, it’s lightweight and
compact, but packs lots of gear because of
its tall and slim design. The top conve-
niently opens away from you when you’re
wearing it; the soft, protective, brushed tri-
cot lining allows the padded dividers to be
placed almost anywhere to adjust specifi-
cally to your equipment and there’s even a
built-in memory card pouch on the inside
of the bag’s lid. More thoughtful features
are a removable and adjustable non-slip
strap, built-in All Weather Cover, stretchy
neoprene rubber side pocket, belt loops,
one SlipLock attachment loop and a padded
handle. Probably the most clever feature of
this bag is the large built-in Microfiber
Cloth used to clean the camera’s monitor
and to keep it from getting scratched from
items rubbing on it when you close the lid.
As you can see, this bag is designed for dig-
ital from the ground up and you’ll be hard
pressed to find a better compact bag.
www.lowepro.com
For carrying point-and-shoots, I rec-
ommend Ape Cases from No-
razza. Ape Cases are aptly named;
they are built strong with Ballistics
Nylon, thick padding and sealed with
zippers to keep your camera safe.
The black exterior is handsome and
the yellow interior is not only useful
to find small items in the bag but it’s
also a fashion statement. They have
many models to choose from in the
Ape Case Digital Series. My favorite
is the AC220.
The interior dimensions are 4.5” x 6”
x 2.7”. There’s plenty of pockets and
compartments and there’s no hook &
loop material; it’s got all zippers for
a secure and water tight fit. The Ape
Case MC420 is a handy little pouch.
It stores four batteries, two memory
cards and other accessories that fits
on your belt. Now that’s convenient!
www.norazza.com
There are new digital photography toys com-
ing out every day. Some work and some
don’t, but when you find gadgets that work,
not only do they make photography more
fun, they might make you a better photog-
rapher.
–Leo Heppner
www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 15
 Beginner’s Mind Melissa Perenson
Four Top Photo Organizers Compared
F
resh back from vacation, you have
cards, or maybe even a laptop, packed
with digital images. You thought tak-
ing the pictures was fun? Nah—now, the fun
is really just beginning: You have to sort
through those hundreds of photos you
snapped while gone.
Sound familiar? It should: Between the
current crop of high-megapixel point-and-
shoot cameras, and the explosion in digital
SLRs for the masses, chances are you’re tak-
ing more photos than ever before. The
quandary becomes, what do you do with all
of those bits-and-bytes? And how do you
begin to manage them?
Myself, I find I use up to an average of
4GB a day when I’m on a vacation, shoot-
ing with a Nikon D70 and 2GB high-speed
CompactFlash cards (shooting in RAW +
Basic JPEG mode). Bottom line: I can come
back from two weeks of travel with 60GB of
images that have to be stored and sorted.
The storage part is almost less-daunting
than the prospect of sorting and viewing
hundreds and hundreds of images. Doing
so effectively means coming up with a file-
and-folder structure that matches your
shooting habits, as well as finding a software
program that works best to sort, organize,
and retrieve your images.
I recently gave four programs a try—
Nikon’s PictureProject 1.0, ACDSee Sys-
tems’ ACDSee 7.0, Google’s Picasa 2, and
Breeze Systems’ BreezeBrowser Pro 1.1—in
my first attempt to find a program that
makes sense for my system and photo col-
18 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
lection. These four programs span the gamut
of upfront expenditures. The PictureProject
I used is admittedly a year old—the version
that shipped with my camera when I first
bought it. ACDSee 7.0 sells for $50. Picasa
costs nothing beyond the free download,
while BreezeBrowser Pro is the priciest, at
$70 downloadable from breezebrowser.com.
Of the four, sadly I can’t say I’ve settled
on just one. Choosing an image browsing
and organizing tool is not like a Chinese
menu, where you can pick food, er, features,
from columns A, B, and C. For now, I’ve
come to the conclusion that I’ll need more
than one of these programs on my system,
depending upon the task at hand. And I sus-
pect you’ll feel much the same.
Sorting: A System in Progress
It took me time to come up with a system,
but I finally have. Sort of. I consider my dig-
ital image card to be the equivalent of a dig-
ital negative—so I’m loathe to delete any-
thing once I’ve shot it.
Instead, I prefer to transfer the card in its
entirety. I actually rename the image folder
on the card itself, so when I transfer the im-
ages using Windows Explorer—generally
the fastest way to transfer raw data from the
card to your PC—I’m not going to acci-
dentally erase another folder generically
named DCIM (just in case I got sloppy while
copying images a previous time).
When I rename the folder on the card, I
append a date and location or other de-
scription after the ubiquitous DCIM nomen-
clature. I do
this in part just
because it
saves a few
keystrokes of
deleting the
DCIM every
time I transfer
a card; I also
do it because it
makes it easy
to find my im-
age folders (as
opposed to
other stray im-
ages I might
have socked
away on my
hard disk). So,
a typical folder
might look like
this: DCIM-
www.digicamera.com
03-21-05-Shinjuku and Ginza. I use dashes
instead of slashes because the Microsoft
Windows file system can’t accommodate
slashes in the folder name.
Then I move the folder to my designat-
ed Pictures folder, erase the card, and start
again. Now, those pictures are on my hard
disk—the challenge lies in finding them
again. How do you do your sorts? If you
have a good solution, let me know via email
at mperenson@digicam.com.
PictureProject
Considering that PictureProject 1.0 (now at
1.1)shipped with my Nikon, it’s logical that
I’d install it immediately and start to use it.
Unfortunately, I found it to be woefully de-
signed. The user interface is kludgy, and
sometimes counterintuitive. If I were using
PictureProject to import images, maybe I’d
have found it easier to use. But for access-
ing images already on my hard disk, the soft-
ware’s import process quickly proved an-
noying. And, I shied away from it for
importing from a card: I’d found the import
slow, and preferred using Windows Explorer
instead. As a convenience, PictureProject of-
fers the option to upload files to Nikon.net
after transferring them to your hard disk,
but again, this is only useful for the small
percentage of users inclined to rely on on-
line.
The biggest advantage I found in Pic-
tureProject was its integrated image editor,
which offers a host of image enhancement
capabilities, including the ability to easily
auto-adjust an image. It also displayed RAW
images quite cleanly—better than the oth-
er programs I looked at here.
ACDSee 7.0
With an image browser, a means to catalog
and archive images, an image editor, and a
way to create photo discs and backup discs,
ACDSee has lots of appeal. But the cost of
admission is high—and I’m not talking
about the impact on your wallet. In spite of
its interface improvements, ACDSee has a
steep learning curve, and much of its pow-
er feels buried behind menu options and
tabs.
The default screen manages to be both
busy and streamlined at the same time—dis-
playing a cacophony of image information
at once (file name, size, resolution time, and
date, for example). You can customize the
screens to display what you what—but that
requires you to head into Tools/Options,
and play trial-and-error with a slew of oth-
er customizable options. I liked how you
could rate your photos on a scale of 1 to 5,
and then just view all of the photos with a
given rating. I also liked how you could cat-
egorize images by subject—Albums, People,
Places, Various to start with, plus you can
create your own categories. You can even
cross-categorize an image as falling into more
than one of those subjects (for example, if I
had an image of a bride I captured in Tokyo,
I could file it under People and Tokyo, if I
were so inclined).
This program also has a way for you to
search for files and folder, as well as search
by specific categories and file properties. If
a file is buried on your hard disk and you
know something about it, chances are you’ll
find it with ACDSee.
I’ve only just touched on the capabilities
of ACDSee 7.0, and you probably will, too.
It’s a great choice if you want a well-inte-
grated package that makes it easy to browse
and backup images. But if you’re really go-
ing to tap its searching and organizing pow-
er, be prepared for a sizable time investment
to do those ratings and the categorizing up
front.
Picasa 2
Ah, where to start about this little gem of a
program? Search engine giant Google
snapped it up a year ago, tweaked the code,
and released an update earlier this year as a
free download via its Web site. And like
Google’s site, Picasa is now a lean, mean im-
age viewing machine.
Picasa takes a cue from Apple’s iPhoto
(which I don’t go into here because I’m a
PC, and not a Mac, user), and provides a
straightforward and fun means of browsing
thumbnails of all of your photos. The first
thing that jumped out to me about Picasa
was its blazing-fast browsing speed. Even
importing images from my hard drive
proved to be a breeze; this operation con-
tinued in the background as Picasa searched
for, and found, long-lost photos, buried on
my hard drive.
The clean, streamlined interface has a
pleasing design which is mostly easy to
navigate. I say mostly, because, as with
most applications, Picasa has its share of
quirks. For one thing, once images are im-
ported, the program’s folder-tree left pane
reflects just the folder name that contains
the images. This drill down enables you
to easily browse, in the right-hand pane,
which contains the image thumbnails
from all folders imported into Picasa An
added fun bonus comes from the ability
to use a slid-
er control to
instantly re-
size these im-
ages from a
teeny-tiny
stamp to
something
more com-
fortably visi-
ble.
However,
this approach
fails if your
images are
contained in
subfolders,
whereby the
higher-level
folder de-
scribes the
general con-
tent therein, and say the lower-level fold-
ers are dates. It also fails if you do as I do,
and rename the top-level folder, and keep
the rest of the folder structure intact upon
transferring from a memory card (I end-
ed up with four folders in a row generi-
cally labeled 100NCD70). Picasa does let
you edit that folder’s label without chang-
ing the original folder name, but the
process is tiresome for a volume shooter
like me who has already assembled and
sorted a large image collection. If you’re
first importing your images directly from
a memory card, though, Picasa fixes this
issue, by automatically prompting you to
name the collection of images.
The integrated image editor is slick,
easy, and effective, with multiple levels of
undo. As a bonus, changes you make won’t
affect the original image (they’re remem-
bered only by Picasa), so the effects can be
removed at any time. The software is also
efficient in how it lets you email, blog, and
backup your image collections to CD or
DVD. I loved how you could easily create
another copy of a collection of images
from different folders—a feature I’ve
sought for some time—and how you can
view images by the date taken. The
slideshow feature feels more limited—no
exporting to DVD, although you can ex-
port to CD (just not in a format playable
on a DVD player).
In spite of a few interface kinks, I’ve
quickly become attached to Picasa. I can’t
rely on it for sorting and organizing by sub-
ject, but I am finding a great tool that I plan
to add to my imaging toolkit. After all, you
can’t beat the price.
www.digicamera.com
BreezeBrowser Pro 1.1.2
I’ve saved the best for last. This tool is well
worth its price of admission. Aimed at pros
and enthusiasts, BreezeBrowser Pro is handy
and fast, and has some indispensable fea-
tures.
The no-frills interface lacks design finesse
and has a few rough spots; still, you get
straight to your images, no fuss, no muss,
and no importing required. You have three
views—a thumbnail view (with a Windows
Explorer-like pane on the left that shows you
your PC’s folder structure); film strip views
(thumbnails and image info on left, full im-
age shown at right); and the main view,
which shows the image, its EXIF data, and
its histogram. You can tag images across
multiple folders, to compare images or cre-
ate a slideshow.
BreezeBrowser Pro supports RAW con-
version for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta,
and Olympus, and provides image en-
hancements (including sharpening, cor-
recting gamma and color saturation) for
RAW files. Plus, it lets you retain EXIF data
upon converting from a RAW file to a JPEG
or TIFF.
As someone who knows where her im-
ages reside, I loved how easy this software
made it to speedily browse my images, with
no startup hassles as I had with all of the oth-
er programs. I also loved seeing the EXIF
data, so I could learn how I achieved a shot.
The template-based HTML generator for
creating basic image Web pages is a snap,
and even lets you add watermarks and cre-
ate an online ordering system that taps into
PayPal’s shopping cart. Nifty indeed.
–Melissa Perenson
DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 19
Accessorize Your Olympus E-300
If you only use the kit lens and built-in flash, you’re missing half the fun!
A
s our feature editor, Arthur Bleich, wrote
in his review in our previous issue, “With
the E-300 EVOLT, Olympus has come
up with an ideal reflex camera for serious
photographers at a very affordable price. If
you’re ready to step up to an 8-megapixel
digital SLR, the E-300 is an exceptional cam-
era that will give you superb images and help
you achieve your creative vision.”
Pretty strong endorsement from Arthur.
I’ve been his editor since we launched this
magazine in 1998 and I can tell you that he
doesn’t gush easily. By reading his review,
he convinced me to borrow an E-300 kit
from Olympus for an extended time, just to
see what all the excitement was about. Had
Olympus actually revolutionized the digital
reflex camera? That’s a tall order.
Punctuated equilibrium
Now that I’ve spent a considerable amount
of quality time with the E-300, I’ll say right
up front that this camera is more evolu-
tionary than revolutionary, though in the
punctuated equilibrium sense that is current
in evolutionary biology circles; this is a big
leap forward but not a whole new species.
Rotating the mirror mechanism and
prism/mirror optics into the body of the
camera makes loads of sense in a dig-
ital camera because you have so much
more room to play with. There’s no
film spools or motor drive, of course.
More to the point with this particu-
20 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
lar camera is the Olympus-developed Four
Thirds sensor and lens system, which allows
for a much smaller design overall than tra-
ditional SLR cameras. The target imager is
smaller than a 35mm film frame, so the lens
mount, internal optics and various support
mechanicals can be smaller.
Traditionalists may look askance at the
E-300, but personally I find the “flattop”
look appealing and even a bit retro — from
a distance, the E300 looks almost like a clas-
sic 35mm German rangefinder from the
mid-20th century.
But this camera is about far more than a
cool body design. This is the entry level to
Olympus fledgling professional line of dig-
ital SLR cameras, lenses, flash systems, and
support accessories. As has often happened
in the digital photography space, the “pro-
sumer” camera that follows the “pro” cam-
era is in many ways more powerful and ap-
pealing than the high-ticket version.
Technology moves ridiculously fast in this
realm; both Canon and Nikon found them-
selves in the same place with the release of
the EOS 10D and D70, respectively.
Bottom line is this: cameras like the E-
300 are leveling the playing field by blurring
the formerly clear demarcation between con-
sumer and professional photography gear.
With a camera like this in hand, you can cap-
ture pictures with about as much facility as
the big boys do — provided you have the
eye, the training, and the experience, of
course.
Oh, and you’ll need some stuff that does-
n’t come in the E-300 Kit box: better lenses,
bigger flashgun, some fast memory cards,
extra battery packs, and a bunch of cables
and gadgets. To give you a head start, I’ll tell
you about the accessories I
chose to round out my
arsenal for the way I
shoot. It’s not a com-
prehensive round-
up of all available
accessories, but
this is what works
for me.
1. Memory
The first thing you should buy to start tak-
ing advantage of all your E-300 has to of-
fer is a fat, fast CompactFlash card from
a name-brand maker. Lexar, SanDisk,
Kingston, and other makers offer speed-
rated cards aimed at pro use in DSLR
cameras that can take advantage of the
speed boost. For my tests I used all three of
the brands I mentioned above in capacities
ranging from one to four gigabytes. All per-
formed beautifully for me with no speed ad-
vantage favoring one brand over another
that I could perceive. I’m sure one of them
is faster than the
others, and I’m
sure I’ll hear all
about it from the
PR folks at all
three companies.
My advice to
you is to not
worry about it
and just look for
a good deal.
Don’t even think
of buying any-
thing smaller
than 1GB. Eight-megapixel photos eat up
smaller cards way too fast to be fun, so
live large and shoot with abandon.
2. Lenses
Next on your list should be a lens or
preferably two: one ultra-wide zoom and
one telephoto zoom. If you can only af-
ford one lens right now, get one that best
suits the kind of photography you shoot
most. As I like photographing landscapes
and interiors, I chose the Olympus Zuiko
11-22mm f2.8-3.5 ($899). This is a gor-
geous lens, with a 35mm equivalent range
of 22-44mm — perfect for most of the
scenes I like to capture. The wide maxi-
mum aperture gives me excellent natur-
al light performance. Edge to edge sharp-
ness and light distribution is excellent, but
most important is the lack of barrel dis-
tortion at 11mm, or maximum wide an-
gle. I know it’s at lot to ask someone to
spend almost as much on a lens as they did
on their camera, but that’s exactly what I’m
going to do. Try one and you won’t want to
shoot without it.
Prefer
shooting
sports action, ani-
mals, and other subjects
captured at some distance such a classic por-
traiture styles? For this use I chose the Olym-
pus Zuiko 50-200mm f2.8-3.5 ($899). An-
other impressive piece of gear, yet not
oppressively heavy or unbalanced like old-
school 35mm film lenses often are when at-
tached to a lighter, smaller DSLR body.
Though the 50-200 has a stout mount-
ing collar for tripod use, I usually re-
move it and shoot handheld unless I’m
indoors. Like the 11-22mm, the 50-
200mm is world class. Fully buzzword-
enabled, with ED glass, internal fo-
cusing, aspherical lens elements, and
so on. It’s a joy to use and perfectly
suited to the E-300 body.
Need a longer lens but can’t
pony up the several thou-
sand dollars needed
for a long
telepho-
to? Get the
Olympus 1.4x Tele
Extender. This little adapter takes your
200mm out to 380, which doesn’t sound like
much until you
realize that this is
equivalent to 560mm in the 35mm world.
That’s one seriously long lens — practi-
cally a telescope. There is some minimal
light and optical performance loss using
an extender over a purpose-built mega-
zoom, but it still takes fantastic pictures
and the camera takes care of exposure com-
pensation needed.
Like the E-300 camera, all these Zuiko
lenses have nonvolatile internal flash mem-
ory that allows you to field-upgrade your
investment to the latest firmware. That takes
a little of the sting out of the high prices,
as this makes your purchase that much
more future-proof. Olympus has already
issued one round of updates, which I in-
stalled in about twenty minutes with zero
hassle. Be sure to follow the instructions
to the letter, though. If you skip a step you
could render your camera or lens useless
and you’ll have to ship it back to Olympus
for repair.
If you’re going to shoot in dusty or wet
conditions, get some high-quality clear fil-

FOR MORE INFO…
OLYMPUS . . . . . .www.olympus.com
LEXAR . . . . . . . . .www.lexarmedia.com
SANDISK . . . . . . .www.sandisk.com
KINGSTON . . . . . .www.kingston.com
ROADWIRED . . . .www.roadwired.com
LOWEPRO . . . . . .www.lowepro.com
TENBA . . . . . . . . .www.tenbagear.com
conditions, get some high-quality clear fil-
ters that fit your lenses. Get the low-profile
kind to minimize any vignetting, particu-
larly on your ultra-wide. I haven’t
bought clear filters yet so I don’t
have a preference, but any good
name brand will do. If you fre-
quently shoot around open water,
get a good circular polarizer to
eliminate the reflected glare. Un-
filtered, it’ll play havoc with your
metering system and make that
beautiful lake look more like
aluminum foil than water.
3. Flash
This is another hard sell to the uninitiated.
A good flashgun will cost you about two
hundred bucks. You can buy compatible
flashguns from other than your camera’s
manufacturer, but to make life simple and
get the best results, get the FL-36 ($239).
Olympus designed this unit to perfectly mate
with the E-300, so the level of automation
is amazing. Turn on the camera with the
FL-36 attached and they both come on.
Want to add more power or a bit of fill flash
to a bounce shot? Pop up the internal flash
and the two work together in perfect har-
mony. Need a bit more help getting the aut-
ofocus system to lock on to a difficult sub-
ject? The Fl-36 will emit a red grid pattern
on your dark subject from across the room.
Need more light at the edges when shooting
with your ultra-wide lens? Flip out the FL-
36’s built-in diffuser panel to disperse the
light output even more.
My favorite use of an external flash is
to aim the rotating head up to bounce off
the ceiling. In most cases you get smooth,
balanced light that seems to come from
everywhere and nowhere. Faces aren’t blast-
ed out and the background doesn’t
go dark and underexposed. For
interior photography, a good
flash is absolutely essential.
4. Power
You’ve learned by
now that the true
consumable in
digital imag-
ing is bat-
tery pow-
er. Unless
you sit in
a studio
all day
with
easy access to an
AC jack, you’ll want to invest
in a spare rechargeable battery pack
($50). Olympus has achieved re-
markable longevity in the E-300. You
can shoot all day with this thing on a
charge. Personally, I’ve never run out
of juice on any of my modest photo
expeditions, but I carry a fully
charged spare anyway, just in case.
People photographers will want to
consider the Olympus HLD-3 Battery
Holder ($99), a screw-on extension
to the E-300 that adds two more bat-
teries to your power supply while also
offering a second set of critical con-
trols for vertical shooting. It adds to
the heft, of course, but if you need max-
imum untethered power, this accessory is
the way to go.
5. Cases and other stuff
You may want a wireless remote to control
the camera, and not just so you can easily
capture group shots with you in them. In
critical tripod shots using natural light, you’ll
be using longer exposures that can easily blur
if you use your finger to press the shutter.
Use the RM-1 remote control ($19) and
 seamlessly.
A couple of
years ago I was for-
tunate to have the
use of a Nikon
dream rig built
around the D1x, their
flagship camera at the
time. I had over twen-
ty thousand dollars
worth of pro gear in that
bag, which weighed about 25 pounds. My
Olympus E-300 rig can be had for less than
$3000 and weighs under 15 pounds com-
plete, including the manual. Best of all, in
my semi-professional hands my E-300 rig
can do everything the Nikon system could.

– David MacNeill

www.olympusamerica.com/evolt

breathe easy.
Speaking of relaxing, you’ll be
very unhappy if you drop
your E-300, so use the
strap that comes with the
kit or, even better, get
the GS-2 Grip Strap. It
makes the camera part
of your arm. Don’t
leave home without it.
You’ll need a
good case for all this
gear, and not just some
garden variety case will
handle all these larger
lenses and such. My fa-
vorite is the RoadWired
Photo/Video Pro case, but then again I
helped design it for them and I’m vain with 11-22mm mounted, the
enough to think I did an utterly fantastic 50-200mm, a spare battery
job. (Incidentally, I derive zero financial and a few cards, I like the
gain from the sale of these cases.) Other Tenba ProDigital D-10
faves in the case space include LowePro ($95), a compact shoulder
and Tenba. Both makers offer a stagger- case that’s tough as nails yet
ing number of carrying systems appro- light in weight.
priate to your new rig. Just be sure you Close-up photography
don’t overbuy, as your E-300 rig, while often requires specialized
powerful, occupies less space and weighs double flash rigs or ring
considerably less than 35mm-derived pro flashes, as well as special
DSLR camera systems. For expeditions off-shoe cords, clamps,
where I may be hauling along a rented and other arcane stuff.
mega-zoom, I like the LowePro Rolling Olympus offers a range of
Mini Trekker AV ($279), a brilliant design special lighting systems for
from one of the top names in photo cas- this purpose, all of which
es. For traveling light with, say, the E-300 mate with your E-300
REVIEW
I
Konica Minolta magicolor 2430 DL

f you think inkjet or dye-sub printers are

the only game in town for quality photo
output, think again. The Konica Minol-
Super photographic images from a laser printer? You’ve got to be kidding!

check how the dots had been laid down.

And since that’s not the way photos are
ordinarily viewed, it doesn’t matter
ta magicolor 2430 DL color laser printer at if the dots are big or small, ran-
only US $499 is the new challenger and dom or ma-
whips out beautiful images fast and on the
cheap.
A laser printer? Come on, I’ve got to be
kidding, right? They’re supposed to be big
and ugly and expensive and the pictures they
output look like you’re viewing them
through a screen door—coarse, grainy and
just plain awful. Not any more. In fact, when
I framed and hung two identical prints, one
output on the magicolor and the other on a
top-of-the-line inkjet, I’d have given odds
you couldn’t tell which was which, unless,
of course, you used a magnifying glass to

What’s Hot:
• High quality image output
• Moderate initial expense
• Perfect for multiple users
• Fast printing of both
images and text
• Prints on plain paper.
• Can take up to 45 lb
(90 lb index) paper stock
• Low cost per image
• Two-sided printing with-
out bleed-through
• PictBridge compatible
• No ink/paper color profiles
needed
• Extremely long print life
• Excellent tech support and
warranty
What’s Not:
• No written manual or quick-
start guide
• Limited to 8.5 x 14-inch prints
• Somewhat noisy
• Not PostScript compatible
• No borderless printing
• No drivers for Mac OS 9
• All images have similar surface
characteristics (matte/lustre)
• No extensive color controls (but
can be adjusted from within
imaging program)
trixed. The proof is in how the image looks–
that’s all that counts.
The 2430 DL arrived well-packed and
weighed in at 44 lbs with its four toner car-
tridges pre-installed. All I had to do was plug
it in, run a USB cable to the computer and
boot the utilities and documentation CD.
That’s when I ran into the first hurdle. The
driver insisted on “speaking” Spanish. At
first I thought it was because the printer had
been shipped to Miami and it knew where
it was. But that would have given it too much
credit—it was just a glitch and a quick call
to tech support solved the problem.
At only 16.9 x 19.8 x 13.4 inches, the magi-
color will fit comfortably almost anywhere
but don’t place it too close to you—it thumps
and whirs when it prints and sometimes gives
a burp or two even when it’s idle. Unlike most
laser printers, where the paper rolls past a se-
ries of fixed-in-place toner cartridges, the 2430
DL’s toner cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow,
and black) rotate. This keeps the printer com-
pact but also makes it go though a song and
dance routine for each print. If you have more
than one computer, the
printer can be networked through
either Ethernet or a variety of high speed USB
switches available from Belkin (http://tinyurl.
com/4wm2b).
Manual labor
Unfortunately, no useful written documen-
tation or quick-start manual came with the
printer—only a meager installation guide and
a caution booklet both of which had less than
a page of English among 21 different languages.
The real meat is on the CD—a Reference Guide
(140 pages) and the more useful User Guide
(144 pages) which you’ll have to plow through
and print parts of to learn how to operate the
printer. Count on at least an hour for that; if
you’re anxious to get going, begin by printing
out pages 7-14, 20-48, and 64-71. On a more
upbeat note, the 2430 DL carries an excellent
one-year warranty. If tech support can’t solve
a problem, Konica Minolta will ship you a re-
placement printer by two-day air and have
yours picked up—both at their expense. You
can also extend that warranty for one or two
years at US $80 or US $140 respectively (which
I would highly recommend) or buy an on-site
service policy.

Laser printers form their images by heat-
fusing dry toner to paper. Unlike inkjets,
where paper type plays a large roll in deter-
mining how the image will look, laser print-
ers couldn’t care less. A photograph will look
just about as good on any old lightweight
paper as it does on thicker stock. That can
trick you into thinking the image is inferior
when, in fact, you’re being fooled by the
thinner-than-inkjet paper it’s printed on. If
you use thicker paper stock like NCR’s
Glossy and Matte Presentation Papers, it lev-
els the playing field; pictures begin to feel
(and therefore look) a lot more like inkjet
prints. But you’ll never get the variety of out-
put that inkjets produce when using differ-
ent types of paper surfaces. The best way to
describe magicolor prints is that they fall
somewhere between a matte and lustre sur-
face, with a slightly soft sheen. By the way,
don’t run inkjet paper through a laser print-
er; the coated surface can mess up the print-
er’s drum.
Laser vs. Inkjet Quality
The two cat’s-eye pictures are scans of the
same photo, one of them output on the
Konica Minolta magicolor 2430DL at 2400
dpi and the other printed on a premium
inkjet at 2880 dpi. The magicolor lays
down its dots
through a screening
process while the
The 2430 DL can print at three different inkjet uses a more
resolutions: 600 dpi, 1200 dpi, and 2400 dpi. random dot pattern
If you look closely, there’s a just-noticeable that gives the illusion
difference in detail between 600 dpi and 2400 of a smoother, more
dpi but 1200 dpi seems to be neither here- continuous tone im-
nor-there and I noticed a slight color shift age. However, the
at that resolution. I found myself sticking to
2400 dpi—Konica Minolta says it only costs laser print is actual-
about a penny more per print as opposed to ly sharper when
outputting at 600 dpi because the printer viewed at this large
uses just a smidgen of additional toner; it magnification. Hold
produces the higher resolution by running the page away
a different algorithm to lay down a tighter from you, however,
dot pattern on the paper. and you’ll see that
both images begin
100-year print life to look the same
Color prints from the migicolor have a pre- because the eye
dicted life of over a hundred years unless cannot resolve fine details as it gets fur-
they are subjected to extreme heat while ther away from them. Except for differ-
stacked together. Prints are also very inex- ences in the paper surface, pictures print-
pensive compared to those output on injets ed on the magicolor and the inkjet looked
and dye-subs. According to Konica Minolta’s identical at a normal viewing distance. –AB
calculations, a 7.5 x 10-inch color print costs
REVIEW
about 31-cents, which includes the expense
of replacing the printer’s drum ($149) after
several thousand prints have been run. My
own seat-of-the-pants calculations were
around 44-cents which is still pretty low.
And prints just fly out of this machine! I
clicked on “Print” and the first 2400 dpi, 8
x 10 photo rolled out in just 35 seconds; sub-
sequent copies of the same image took just
12 seconds each. Black and white photos of
similar size and resolution took 15 seconds
for the first copy and just two seconds for
each additional one. Compared to the speed
of an inkjet printer… well, there just isn’t any
comparison. The magicolor would be perfect
to take to events where you could shoot, say,
portraits and deliver a finished product to your
subjects in just a few minutes.
What’s also a timesaver is that you don’t
need to bother with ink and paper profiles
—recommended for inkjet printers—to get
color-perfect results. Remember, with laser
printers paper type doesn’t enter into the
equation; you could print on a shopping bag
28 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
and the colors would still be right-on. In
fact, the driver gives you only a few
choices to play with: brightness, contrast,
and saturation. And that’s all you really
need.
One of the 2430 DL’s touted features
is that it is PictBridge 1.0 compliant; you
can print pictures directly from your dig-
ital camera if it has that feature. But
there’s a price to pay. Not that the print-
er doesn’t do its job, but it’s that Pict-
Bridge, still in its infancy, gives the magi-
color its marching orders. I connected an
Olympus E-300 via its USB cable and was
sorely disappointed. First, the printer re-
quires an extra 256MB of RAM (which
was installed) for full functionality and
best image quality when printing using
PictBridge. So that’s an extra US $150
right there. Which wouldn’t be so bad
if it didn’t take so long for most pic-
tures to print out—in some cases up
to five minutes per image. The feature
I was most interested in, printing a se-
ries of small index pictures from the
camera’s memory card worked faster
but, alas, there was no way to have the
file names print out under each picture
to quickly identify them. So don’t ex-
pect miracles here—at least not yet.
Unlike inkjet printers where you can
remove a cartridge if it’s low so it won’t
run out during the middle of a big job and
www.digicamera.com
then replace later it to use for a smaller one,
do not do that with the 2430 DL. If you re-
move a toner cartridge before its time well,
then, that’s its time and even if it’s still full,
it becomes a pricey doorstop. If you reinsert
it, the printer will refuse to run, giving you
a message that the toner is out. I know this
firsthand, having blown over US $400 worth
of toner one memorable afternoon. Thank-
fully, it didn’t cost me anything but when I
called tech support, even they didn’t know
that you couldn’t remove and then re-insert
still-good cartridges. I finally found that lit-
tle caveat buried deep on page 64 of the
User’s Guide on the CD.
Skeptics, listen up
Undoubtedly some skeptics will read this re-
view and doubt that the quality of a laser
print can ever equal that of an inkjet image.
I imagine they might be the same ones (as
was I) who once said that inkjet prints could
never equal the quality of silver halide pho-
tographs (now they surpass them, of course).
All I can say is that I, too, had my doubts
about the 2430 DL but ended up thorough-
ly impressed by what it could do. And re-
member, you can also knock out flawless
text at 20 pages a minute and quickly print
brochures and other material—even on both
sides—without the slightest bleed-through
(large, two-sided photos are a piece of cake).
Am I going to throw out my beloved Ep-
son inkjet printers? Not a chance, because
they can still give my images a variety of
“looks” that I like due to a wide choice of
paper surfaces. And my 2200 can also give
me bigger prints than I can get with the 2430
DL. But when I compare inkjet prints made
on matte or lustre paper with those the magi-
color produced on comparably thick paper,
I am awed by the quality. I mean, who would
have thought the old laser workhorse could
become such a stunning showhorse? Not me.
At least not until now.
– Arthur Bleich
REVIEW
A
Archos Pocket Media Assistant 430
rchos wants to know how much you
can take, literally. I’m not talking about
how much media and other data you
can cram onto a 30-gigabyte hard drive — the
upper limit of that is fixed. No, what they want
to know is how many functions you want in
one pocket-size device, and when that thresh-
old is found, how much money are you will-
ing to hand over to possess one?
First attempt: the almost ridiculously well-
endowed Pocket Media Assistant 430, now
shipping for a mere $799. That’s a lot of cash,
but when you read the list of what the PMA430
can do, it doesn’t seem so bad:
■ Video recording from any analog media
source at slightly better than television reso-
lution in the MPEG4 format for video and
MP3 for audio;
■ Playback on a crisp, bright, 3.5-inch LCD
touchscreen with 320x240 pixels and 262,000
glorious colors, or connect to any television
monitor/home theatre system with standard
RCA or S-Video input ports;
■ Store, organize, and play digital audio files
in MP3, WAV, and WMA formats;
■ Record and rip stereo audio straight to
MP3 using an external mic, the internal mic,
or any stereo line level source, up to 192 kHz
at 48 bits, or lossless stereo WAV format;
■ Store, organize, and view digital photos
in JPG, BMP, PNG, and GIF file formats, ei-
ther copied from your computer or down-
loaded directly from your digital camera us-
ing USB Mass Storage compliance;
■ Play widely available games in either Mo-
phun or Qtopia formats;
■ 802.11b WiFi to browse the web and
check your email accounts, or use an option-
al USB ethernet adapter to use wired networks;
■ Maintain your calendar appointments,
task list, address book, and notes, then sync
them with Outlook on your Windows PC;
■ View, but not edit, standard Office doc-
uments including Word, Excel, and Power-
Point, as well as TXT, CSV, and soon (Archos
promises) Adobe PDF documents, either
copied from your computer or emailed;
■ Legally enjoy any Windows Media Play-
er-compatible DRM-protected digital media
file, including movies and music downloaded
from online services;
■ Run Linux programs;
■ Create your own applications using the
Archos SDK.
Crikey! All that for a paltry 800 clams?
And you can do all this for up to ten hours at
Archos wants to know how much you can take, literally
a stretch on a single charge
of the easily removable
3.7-volt lithium-ion
rechargeable battery pack.
The PMA430 ships with
an elaborate cradle sprout-
ing connections for just
about everything under
the sun. All jacked in and
sitting next to
your home
theater rig and
media com-
puter, it’s al-
most comical-
ly well
connected, but it all works as advertised.
Storming the citadel
Now the reality. I hate to break it to you, but
the Archos PMA 430 is as much a technology
demonstration as it is a useful consumer prod-
uct. All but the geekiest among us will stum-
ble over user interface quirks, playback limi-
tations, and byzantine media preparation
procedures involving multiple pieces of soft-
ware from all over the net.
The PMA 430’s interface clumsiness I can
forgive — this is a Linux-based device, so it’s
not exactly been given Apple-class treatment
in the polishing and user testing department.
With Linux, you take the rough with the
smooth because you are (a) cheap and (b) like
to fix things yourself. Thus, the fonts look
yucky, the colors are amateurish, and the var-
ious interface controls work differently de-
pending on which part-time student pro-
grammer hacked out the code on that piece of
the puzzle. It’s a UI trainwreck, but once you
get used to the abuse it’s really not so bad. Like
a Stockholm Syndrome for bad software, over
time you can learn to love your kidnappers in
spite of your better judgment. It’s a human
survival mechanism that had made Bill Gates
the richest person on Earth, money earned
from the profits gleaned from decades of soft-
ware abuse. If he wasn’t such a generous phil-
anthropist, his tens of millions of victims
would have stormed his mighty citadel and
forced him to use his own software until he
went completely insane.
This machine’s media playback hassles
are also forgivable, as they really aren’t Archos’
fault. Without, for example, the inability to
play back a recorded DVD on any device but
one unique PMA430 and not on a computer
screen or TV, Archos would
have been suffocated overnight with restrain-
ing orders from Big Media’s legal goon squads.
The one thing I cannot forgive is the al-
most comically complex hoops you, the end
user, have to jump through to take a piece of
visual media and make it playable on the
PMA430. Even the documentation that comes
with the device is apologetic about this atro-
cious state of affairs. MPEG4 is not really a sin-
gle specification as much as a collective set of
guidelines. A QuickTime movie, for example,
encoded in proper MPEG4 format, won’t work
in the Archos without transcoding it into an-
other variant using third-party software you
have to pay for. There are many examples of
media that won’t just work in this device —
basically, anything that isn’t ripped either by
a PMA430 or on another computer using
DivX or XviD encoders will probably fail to
play without a fair bit of tinkering. If you like
downloading lots of little pieces of utility soft-
ware from the net, installing it, then making
it all work like an assembly line, then you’ll
love this aspect of PMA430 ownership.
To be fair, most potential PMA430 buy-
ers will be most interested in recording TV
shows for viewing elsewhere and elsewhen,
like a mobile TiVo with a built-in display. Af-
ter this will be those who want to copy DVDs
and old videotapes into the device for personal
use. Beyond media use, the obvious mobile
computing aspects of wireless net access and
personal information management are pretty
compelling. If this unit had a phone and a
mapping GPS receiver in it, the word “con-
vergence” wouldn’t begin to describe it.
– David MacNeill
www.archos.com
REVIEW Dust Away
Sensor cleaning solution for digital SLR owners

L
ike a buzzing,
biting mosquito,
dust is a constant
annoyance. It’s on our
lenses, it’s on our pho-
tographs and it finds it
way onto our imaging
sensors. If you follow
your camera manufac-
turer’s recommenda-
tions you probably
send your camera off
to be cleaned at least
once a year or you de-
cide when you can no
longer deal with
cloning out all the dust
particles appearing as
black dots in your im-
ages. The cleaning
process at the manu-
facturer can some-
times take as long as eight weeks, leaving
you without a camera. Since I can’t han-
dle waiting that long every time I need my
d-skin optical disk protectors
camera’s sensor cleaned, I always clean it
myself. For the past three years I have I f you have ever lost important data because a
CD or DVD picked up a bad scratch or scuff
you’ll appreciate the new d_skin CD/DVD
unharmed. As insurance for valuable data these
should become very popular.
The only caveat I could think of is that some
been swabbing the sensor with a sensor
cleaning solution. It takes a while and it’s protectors. Think of them as jewel boxes that computers use very thin slots to accept CDs, so
an expensive process that costs about $8 stay on your disks while they are being played. thin that even a CD with a label stuck on won’t
for each cleaning. The d_skin protectors come in a neat metal slip into the slot, and a CD protected by a d_skin
I discovered a new product that seemed can, five to a package for $5.99 list price. Do might not fit into some of those, but I didn’t
so simple that I was skeptical that it would they work? As an informal test I put a d_skin have access to one to try.
work. I’ve been using it after every photo- onto a CD I had just burned and took an old I plan to put d_skin protectors on my most
shoot for the last two months, and since then
rusty nail to it. With pressure I was able to important back-up CDs and DVDs as an extra
I haven’t had to use Photoshop to clone out
damage the surface of the d_skin, but the CD layer of protection. –Bob Shell
any dust spots. It’s so easy to use and all you
need is canned air to make it work. Spray surface underneath remained www.d-skin.com
the canned air on the sensor brush fibers for pristine and
5-20 seconds, making sure you don’t shake
the can. This removes particles from the
brush fibers. The next step is to slide the
brush fibers from left to right over your cam-
era’s sensor. It’s that easy! Repeat the entire
process if needed. If you’re tired of sending
your camera out for cleaning or using swabs
to clean your camera’s sensor, you have to
try this little gem. It’s worth the price.
–Jon Cox

Dust Away
Econo 1.6X Kit
Price: $89.95
www.visibledust.com
 Think
Like
a
Pro
By Arthur H. Bleich

32 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com

 P
rofessional photographers
usually take better photos
than you do because, a) they
shoot more and, b) they have
developed methods to assure
that knock-out pictures are delivered to
their clients. You, too, have clients (family
and friends) and although they may not be
as demanding (because they’re not paying)
you still have an obligation (and hopefully
Photo © Jon Cox
a desire) not to bore them with trivial snap-
shots.
No doubt about it, serious photography
is difficult because it requires both a mas-
tery of technique and an eye for esthetics.
Sometimes one gets in the way of the oth-
er and visual chaos results. But if you think them to pose for some portraits. Tell shot most of his great pictures with
like a professional photographer, you’ll find them up front you know this may one camera and a 50mm lens.
it a lot easier to get the kinds of results that’ll not be their idea of fun but you
have both you and your “clients” saying: promise it won’t take more than 15 04 Find a long-term project to work on.
“That’s a great shot!” Let’s begin. minutes. Most of them can live with You wouldn’t think it, but most pros
that, though they’ll probably still have a pet project they’re working
01 Have a goal in mind whenever you
decide to shoot pictures. Don’t just
think it’s an eternity. If you offer a on aside from their commercial as-
reward, that will sweeten the deal signments. Though it sounds like a
wander around hoping that some- considerably. busman’s holiday, it keeps their eye
thing will catch your eye. Decide, for in shape and allows them to shoot
example, that today’s the day for 03 Don’t fixate on equipment. Many whatever (and however) they want
shooting unique doorways, or seals photographers constantly gripe that without having to answer to a client.
at the zoo, or something equally spe- if only they had this or that camera Committing to a long-term project
cific. With your mind (and eye) fo- or lens, they could make better pic- also will allow you to make adjust-
cused on one objective, you won’t tures. That really ap-
get frustrated trying to find things plies to only a few ar-
to take pictures of or come back with eas, mainly sports and
a lot of junk. In essence, you are tak- wildlife where, indeed,
ing on an “assignment” that has some long telephoto
some structure to it and you will be lenses are required.
forced to shoot accordingly. You’ll But you know what?
also end up with lots of good pic- Even if these com-
tures to choose from instead of a plainers had those
smorgasbord of images, none of lenses, they’d find an-
which may be very good because you other reason why they
didn’t spend enough time on each couldn’t bring home
Photo © David Bergman for The Heart Gallery NJ

of them. the bacon. Learn to

make the most of the
02 If you want to shoot great candid
pictures of kids, pretend to ignore
equipment you have
and you may find you
them. With younger kids, be pleas- don’t really need as
ant at first but if they continue to much as you thought
bug you with questions or start to you would. Unless
Photo © Arthur H. Bleich

ham it up for the camera just don’t they have assistants

answer and keep the camera up to along, most pros leave
your eye. They’ll quickly become the kitchen sink at
bored and go back to their activities, home and travel light–
forgetting that you’re there (which a couple of camera
is exactly what you want). Dealing bodies and a few lens-
with pre-teens and teens requires ne- es. The legendary
gotiation, especially if you want Henri Cartier-Bresson

www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 33

 ments as you move along. As you
shoot and see your results, you be-
gin to think about how certain im-
ages could be improved and you can
then make a mental note of what to
do the next time out. To begin with,
pick a subject that you can spend at
least a half-day a week with over a
one or two month period. This
could be a bridge or building shot
from different viewpoints at differ-
ent times of day, or a sports or
singing group that meets periodi-
cally, or a series of pictures on al-
most any subject.
05 Stop counting pennies (actually dol-
lars). When film was in its heyday,
film and processing were expensive.
If you did your own darkroom work,
paper and chemicals added to the
cost. Here’s something all pros
learned early on: if you wanted to get
good, you had to shoot a lot of film
and if you did your own developing
and printing, you couldn’t count
pennies when it came to making half
a dozen or more prints of the same
image to get one that was perfect.
You just had to forget the price or
you’d stop shooting or printing too
soon. The easiest way to do that was
to buy 100 rolls of film at a time and
500-sheet boxes of paper so you
could just dip into an endless supply.
Today, as a digital photographer, you
don’t spend a cent on film or pro-
cessing so you’re way ahead. Put that
money toward buying a dozen or
more inksets and a few hundred
sheets of paper—all at once—so you
can work on an image until it reach-
es perfection without thinking about
running out of supplies or how much
it costs.
34 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
07
Photo © Beau Hooker
06 “Preparation, preparation, prepara-
tion.” That was the late Johnny
Cochran Jr.’s mantra and you’d do
well to heed it. When pros get as-
signments, they don’t just throw
their camera gear in a bag and take
off. In the early stages of my career,
I sat next to a National Geographic
photographer on a plane to Alaska
and watched as he went through
08
notebooks worth of material he had
researched for weeks before leaving
on his assignment. Years later, I
found myself doing the same thing
because it’s the only way to make
sure you have all your bases covered
and know what to look for. Now,
with the Internet so easily accessi-
ble, there’s just no excuse for not
learning everything you can about
Photo © Jon Cox
09
www.digicamera.com
your intended subject so you know
what to look for before you even
turn your camera on.
There are things you should always
have with you—extra memory
cards, batteries, a tripod and all that,
but most pros have a much longer
list and it goes beyond throwing an
iPod into their camera bag for en-
tertainment. One of the most valu-
able pieces of gear you can have is a
pair of kneepads (do I hear some
snickering, out there?). Most pho-
tographers simply duck-squat when
trying to shoot dramatic low-angle
shots and that can just about wreck
your body. An inexpensive pair of
knee-pads from Home Depot can
let you get down and dirty with a
smile on your face. You can even
wear them under an old pair of jeans
so you’re ready to hit the ground at
any time. For less extreme shots,
bring along a lightweight folding
canvas stool (about 13-inches high)
so you can sit low and shoot, say, at
the sidelines of an event. And at the
other end of the spectrum, most
pros carry a small ladder for times
they need a little added height to im-
prove their viewpoint.
Force yourself to shoot the same
subject from different points of view
and at different times of day. At first,
this can be a killer because it takes
some thinking and a lot of work. But
if you look at images shot by pros,
you’ll find that most of them have
been shot at an unusual angle or
with unusual lighting (early or late
in the day or at night). Pros have to
bring back eye-poppers and shoot-
ing the subject straight on at noon
just doesn’t cut it. After awhile, it
will just become natural for you to
think in terms of different angles and
lighting and your pictures will sud-
denly begin to jump out at viewers.
Pros also love wide angle lenses be-
cause they give a unique look to an
image and can add some deliberate
distortion. Buy a wide-angle lens and
learn to love it, too.
Pros read many of the same books
and magazines about photography
that you do and listen to a lot of
chatter about which cameras, lens-
es, printers, computers, and software
are supposed to be the best. But they
don’t go switching around wildly be-
cause that can lead to disaster. If you
 Photo © Bob Shell
work on oil rigs and how his

Photo © Bob Shell

“aunt” was always com-
plaining because, even
though the money was
good, she and the family
didn’t see him for weeks at
a time. He would immedi-
ately see nods and smiles
and the ice was broken. OK,
maybe you think he was
cheating a bit but it worked
and no one was hurt by it.
If you use this technique, re-
member not to have an im-
mediate member of your
family in the same occupa-
tion or you may be expected
to know more than you do.

11 Props can make or break a

find that the camera and lens(es)
you have are giving you good results,
stick with them. If shooting in JPEG
yields good prints, there’s no need
to get bogged down in RAW. Some
photographers actually like to use
complicated processes—it makes
them feel superior to others. You
don’t need the latest and greatest to
make good pictures; constantly
changing your gear and techniques
may actually hold you back as you
12
constantly struggle with new learn-
ing curves. Most pros keep things
simple so they can concentrate on
the image-making process. You
should, too.
10 One of the most difficult things pho-
tographers have to learn is to over-
shot. Many pros drag a
whole bunch of them along
if they are appropriate to
13
their assignment. A little girl
is just a little girl, but a lit-
tle girl with a red balloon
can really catch your eye.
Scenic photographers fre-
quently carry a duffel bag
full of different colored jack-
ets and hats for their foreground
subjects to wear so they stand out.
If you shoot pictures of kids and
teens, encourage them to bring
along their favorite toys or posses-
sions; it’ll make the shot more in-
teresting and your subjects will be
more comfortable in front of the
camera.
Always keep your eyes open for pic-
ture possibilities that are not main-
stream. For example, I know a sports
photographer whose most interest-
ing shots are not of the game but of
things big and small that surround
it. In the world of motion pictures
these are known as cutaways, scenes
related to the main action but not
part of it. Fans in the stands, play-
There are a few things you should-
n’t do. One of them is relying on
your sequence (or burst) mode to
catch a great action shot. Shooting
a sequence of images doesn’t guar-
antee you’ll catch the peak of action;
the only way that’d be a shoo-in is
if your camera could fire at about
30 frames or more per second and
that’s not possible yet. Besides, even
if it were, think of the memory card
requirements. Before motor drives
became available on film cameras,
sports photographers relied on their
own sense of timing to stop the ac-
tion. Guess what? They did a pretty
good job of it. All it takes is practice.
The other thing you should avoid is
being too quick to erase “bad” im-
ages. Many pros have gone through
their film negatives after the passage
of time and have found great images
they overlooked when they first shot
them. Digital makes it too easy to
make quick (and often wrong) de-
cisions to delete pictures. Only scrub
obvious garbage—if you’re not sure,
keep it.

come their reluctance to approach ers in anguish over losing or tri-

people they don’t know and ask if
they can photograph them. A pro
once told me how he was able to es-
tablish quick rapport with subjects,
putting them at ease while he shot
their pictures. He said he always had
an imaginary aunt, uncle, nephew,
umphant in victory, a referee tying
his shoelaces, bored pitchers in the
bullpen, and so on. Similarly, every-
day things that you walk by a thou-
sand times bear closer examination.
A rope tied to a pole can make a
great design shot if you move in on
Photo © Arthur H. Bleich

or niece in his pocket who was in the
same occupation as his intended
subject. For example, if he was pho-
tographing oil workers on a rig, he’d
tell them how his “uncle” used to
it and frame it well. Even a water
sprinkler head can look like a mu-
seum piece if you take the time to
shoot it at a unique angle when the
light is right.

36 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com

 Photo © Jon Cox
14 Imaging programs will not improve
your photographic skills. This may
sound like digital heresy but slavish
devotion to these programs can im-
pede your progress as a photogra-
pher. When film was king, many of
the world’s greatest photographers
never went near a darkroom—they
handed their “take” to a lab for pro-
cessing and then edited their slides.
Imaging programs are great for ad-
justing brightness, contrast, color,
sharpness, and for getting rid of im-
perfections and unwanted elements
but that’s all you need to know how
to do. If you spend a lot of time with
your imaging program, that’s less
time to shoot. The secret is to shoot
correctly to begin with so the time contacts that can be valuable to you Many pros got their start in the field
you spend on the computer is min- in the future. The State of New Jer- by doing photography for non-prof-
imized. And spending US $650 for sey recently asked top pros (like its. Choose a charity in your area (it
Photoshop when $80 for Elements David Bergman who’s been featured could even be your place of worship)
will suffice is simply an exercise in in DCM) if they would photograph and let them know you’re available
conspicuous consumption or keep- kids who were up for adoption. to do some volunteer photography
ing up with the Jones’s, both of They wanted appealing images that for them. It’ll be good for both of you.
which are despicable would give an insight into the kids’
personalities rather than just mug Arthur H. Bleich (arthur@dpcorner.com) is a pho-
15 Pros frequently donate their time to
charitable projects and so should
shots that they’d used in the past. As tographer, writer, and educator who lives in Mi-
a result, more kids were adopted and ami. He does assignments for major publications
you. It will give you a good feeling each photographer came away pro- both in the U.S. and abroad, and conducts digi-
to know just how powerful photog- foundly touched by the experience. tal photography workshop cruises, the next of which
raphy can be as a force for positive You can see the results at The Heart will sail on December 3, 2005. Visit his Digital
change. And you will make a lot of Gallery <www.heartgallerynj.com>. PhotoCorner at www.dpcorner.com.

Photo © Jon Cox

www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 37

REVIEW
Y
ou won’t see many personal com-
Alienware Area 51 MJ-12m 7700

puter reviews in this magazine, but

when you do, it’ll be something ex-
Most powerful Windows-based mobile computer we’ve ever seen

traordinary. We requested a review sam-

ple of the Alienware Area 51 MJ-12m
7700 mobile workstation because of its
impressive specs, making it suitable for
professional creative production work in
video, audio, and serious still photo-
graphic work.
Don’t be turned off by the garish, sci-
ence fiction graphic treatment. This ma-
chine may be marketed to gaming fanat-
ics but underneath it’s all business. I’ll let
the specs below speak for themselves, but
taken together in actual use, this machine
delivers devastating performance, on par
with the best desktop machines.
Not surprisingly, this beast is freakin’
enormous. I have end tables at home that
are smaller across, and the thing weighs
almost 13 pounds. Under your arm,
it feels like you’re carrying an at-
taché packed full of stuff. The
power brick is the first I’ve ever
seen that is actually about the
size of a real brick and weighs
almost as much.
But, oh! what you get in
return. Blistering desktop-
class Pentium 4 speed, a gor-
geously bright 17" widescreen (1680x1050 Our tests were, predictably, flat-out Specifications
pixel) display with a built-in VGA camera, amazing. We ran a full array of pro-grade • 3.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 microprocessor
dual hard drives (up to 200GB’s worth) photo and video editing applications with • 800MHz frontside bus, 1MB cache
configured in either RAID 0 or RAID 1 stunning results. Just for laughs we installed • NVIDIA Quadro FX Go 1400, 256MB DDR3
striping, up to 2GB of RAM, state-of-the- Half-Life II and the thing ran so well one • Up to 2GB of PC2-4200 SO-DIMM RAM
of our editors actually got dizzy and had to • Up to 2 100GB SATA hard drives, RAID 0/1
art NVIDIA graphics subsystem with DDR3
stop playing. It’s almost ridiculous how fast • 17" 1680x1050 widescreen display
vRAM, dual optical drives, and a full-size • 4 USB 2.0 & 2 FireWire ports
keyboard. this thing is.
Other nice features include the ability • DVI, serial, parallel, and PS2 ports
• S-Video, Video-in, 5.1 audio (SPDIF) ports
to play CDs and MP3 disk while the com-
• Gigabit ethernet, 802.11a/b/g wireless
puter is turned off. There are controls of • PCMCIA Type II ACPI CardBus slot
the front within easy reach — even an LCD • Flash card slots: CF, SD, MMC, MS , MS Pro
panel for track info. Watching a DVD on
this unit was completely immersive. Be- Dimensions & Weight
tween the huge display and the four speak- • 15.6” x 11.7” x 2.1”
• 12.75 lbs. (sans power brick)
ers + subwoofer underneath the case, it was
easy to kick back in our office chairs and Contact: www.alienware.com
just watch the show. Price as tested: $3142
I’m a Mac guy who relies on a 17" Pow- (1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, DVD-R,
er Book G4 for everything. If I was a PC guy, 1680x1050 display with camera, NVIDIA
this would be my computer. –DM GeForce Go 6800 graphics card)
CAMLAB
I
am a big fan of Fujifilm digital cameras. We re-
cently reviewed Fujifilm’s FinePix E510 and E550
compacts and found them to be delightful 5 and
6 megapixel cameras equally well suited for beginners
and those interested in advancing their photography
skills. Somehow, Fujifilm has mastered the art of mak-
ing mass market consumer cameras that are simple
and easy to use while still conveying a feeling of qual-
ity and sophistication. Even inexpensive Fujifilm cam-
eras don’t talk down to their users with idiot-proof
features and Tonka toy design, as if their budget-mind-
ed customers were too dumb and clumsy to handle a
real camera. And almost all FujiFilm cameras I have
ever reviewed back that up with technological com-
petence and excellent picture quality.
I was therefore very excited over the announce-
ment of the new FinePix F10 Zoom. Like the E5xx
Series, the F10 is an ultra compact just small and light
enough to fit into a pocket. And like those fine cam-
eras, the F10 comes with a sensor that uses Fuji’s pro-
prietary Super CCD High Resolution technology that
uses octagonal pixels placed close to each other in sort
of a honeycomb arrangement. Fuji claims this tech-
nology offers images of higher perceived resolution
and quality than what you’d get from a regular CCD
of the same resolution, and digital zoom and movies
yield better quality as well. We found all of that to be
true in our review of the Super CCD HR-equipped
FinePix E550. However, the F10 comes with even
more astounding new technology such as Fujifilm’s
new Real Photo Processor that offers an unprecedented
ISO sensitivity range from 80 all the way up to 1600.
Theoretically that means being able to take pictures
in very low light conditions, and take shots without
flash where other cameras need a flash. Addressing the
complaint that digicam batteries don’t last long enough,
the F10 was announced as being able to shoot 500
pictures on a single charge of its Lithium-Ion battery
pack. And following the much appreciated trend of
equipping digital cameras with larger LCDs, FujiFilm
gave the F10 a 2.5-inch display, which is about as large
as digital camera LCDs come these days. In fact, the
only larger display I can think of is that of the Casio
EX-Z57 which has a 2.7-inch LCD.
Given all of those terrific specifications, my ex-
pectations for the FinePix F10 were very high. Per-
haps too high.
Right out of the box, the F10 is a handsome lit-
tle camera. It measures 3.8 x 2.3 x 1.1 inches. That’s
a bit larger than those tiny cameras in the Canon Dig-
ital ELPH class, but not by much. The metal housing
is beautifully designed and combines bright, brushed,
and powder finishes for a look that exudes both qual-
ity and elegance. The 3X optical zoom lens remains
inside the body, then motors out about an inch when
the F10 is powered on via push of a button. Powerup
 Less than the sum of its parts
is very fast, as are shutter time lag and time between
shots. Most of the backside is taken up by the large
LCD display. There are very few controls. Four but-
tons and a navigation ring in the back. Shutter and
zoom are in separate locations and perfectly placed. A
large mode dial around the shutter lets you select au-
tomatic, scene, manual, and movie modes. All good
stuff. The Lithium-Ion battery and xD-Picture card
slot are accessible through the bottom of the camera.
They are covered by an unlockable plastic door. The
battery is smaller than its compartment and doesn’t
have a retainer clip, so it can easily fall out. The bot-
tom also contains a plastic tripod mount (why almost
all consumer cameras use plastic instead of metal to
save a few pennies is beyond me).
Now it was time to actually try out the camera
during a bright Spring morning outside our editorial
offices in the Sierra Nevada foothills. First observation:
no optical viewfinder. While editor-in-chief MacNeill
applauds this development, I don’t. Not as long as even
the best LCDs are only marginally viewable in direct
sunlight. The F10’s LCD is large and fairly readable
outdoors, but three factors work against it: 1) Only re-
flective
LCDs offer
truly accept-
able readabil-
ity in sunlight and this isn’t one of them. 2) The LCD’s
glass cover reflects like a mirror. 3) The display, large
though it is, is actually quite low res. It only has 115k
pixels compared to 154k pixel in the E550’s 2-inch dis-
play. This meant that often I couldn’t really see what
exactly I took a picture of. Often I just pointed the F10
in the approximate direction and hoped for the best.
I love doing macro shots. The F10 didn’t work
well in that department. In macro mode you can get
as close as three inches which isn’t great to begin with,
but then the otherwise reasonably fast autofocus slowed
down considerably. Between the barely readable dis-
play and the slow focus it took me several shots to get
a halfway decent picture of a bee collecting pollen (see
above). You can use the zoom in macro mode, but that
is a mixed blessing as almost any degree of zoom means
the autofocus mechanism won’t be able to get a sharp
image.
As far as the 3X optical zoom goes, it worked well
enough, but I wondered why some much smaller cam-
eras have internal 3X zooms whereas the F10’s motors
out a full inch, which means you have to turn the cam-
era off before you stick it back into your pocket. That,
and some subjects I tried to take closeups of—a lizard
in particular—seemed quite perturbed by the constantly
moving lens barrel.
All of this would be excusable to some degree if
the F10 had rewarded my efforts with the superb im-
age quality I got out of the FinePix E550 or even its
lesser brother, the E510. But more disappointment
there. Most of my shots simply weren’t as sharp and
vibrant as I expected from all the cool optics and tech-
nology in this camera. And that on a fairly consistent
basis and under different shooting
and lighting conditions. Needless
to say, I was also eager to try out
the phenomenal ISO sensitivity
range of the F10, and there the
news was quite good. You won’t,
of course, get crisp images with an
ISO setting of 1600, but you can
use it to get pretty decent shots un-
der dim lighting conditions where
you’d have to use a flash with al-
most any other camera. That can
come in very handy.
Battery life is indeed excep-
tional, especially considering the
large display. However, the F10
does not have a power jack. In or-
der to charge the battery you need
to plug a terminal adapter into the
camera’s sole connection socket.
You then plug power, USB, and
AV cables into that terminal. Lose
the adapter and you can’t charge.
One final complaint: the curious mix of abbre-
viated text and often hard/impossible to interpret icons
makes for an unsatisfactory menu experience. If you
have to consult the (very good) manual to figure out
what those icons mean, someone didn’t get it right.
I really wanted to like the FinePix F10, but com-
pared to its many terrific siblings, it just misses the boat.
FujiFilm made too many odd decisions here, and the
technology just doesn’t work as it should. ◆
—Kirk Linsky
Model...........................Fujifilm FinePix F10 Zoom
List price.......................US$499
Sensor res ........................6.3 megapixels
Image dimensions ........2848x2136 down to 640x480
ISO ...............................auro/50/100/200/400/800/1600
Lens..............................F:2.8-8.0
Lens focal length ..........8-24 mm (36-108mm equiv.)
Shutter .........................1/2000 to 3 seconds
Exposure compensation ..+/- 2.0 EV in 1/3 EV steps
Storage ........................xD-Picture Card (16MB incl.)
Focus............................Center/multi/continuous
LCD screen ...................2.5 inch TFT (115k)
Flash modes .................6 modes
Viewfinder....................none
Battery ........................Li-Ion rechargeable
Weight .........................5.5 ounces w/o batteries
Dimensions...................3.6 x 2.3 x 1.1 inches
Included .......................Software, cables, strap
CAMLAB Though I had to stretch my arms over my head to take this shot straight on, the in line viewfinder made composition easy. Notice how well the 7070 handles shadow detail in this early morning lighting
T
he Olympus 7070 doesn’t just blur the line be-
tween pro and consumer cameras, it erases it.
With a superb 7.1 MP CCD sensor, a 27–
110mm equivalent lens, and a solidly constructed mag-
nesium body, this camera is ready to capture the big
picture and bring it back in DCF Exif2.2, RAW, TIFF,
or JPEG. Shooting speeds are up to 3.3 fps (RAW)
with ISO settings from 50-400. You can stand back
and take in the landscape, or go into super-macro mode
and get as close as an inch from your subject. The 7070
makes you stop and wonder what defines a professional
camera, and it does it for about $699 (street).
The irony of digital camera design is that the
Holy Grail for professional cameras is to look and feel
like film SLRs, while consumer and prosumer cam-
eras, freed from this constraint, provide better func-
tionality. If you watch someone who grew up using
film cameras use a digital camera with an LCD display,
you’ll see that they keep going back to the viewfinder,
even though it’s not giving them nearly as accurate an
idea of what their picture will be like. Anyone who
started in photography with digitals, on the other hand,
especially if they’ve “graduated” up to the big leagues
and bought a DLSR, will find that as much fun as it
is to look through that SLR’s lens, making the whole
world look like a picture on a movie screen in a pitch
black theater, having a camera glued to your face is re-
ally a drag.
I’ve been waiting for digital cameras to get to the
point where they can abandon the SLR form factor
A few more days and I could have shown you shots of cherry
blossoms, but thanks to a late spring, you’ll have to settle for
close ups (as close as one inch in Super Macro) of buds.
and come into their own. I’ve hoped that one of the
classic rangefinder companies would take advantage of
the similarities between their form factor and digicams,
by putting something really professional out there, but
though Leica and Epson both have entries in this field,
neither really makes the grade. Olympus, on the oth-
er hand, has come up with a camera that very nearly
fits the bill for fast-moving professional photographers
at a nearly consumer camera price. I’ve been carrying
one in my bag as a backup camera while I’ve had it for
review, and have been delighted with its design, solid
construction and especially the crisp wide-angle lens.
What I like about the 7070 falls into three areas:
form factor, resolution, and lens. Glenn Schwartz, prod-
uct manager, isn’t overstating the case when he says
that “The C-7070 Wide Zoom will be valued by pho-
tographers of all levels for its compact size, rugged con-
struction and ease of use, but the powerful wide-angle
lens, 7.1-megapixel image sensor and two new AF
modes are features that give this camera the extra edge
required by high-end amateur and professional pho-
tographers.”
They’ve included features specifically aimed at
pros, like an optional Power Battery Holder (B-
HLD20), which doubles the already substantial bat-
.
Near Professional Features
tery life,
a wide(r) angle converter that takes the lens
down to a 19mm equivalent and telephotos that take
it up to 187 or 330mm (equiv.) Of course, you lose a
lot of light with a teleconverter. Of course it comes
with a hot shoe mount for computer controlled flash,
so that’s some help, but if you’re serious about long
lenses you should consider another camera. My favorite
feature is the 1.8-inch Semi-Transmissive swivel LCD,
which, unlike every other camera I can think of, hinges
straight up from the back to make a really convenient
waist level view finder. Most cameras first have to swiv-
el off to the side, taking the viewfinder out of line with
the lens, and making composing your shot awkward.
The 7070, on the other hand, feels extremely natural,
perfect for portraits and shooting high or low subjects.
Whether I was shooting at waist level, toe level, or with
the camera stretched as far over my head as I could
reach, aiming the camera felt natural. Light level his-
tograms are very useful for making sure you’re getting
as much information
into a picture as you
can, but the 7070 goes
a step beyond to give
you a small target win-
dow within the main
display so that you can
see the relative bright-
ness of the subject as op-
posed to the entire image. It’s
a nice idea.
The magnesium housing is both light-
weight and durable, and the lens retracts enough so
that you can toss the camera into a briefcase, backpack
or glove compartment to be ready for a once-in-a-life-
time shot. The 3.3 fps the camera manages in the RAW
setting should help you capture the action, and when
you get that shot, the 7.1 MP image will have suffi-
cient quality for the pickiest publication. Speaking of
RAW, you’ve got your choice of a number of differ-
ent JPG resolutions for a simultaneously saved file,
something that cameras like the Nikon D70 and Canon
Rebel don’t offer. You also have more choices when it
comes to memory format, the camera has slots for both
CF and SD cards.
On the “con” side, I wish the camera went fur-
ther into pro territory, though at this price it goes fur-
ther than one should expect. The max ISO equivalent
is only 400, owing to the small size of the sensor need-
ed to keep the cost down. For the price, I can’t com-
www.digicamera.com
plain, and I have to respect Olympus’ conservative as-
signment of ISO, to control noise, but I’d be willing
to pay more and to get more.
The controls are a bit iconoclastic, and if you’re
jumping back and forth between the 7070 and some
other camera that may bother you at first. This is a
camera that you can plan on keeping for a while
though, so once you’ve learned the ropes you should
be fine. Two critical controls that are just plain badly
placed take away from my raves about the body, those
being the on/off switch, which is hard to get at, and
the shutter release, which should be placed a bit more
forward and angled down to where your thumb nat-
urally rests.
Wide-angle lenses are subject to “barrel distor-
tion” which is the tendency for lines near the edges of
an image to bow outward. The 7070 suffers from this
as well, but unless you’re shooting an image with
straight lines at the edges, you won’t notice it. If you
would like to correct it, the software that comes
with the camera includes a tool for that, or you
can get an Adobe Photoshop plug-in from
Panorama Tools to fix it there.
In conclusion, though there’s some room left for
improvement, this is a very strong camera which
accomplishes its mission—to bridge the gap be-
tween personal and professional camera and pro-
vide a serious tool for photographers that either
want to work in a Digital Camera form factor or
to be ready to grow into DSLRs and still have a
dependable backup camera.
There will undoubtedly be some who would
rather have a longer telephoto than a wider lens, but
that’s a matter of photographic vision. I like wider lens-
es because they let you capture bigger spaces, especial-
ly architectural ones like the shots of Alexandria, Vir-
ginia I’ve got here. Longer lenses keep me too far from
the action, whether its people, places, or things, be-
cause I like interacting with the subject.
I’d strongly recommend the camera to photog-
raphy students and journalists both of which will ap-
preciate its pro-features, compact size and affordable
price.  —Ernest Lilley
Model...........................Olympus C-7070 Wide Zoom
Estimated street price...US$699
Sensor res ........................7.1 megapixels
Image dimensions ........2560x1920 down to 640x480
ISO ...............................50/100/200/400/auto
Lens..............................F:2.8-8.0, 4X opt/5X digital
Lens focal length ..........5.7-22.9 mm (27-110mm equiv.)
Shutter .........................1/4000 to 16 seconds
Exposure compensation ..+/-2EV in 1/3 or 1/2 EV steps
Storage ........................CF + xD Card (32MB incl.l)
Focus............................Dual AF: contrast or phase
LCD screen ...................1.8 inch TFT (130k pixels)
Flash modes .................7 modes, up to 21 feet
Viewfinder....................optical real image
Battery ........................BLM-1 Lithium-ion rechargeable
Weight .........................13.5 ounces w/o battery
Dimensions...................4.6 x 3.4 x 2.6 inches
Included .......................Software, cables, strap, cradle
DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 43
CAMLAB B
efore I get into actually describing the subject of
this review, Sony’s new Cyber-Shot DSC-P200,
I feel compelled to present a few contemplations
that came to mind as I perused his magnificent little 7.2
megapixel marvel.
It seems, for example, utterly incomprehensi-
ble that not all that long ago, all Sony digital cameras
distinguished themselves by recording their pictures
onto standard floppy disks. That was the Mavica se-
ries (which lives on in a trio of cameras that use op-
tical disks as their recording medium, and one still
uses a floppy disk) and you could tell they used flop-
py disks because their largish bodies were pretty much
built around the square shape of a 3-1/2-inch flop-
py. In this day and age of tiny Memory Sticks and
other postage-stamp sized storage cards the thought
that a camera’s size was once dictated by something
as arcane as a standard floppy disk seems absurd, as
does the minuscule recording capacity of those old
floppy disks. Such a disk wouldn’t hold a single im-
age from the new Cyber-shot DSC-P200, not even
in its lower “standard” compression. A VERY COMPACT
Take one look at the gleaming silvery case of
the P200 and you cannot help but marvel at how far
we’ve come. The fictional characters in Stanley HIGH RESOLUTION
Kubrick’s groundbreaking “2001—A Space Odyssey”
movie may have been able to fly to Jupiter, but in SONY CAMERA AT AN
Sony’s wonderful world of technology, the year 2001
is ancient, quaint history. AFFORDABLE PRICE

Sony Cyber-shot
Unlike those big old Mavicas, the Cyber-shot
P200 is barely larger than a flip-phone—4 x 2 x 1
inch, with a weight of just five ounces—but it’s a pow-
erful 7.2 megapixel camera with a high quality Carl
Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3X zoom lens, a bright 2-inch out-

DSC-P200
door-viewable LCD screen, and the usual flurry of
incredibly well designed micro details that Sony is fa-
mous for. Just like its P-Series predecessors (the P100
and the P150), from a design point of view, the P200
is playfully styled with one side square and the other
side curving around the three bright concentric cir-
cles around the P200’s 3X optical zoom lens. In fact,
everything about the P200 is rounded and curved:
lines, buttons, inserts, even the tiny little flash win-

dow and the long concave moulding around the left
side of the camera which is probably there so that you
can more easily hold the P200 with the index finger
and thumb of your left hand. All of this is in great
contrast to the angular T1 Sony shocked the world
with way back in, oh, perhaps 2004.
BY BEAU HOOKER
It is not entirely tures and performance, but they are not willing to pay
clear why Sony the higher prices of our no-compromise solutions.”
needs so many As a result, while the P200 offers full 7.2
different lines megapixel resolution, its 3X zoom lens motors out an
of fairly simi- inch when you power up the camera. An internal,
lar digicams, foldable zoom is more elegant, doesn’t get in the way,
but then but costs more. And while some of the top notch
again, that was Sonys have 2.5-inch displays, the P200 must do with
no different a 2.0-inch LCD—respectable, but noticeably small-
when Sony still er. There are other, less obvious concessions, but all
made its Palm OS- of this means that the P200 costs less. It is not cheap—
based Clié PDAs. No no Sony 7.2 megapixel camera can be cheap—but it’s
matter what your prefer- less than the no-holds-barred, all-tricked-out W- and
ence was, Sony had a Clié for T-Series models.
you. If I were on Sony’s staff and had to come up with What you get with the P200 is a high resolu-
an internal product placement description for this tion camera that does almost everything well. It is
camera, I’d probably say, “The P200 is for those cus- small enough to fit into any pocket (as long as the
tomers who prefer style and elegance over the angular lens has retracted inside the body), it has a solid 3X
shape of our more engineering-driven models. These cus- optical zoom that’s complemented by either a stan-
tomers are value-conscious and demand advanced fea- dard 2X digital zoom or Sony’s “Smart zoom” that

44 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE digicamera.com

borrows unused pix-
els to enlarge an
image taken in
one of the cam-
era’s lower res-
olution settings.
There is a small
optical viewfind-
er for those times
when it becomes dif-
ficult to view the LCD
display outdoors. The controls are all fairly
self-explanatory although an initial pass through the
very good 98-page manual is definitely recommend-
ed. That way you’ll learn that the little green camera
icon means “automatic” and everything is taken care
of, whereas in P(rogram) mode the camera controls
aperture and speed and leaves the rest to you. In M(an-
ual) mode you have complete control over everything.
Frequently used controls such as macro, flash, or res-
olution can be changed by pushing one of the four di-
rectional controls—no need to push the Menu but-
ton and work your way through the not always obvious
Model...........................Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P200
List price.......................US$399.95
Sensor res ........................7.2 megapixels
Image dimensions ........3072x2304 down to 640x480
ISO ...............................100/200/400 or auto
Lens..............................F:2.8-10
Lens focal length ..........7.9-23.7 mm (38-114mm equiv.)
Shutter .........................1/2000 to 30 seconds
Exposure compensation ..±2.0EV in 1/3EV increments
Storage ........................Memory Stick (32MB incl.)
Focus............................Multi-point, center, manual
on-screen menus for that. Controls are laid out well; I’d rate the P200 only average in autofocus and frame-
LCD screen ...................2.0 inch (134k)
you’ll find everything where you expect it. to-frame recycling speed. I love the 30 frames-per-sec-
Flash modes .................4, up to 11.5 feet reach
In the field, the P200 performs well. It never ond 640x480 movie mode with sound. It requires a
I/O ................................A/V and USB via multi connector
gets in the way, its battery lasts a long time and the Memory Stick Pro card, but produces excellent movie
Battery ........................NP-FR1 Lithium-Ion
screen even tells you how many minutes you have left, clips.
Weight .........................5.0 ounce w/o battery
and the display provides enough information (including All in all, the P200 is the answer for those who
Dimensions...................4.0 x 2.0 x 1.0 inches
a live histogram) without being cluttered. Both con- want a small, reasonably priced Sony camera with high
Included .......................Software, strap, cables, charger
trols and icons/text are a bit too small for my taste and resolution and good features. ◆ —CHB

digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 45

CAMLAB 7.2 MEGAPIXELS
IN YOUR POCKET

Casio EX-Z750
I
’m becoming something of an expert on Casio’s line of card I’ve written many times about the recent emergence of the thin-
cameras. I can’t help myself; I just love ‘em. And the company zoom form factor and how they have taken over the market. Casio
keeps cranking out new and improved models at an astonish- pioneered this category back in 2002/2003 with their first card cam-
ing rate. Often a new model or two arrive on my desk the day I fin- eras, the 2-megapixel S1 fixed focal length camera followed by the
ish my last Casio review. Fortunately, the retail distribution
channels work a little slower, so the models I review are usu-
ally still available when our magazine ships. But somebody is
putting something in the water cooler at Casio’s design de-
partment — these people obviously never sleep.
3.2 megapixel Z3 with a zoom lens. From the
success of those products, the company went
on to develop an array of models based on
them, increasing resolution, performance,
and battery life. Amazingly, they stayed just
as tiny and pocket-friendly as the early de-
signs.
And now we have the Z750, offering a
staggering 7.2 megapixels, a 2.5-inch display,
high-quality MPEG4 640x480 movies at 30
frames per second, a new dock design that
sports an audio/video out port for connect-
ing to your home theater, and an impressive
array of innovative new capture modes and
in-camera editing features.

Mixed blessing
Having 7.2 megapixels on tap is great, but
it’s a bit of a mixed blessing. The files are
quite large. Fine resolution JPEGs are
around 4.3 megabytes, while the CMYK
Z750 (7.2 megapixels)
TIFF versions I created for this layout each
hit 27 megabytes. But of course the upside is all that
room to crop without losing detail. If you’ve got a
computer with decent processing speed and a large hard
drive, you’ll love it. And you’ll need to spend another
couple of C-notes on a pair of 1GB SecureDigital cards.
The Z750 doesn’t ship with one and anything smaller
with a 7.2 megapixel camera will just frustrate you.
To illustrate the relative size difference, I took photos
of the badge on my MINI Cooper S using a tripod. As
you can see not only is the size difference dramatically
apparent but you can also see that the different imager
on the two cameras produce slightly different fields of
view — the Z750 is slightly less wide angle.
As the day was extremely sunny and the sun straight
overhead, I took a wide shot of my car’s front end to see
if I could tease out some purple fringing. As you can see Z55 (5 megapixels)
in the detail, even zoomed in to 500% in
Photoshop there is almost none — and
this was an extremely high contrast
situation. Continued on page 64

Model...........................Casio EX-Z750
List price.......................$449.99 list
Sensor res ........................7.2 megapixels
Image dimensions ........3072x2304
ISO ...............................auto, 50/100/200/400
Lens..............................F:2.8-5.1
Lens focal length ..........7.9-23.7mm (38-114mm equiv.)
Shutter .........................1/1600 to 60 seconds
Exposure compensation ..+/- 2.0 EV in 1/3 EV steps
Storage ........................SD Card (none included)
Autofocus.....................Contrast AF: multi, spot, free
LCD screen ...................2.5 inch (115,200k pixels)
Flash modes .................Auto, fill, off, red-eye control
Viewfinder....................Optical
Battery ........................Casio NP-40 Li-Ion only
Weight .........................4.48 oz w/o battery or SD
Dimensions...................3.5 x 2.3 x 0.88 inches
Included .......................Dock cradle, cables, software
FEATURE

RAW DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH

Power
by Jon Cox
A
diamond cutter studies a lump of stone.
He decides where to make each cut to
capture the beauty of the crystal rock.
His level of craft, along with the quality and
clarity of the stone, determines how strik-
ing the diamond appears. Like diamonds
in the rough, RAW image files allow digi-
tal photographers to prove their expertise
in the digital darkroom. How the photog-
rapher interprets the data decides the allure
of the image.
You’ll hear a lot of people say, “You
don’t need to shoot RAW files” and they
are correct. You don’t need to but, if you
have the option of working with all your
camera can give, then why not? I believe
this is the best method to render your dig-
ital images. A RAW file is a “lossless” com-
pressed file containing minimal camera pro-
cessing. It seems counterintuitive to spend
thousands of dollars on a digital camera
that’s equipped with sophisticated settings,
only to use file format that doesn’t take full
advantage of these advanced settings. How-
ever, this is exactly what happens when you
shoot using the RAW file format.
For years nature photographers have pri-
marily shot color slides. When developing
a slide into a print, there is little leeway to
make changes to exposure in the darkroom.

Hanang Chameleon, Nou

Forest, Tanzania. Nikon D1X
with Micro-Nikkor 105mm
f/2.8D AF lens
Trekking around the Nou Forest in
Tanzania is breathtaking – finding a
rare chameleon is even better. The
RAW image is exactly how it appeared
on my camera’s LCD screen,
seemingly underexposed with very
little detail. If I had been judging my
exposure based on the image in the
LCD screen, I definitely would have
re-shot this image. However, I was
looking at the camera’s histogram,
which showed detail in every part of
the image including highlights and
shadows. This is why I kept the shot.
Weeks later when the image was
downloaded onto my computer it still
looked much too dark. My camera’s
histogram didn’t lie; the image was a
diamond in the rough. A few steps in
Photoshop’s RAW dialog box and the
image appeared just as I remembered.
Black and white film allows countless ad-
justments in the wet darkroom, enabling
photographers to pull out details that are
difficult to see on the negative. You can
compare a JPEG file to a color slide in a way
that you have less leeway in the darkroom
to make changes. A RAW file can be com-
pared to a film negative. My mindset has
changed. Since I started shooting RAW files,
I feel more like I did when shooting black
and white film. My primary goal is to col-
lect data as I shoot RAW files, and then im-
port it into the digital darkroom for final
editing. In the field I shoot, while checking
the histogram to make sure my exposure
contains details in the whites and blacks. I
don’t worry about color temperature or
how the image actually appears in the LCD
screen, because I trust my histogram.
To use the RAW file, you must start by
making sure your camera has the ability to
shoot with the RAW file format. Different
format options are located in your camer-
a’s shooting menu. Your camera’s manu-
facturer may have given their RAW file for-
mat a different name from RAW; however,
RAW should be indicated. Once you have
taken a few RAW images, you can down-
load them onto your computer. Adobe Pho-
toshop CS, CS2 and Photoshop Elements 3
all have the built-in ability to open RAW
files that have been taken from many digi-
tal cameras, but not all. Check
www.adobe.com to see if your camera mod-
el is supported. Using RAW files takes
longer to process than JPG or TIFF files,
50 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com
but has become much easier with
the Adobe Photoshop Plug-in.
The RAW plug-in is like a special
photographer’s software package
that’s bundled within a larger
imaging program. You might
have to adjust your workflow a
bit when dealing with RAW files.
Use the “File Browser” found un-
der the “Window” option in
Photoshop to see a quality pre-
view of each image before open-
ing them individually. As you
scroll through the preview, select
an image you want to view in
more detail and click. It’s in this
window where the power of the
RAW file is held.
Within the RAW file dialog
box you can adjust for exposure,
color temperature, shadows, con-
trast and saturation, just to name just a few.
What’s different about this RAW file dialog
box as compared to other options in Pho-
toshop? It’s made especially for photogra-
phers and uses our lingo. For example, if I
want to adjust for exposure I use the “Ex-
posure” slider. If Mac users hold the Option
key or if Windows users hold down the Alt
key, you can see at what value the whites in
your image will lose detail. The image will
be “clipped” and appear overexposed. White
on the screen shows that detail is preserved,
If you want to learn more about
RAW files or natural close-up
photography in general, check out
while color on the screen indicates that de-
tail is being lost in one of the channels. The Jon Cox’s latest AMPHOTO book
best way to adjust the exposure value is to Digital Nature Photography Closeup,
move the slider until the whites begin to lose available worldwide at amazon.com,
detail and then move the slider
barnesandnoble.com and your local
back a bit so your whites retain
detail. When you move the slid- bookstore.
er, a value will appear in the win-
dow, which relates to the amount Digital Nature Photography Closeup
of f/stops that you have changed
in your image. For example –1 Author Jon Cox
shows that your image is one Paperback: 176 pages
f/stop darker than how you shot Publisher: Watson-Guptill
it and +1 shows that your image Publications (June 1, 2005)
is one f/stop brighter than how
you shot it. ISBN: 081743674X
The “Shadows” slider works
much in the same way as the “Ex-
posure” slider. If you want to in-
crease the blacks in your image,
then move the slider to the right.
Mac users hold the Option and
Windows users hold down the
Alt to view the point at which the
blacks begin losing detail. White
on the screen shows that detail is
preserved, while color indicates
that detail is being lost in one of
the channels.
If you haven’t used the RAW
file yet, you’re in for a treat! You
may become hooked like I am.
–Jon Cox
www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 51
CAMLAB

T
hese days MP3 players
have become as ubiquitous
as cell phones, so I guess it
was just a matter of time
before it occurred to some-
one to combine an MP3
player with a digital camera just as they have
done with cell phones. Actually, in spite of some
claims by others, Kodak was the first off the
mark with such a combination gadget several
years ago. Maybe it was the right product at the wrong
time (I loved mine), but it just didn’t catch on. Hope-
fully the time is right today for Concord’s neat little
DVx. The DVx isn’t just a digital camera and MP3
player, though, it also can record MPEG movies (68
minutes with a 256MB card), act as a voice recorder
(18 hours with a 256 MB card), work as a
bright LED flashlight, and work with your
computer as an SD/MMC card reader!
That’s a lot of features to pack into such
a tiny body which measures only about2
3/8 X 4 X 5/8 inch, and weighs less than
four ounces with rechargeable battery and
SD card.
I have to admit that I didn’t have
high expectations when I unpacked the
DVx because it just seemed so small and
lightweight. The day after it came in I
installed the 128 MB SD card that came
with it and slipped it into my pocket for
a trip into the country to do some tests
with a “real” camera. I pulled it out of
my pocket several times while driving
around and snapped photos with it. My
only real criticism of the DVx as a camera is
that it has no optical viewfinder and even though its
1.5-inch LCD monitor is exceptionally good, I still
found it almost impossible to see outdoors in bright
light. Indoors or in dimmer light this was not a prob-
lem and allowed me to make use of the built-in 4X
digital zoom feature.

Now at 2 Megapixels (4 Megapixels with in-
camera interpolation) you aren’t going to use the DVx
to make wall murals, but the lens appears to be of very
high quality and the images I got are very sharp, so I
would expect to be able to make very good 4 x 6 inch
prints from these files. As you can see in the landscape
photo accompanying this review, the small twigs on
the tree were rendered sharply without any stair-step-
ping or color fringing, performance which really im-
pressed me and I am not that easy to impress.
Perhaps the neatest part of the DVx as a cam-
era is that the lens and it’s accompanying LED illu-
minators are mounted in a revolving drum. Use the
wheel on the side of the DVx to rotate the camera
straight up and it is completely hidden and protect-
ed. You can revolve it so it points out of either side of
the DVx, so you can see yourself when holding it at
arm’s length to shoot self-portraits.
How did the DVx perform as an MP3 player?
To see, I loaded some of my favorite tunes onto the
SD card and listened to them (legally downloaded via
iTunes, of course). I don’t claim to be an audiophile,
but I think they sounded as good as MP3 files played
through little “ear bud” earphones can sound. I can
see putting the DVx in my pocket when I go out for
walks so I can listen to music and snap photos if I
come across anything interesting. The Concord DVx
is certainly one of those neat little gadgets that you
just have to have once you know about all it can do,
sort of a “digital Swiss Army knife.” And with a sug-
gested price of $ 199, it isn’t likely to bust most bud-
gets. —Bob Shell www.concord-camera.com
CAMLAB
T
he Olympus C-5500 Sport Zoom is for
people who want more than just the ba-
sics in a digital camera, but without go-
ing to extremes. It’s for those who want more than
the standard 3X optical zoom but don’t want to
shlep around a camera with a huge zoom lens bar-
rel. It’s for those who want to quickly snap pic-
tures, but also play with manual controls without
having to spend hours pouring through the man-
ual. It’s for those who want speed, a great macro
function, the ability to take good movie clips, and
also enough resolution for large prints. And let’s
have all of this for a decent price, say US$350 or
less.
Olympus listened, as always, and the result is the
C-5500 Sport Zoom.
It’s a 5.1 megapixel camera, and that is plenty
enough even for very large prints. Sure, you can now
get a camera with 6, 8, 10 or even more megapixel res-
olution, but we’re aiming for balance here.
The Sport Zoom has a gratifyingly large 5X op-
tical zoom that’s the equivalent of a 38-190mm con-
ventional lens. 5X gets you significantly closer than the
common 3X magnification found in most digicams.
There are cameras out there with 10X and 12X opti-
cal zoom, but they usually have large lens barrels that
make the camera bulky. The C5500’s 5X lens, on the
other hand, retreats completely inside the camera body
when power is off. Turn power on, and the lens mo-
tors out between an inch and an inch-and-a-half, de-
pending on the zoom. If 5X is not enough, you can
seamlessly combine that with a 4X digital zoom for up
to 20X total zoom capability. As is always the case with

OLYMPUS C-5500 SPORT ZOOM

digital zooms, image quality suffers a bit and it’s best
to use a tripod, but even at maximum magnification
you still get good pictures.
The C-5500 has two macro modes, The stan-
dard macro lets you get as close as 3.2 inches and still
use the optical zoom to get it just right. In Super Macro
mode you can get as close as 0.8 inches for ultra close-
ups. The zoom can’t be used in that mode, but it’s not
needed anyway. Between the powerful optical zoom
and the equally power Super Macro mode, you have
an amazing range. Nothing is ever too far away or too
close for this camera. I quickly came to love this fea-
ture. It really adds to the enjoyment of taking pictures
in just about any situation.
And since this is Olympus, one of the undisputed
leaders in the digital camera field, the C-5500 doesn’t
just stop with its exceptional zoom and macro. Like
the competition, Olympus has its own exclusive elec-
tronic wizardry to suppress noise, boost image defini-
tion, and deliver sharper and clearer pictures. It’s called
TruePic TURBO and it works.
There is also an “anti-shake” function when
shooting movies. Almost all dedicated video cameras
have that, but it is not that common in digital cam-
eras. The C-5500 also records movies at a full 30 frames
per second for lifelike quality. Unfortunately, movies
can only be recorded in 320x240 pixel format, which
is disappointing as 640x480 is becoming the norm.
Another cool feature is the way the camera’s ten
scene modes are presented. Most cameras have scene
modes these days—special settings that work well in
certain situations—but they are usually represented by
goofy icons. The C-5500, on the other hand, illustrates
each scene mode with a representative and very high
resolution picture on the camera’s large 2-inch LCD.
No big deal, but it shows that Olympus cares about
little details such as this.
And speaking of the LCD, Olympus digicams
are not generally known for large LCDs, so the 2-inch,
110,000 pixel display was a pleasant surprise. There
are smaller cameras out there with larger displays, but
2 inches is large enough to actually see the picture and
also details when you zoom in. The display is very bright
indoors and stays reasonably readable outdoors. In
bright sunlight you might have to resort to the optical
viewfinder though (and hope it works with your eyes
as there is no diopter adjustment).
In terms of size and appearance, the C-5500 falls
somewhere inbetween the small compact cameras you
can stick in your pocket and the larger ones that you
need a special bag for. It measures 4.2 x 2.7 x 1.9inch-
es and weighs about 9 ounces without batteries. The
plastic body feels very sturdy and has a nice silvery
metallic finish. Like many cameras in this size range,
the C-5500 has a “power bulge” on the right side. It
houses four AA batteries and makes it easy to hold the
camera in the palm of your hand (if you’re right-hand-
 Great Zoom. Great Macro. Great Fun.
ed,
that
is). I like
having 4
AA batteries because they provide good battery
life and you can use either alkalines or rechargeables.
From an ergonomic point of view, the C-5500 is
good but not great. I’ve recently reviewed several cam-
eras where all controls were within perfect reach of my
thumb and index finger. That’s not the case with this
camera, but the controls are good enough. One thing
I don’t like is having the zoom as a ring around the shut-
ter because that way you can either operate the zoom
or press the shutter, but not both. I prefer separate con-
trols where the zoom is handled with the thumb. An-
other criticism concerns the flash. It is very small and
you need to pop it up by manually pushing a button
before you can use it. Inevitably, you’ll forget to pop it
up and thus will miss some shots where you need the
flash.
Like all current Olympus consumer cameras ex-
cept for a couple of the high end models, the Sport
Zoom uses xD-Picture cards for storage. If you already
have invested in CompactFlash or SD cards you’re out
of luck and have to buy a good-sized xD-Picture card.
The C-5500 comes with a 16MB card, but that is
access to exposure information. Red and blue highlights
show over- and under-exposed areas, making it easy to
correct even before you take a shot. The macro and su-
per macro works so well that you can get addicted to
taking extreme closeups of all sorts of things. The only
problem you encounter here is in dim lighting condi-
tions where the auto focus illuminator beam will shoot
right by a very close object so that the camera has a hard
time focusing.
In playback mode you can zoom in up to 5X in
five steps, and pan around in very small steps (42 x 32
steps in maximum zoom). You can also trim and resize
pictures, get rid of the dreaded redeye syndrome, and
add up to four seconds of sound to each picture.
Overall, I really like this camera. For not much
money you get a high quality Olympus product with a
terrific lens and the kind of flexibility that makes a cam-
era a pleasure to use. And thanks to its manual modes,
the C-5500 is equally well suited for beginners as for
more advanced photographers. 
—Conrad Blickenstorfer
nowhere
near enough for a modern 5-
Model...........................Olympus C-5500 Sport Zoom
megapixel camera.
List price.......................US$349.99
In the field, the Sport Zoom is a very pleasant
Sensor res ........................5.1 megapixels
companion. Even though it has to motor out the lens,
Image dimensions ........2592x1944 down to 640x480
it starts up very quickly. Auto focus is generally quick,
ISO ...............................80 to 400 or auto
there is virtually no shutter lag, and the camera recycles
Lens..............................F:2.8-8.0 5X opt./4X digital
quickly between pictures. In automatic mode, you sim-
Lens focal length ..........7.9-39.5 mm (38-190mm equiv.)
ply set your preferred resolution and JPEG compres-
Shutter .........................1/1500 to 15 seconds
sion, and then point and shoot. Macro and flash have
Exposure compensation ..+/- 2.0 EV in 1/3 EV steps
their dedicated buttons which cycle through the op-
Storage ........................xD-Picture Card (16MB incl.)
tions. In the more advanced modes (Program, Shutter
Focus............................CCD contrast detection
and Aperture Priority and Manual) you have fairly ex-
LCD screen ...................2.0 inch TFT (110k pixels)
tensive menu control over settings. Those used to Olym-
Flash modes .................3 modes, up to 12.5 feet
pus on-screen menus will feel right at home. Those new
Viewfinder....................optical real-image zoom
to Olympus will need a bit of practice. I also recom-
Battery ........................4 AAs
mend perusing the very good 200 page manual that
Weight .........................8.9 ounces w/o battery or card
comes in PDF form on a CD.
Dimensions...................4.2 x 2.7 x 1.9 inches
Shooting picture with this camera is sheer plea-
Included .......................Master software, cables, strap
sure. Nothing ever seems too far away or too close. A
special “Direct Histogram” function provides real-time
CAMLAB
PROFESSIONAL
I
was very anxious to get a chance to try out the Fuji
Finepix S3 Professional SLR camera when I heard about
it, because I had reviewed it predecessors the S1 and
S2 and liked many things about them. I had also disliked
some things about them and was fervently hoping that
those things were corrected in the new S3.
Did Fuji succeed in satisfying me with their new cam-
era? Well, I have to be blunt and say “yes and no.” The
Fuji S series digital SLR cameras are all built around Nikon
film SLR bodies, and in the S1 and S2 I thought that their
hybrid nature was a bit too obvious. For example, having
to power the camera body with one set of batteries and the
digital back with a different type of batteries always struck
me as poor planning, and a nuisance. I thought a camera
in the price range these are in should have professional fea-
tures, too, such as fast flash synch and a vertical grip and
controls for all of those vertical photos pro photographers
shoot. I was also a bit annoyed that when you format a
card in a Fuji camera it actually overwrites all of the data,
so if you accidentally format a card without downloading
the images no image rescue software can save you and re-
trieve the files. I believe the digital photographer who has
never accidentally formatted a card does not exist.
So the very first thing I did when I unpacked the Fuji
S3 was to check to see how many of these things they had
fixed. Kudos go to Fuji for powering the whole camera
with one set of batteries, and extra points for making them
ordinary rechargeable AA cells which can be bought near-
ly anywhere. That alone is a major step forward for the S3.
The camera comes with four NiMH rechargeable AA cells,
and I was astonished at how long the camera ran on a
charge. I did all of my testing on the initial charge and only
had to recharge when I got ready to write this review.
I’d heard that the S3 featured an integral vertical grip
and vertical shutter release button, and it certainly does. I
was getting to like the camera already from an ergonomic
point of view without even taking my first picture. It seemed
like the designers at Fuji had been listening to my grous-
ing at long distance. I was a bit annoyed that no other con-
trols were provided when shooting vertically as on the
Nikon digital cameras, but hey the vertical release was such
a step forward. Fuji has also worked some magic on the
shutter and boosted the flash synch up to 1/180 second, a
much-appreciated improvement for fill flash work.
Ok, after reading through the very detailed instruc-
tion manual and learning the basics of operation I set out
to do my first shoot with the S3. I wanted to see how a Sig-
ma 70-200 f/2.8 APO zoom lens would do in the studio.
For this country landscape I wanted maximum tonality, so
I set the camera to its longest tonal scale. I added a bit
of saturation in Adobe Photoshop.
b y b o b s h e l l
Since that is a large and somewhat heavy lens I mounted
the lens on my studio stand, hung the camera on the back,
turned it to vertical, and prepared to shoot my first pho-
tos. I got the model framed just the way I wanted, perfect
expression, and pressed the vertical shutter button. Noth-
ing happened. So, I thought maybe I needed to punch it
a couple of times to wake the camera up as I sometimes
have to do on other digital cameras. No dice. The camera
was stone cold dead. I thought for a bit and on a whim I
reached across with my left hand and pressed the regular
shutter release, and the camera sprang to life and I began
to shoot photos. Then the same thing happened again, and
again, completely ruining the flow of the shoot. After a lot
of cursing I finally realized that you can’t wake the camera
up with the vertical release button when it has gone to sleep.
I assumed I must have gotten a defective early sample since
I could not conceive of anyone designing it that way, but
my contact at Fuji confirmed my worst fears – that is the
way they designed it. Their suggestion, set the camera so
it doesn’t go to sleep. When I said something about that
running the batteries down, they responded that most stu-
dio photographers would be using the AC adapter. Well,
maybe I am just weird, but I want a camera that adapts it-
self to my way of working, not one that forces me to work
its way. I don’t want a cord dangling from my camera while
I am working. I already converted some time ago to radio
triggers for my studio flash systems just to get rid of dangling
synch cords. So it looks like Fuji got it almost right on the
vertical release button, but I may have to wait for the S4 to
get one that is fully functional. My contact at Fuji USA was
not able to get an answer from Fuji in Japan as to whether
this could be fixed in a future firmware update, but I have a
feeling that it is a physical wiring problem and not some-
thing the firmware can address.
So I hate the camera, right? Well, no, not at all. On
the whole I like it very much. I’m just frustrated by thick-
headed designers who obviously never use what they design.
I like so much about the camera that the couple things I
don’t like just stand out like proverbial sore thumbs. If you’re
going to put in a secondary shutter release button it is just
common sense to make it do everything that the main one
does. Now I will get down off my soapbox and tell you the
good stuff about the camera.
The camera is built on a Nikon body, as I said, so this
means that if you are already a Nikon user all of the main
controls will be in familiar places and you won’t have to look
far to find lenses. All current Nikkor lenses will work just
fine, as will most older Nikkor lenses. Nikon-mount lenses
from Sigma, Tamron, Vivitar, etc., also work just fine. Sim-
ilarly Nikon flash units and third-party flash units made for
Nikon digital cameras also work just fine (but only the flash
units made for digital cameras). For some of my testing I
used the little Nikon SB50DX for fill flash and got great re-
sults.
It may be stating the obvious, but the most im-
portant part of a digital camera is the
sensor chip. Fuji is one of only
three companies building digi-
tal cameras that also make their
own sensor chips (the other two
are Canon and Kodak; most of A pretty model, an old shirt and a really loud necktie turned
out to be the perfect combination for a studio shoot with mod-
the others use Sony chips). el Renee King. I set the camera for its longest tonal scale to
Making their own chips allows hold detail in shadows without blowing out highlights.

Fuji to go off in their own di-

rection. While other chips,
both CCD and CMOS, use
sensor elements that are square
or rectangular, Fuji uses ele-
ments that are sort of hexago-
nal. Not only that, but in the S3’s
sensor, which Fuji calls the Super
CCD SR II, the sensor elements are in two different sizes.
One of the tricks used by film makers to get broader
sensitivity is to use silver halide crystals of two different sizes,
big ones for low light sensitivity and smaller ones for bright
light sensitivity. It may not be coin-
cidental that Fuji, a major film mak-
er, applied this same kind of think-
ing to their latest digital sensor chip
design. As you can see from this di-
agram, the chip has two sizes of sen-
sor elements in alternating patterns, the smaller, low sensi-
tivity R pixels and the larger, high sensitivity S pixels.
Just as with film, having these sensor elements in two
sizes allows the Fuji S3 to make images with an extended
tonal range. Not only that, but you have the option to switch
the secondary sensors on and off manually to either limit or
extend the tonal range. You can set the tonal range that you
want to match your subject based on percentage of the in-
put of the secondary sensors. The options are 130, 200
www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 57
CAMLAB Manufacturer . . . . . .Fujifilm (www.fujifilm.com)
Model . . . . . . . . . . . .FinePix S3 PRO (interchangeable lens SLR-type)
Camera body . . . . . . .Polycarbonate over metal chassis
List Price . . . . . . . . . .US$2499
Sensor Resolution . . .12.34mp (6.17mp S-pixel + 6.17mp R-pixel)
White Balance . . . . . .Auto, 6 presets, 2 custom
Image dimensions . . .4,256 x 2,848 down to 1,440 x 960 pixels
Compression levels . .RAW-WIDE, RAW-STD; JPEG F/N
Sensitivity (ISO) . . . . .100/160/200/400/800/1600
Viewfinder info . . . . .focus, metering, AE, speed, aperture, mode, frames
Lens . . . . . . . . . . . . .not included
Lens mount . . . . . . . .Nikon F Mount w/ AF coupling, AF contacts
Focusing . . . . . . . . . .Single AF, continuous AF, manual
Shutter speed range .30 sec. to 1/4000 sec., bulb, X-contact
Exposure control . . . .Auto, manual, Aperture/Shutter priority, programs
Exposure metering . .3D-10 Matrix, center-weighted, spot
Exp. compensation . . .-3 to + 3 in 1/2 EV steps
Self timer . . . . . . . . . .20/10/5/2 seconds
Color setting . . . . . . .Standard, high, org., b&w
Storage card type . . .slot 1: xD-Picture Card, slot 2: CF/Microdrive
File formats . . . . . . . .CCD-RAW (14-bit), JPEG (EXIF 2.21)
Autofocus . . . . . . . . .TTL phase detection
Tripod Mount . . . . . .Standard ISO type with hotshoe contact
Print support . . . . . . .PRINT Image Matching II, DPOF
Built-in Flash . . . . . . .Guide No. 12 (ISO 100)
Viewfinder . . . . . . . . .Fixed eyelevel pentaprism w/ diopter adjustment
LCD screen . . . . . . . .2" TFT, 235,000 pixels
Battery type . . . . . . .4 AA Ni-MH
Weight . . . . . . . . . . .1.9 lb. without battery and lens
Dimensions . . . . . . . .5.8 x 5.3 x 3.1 inches
Included . . . . . . . . . .Battery charger, shoulder strap, LCD cover, IEEE 1394
and USB cables, software, clamp filter, eyepiece and camera bodt caps, AV cable

and 400%, which I found confusing terminology. You
can also allow the camera to automatically make this
choice for you. For my testing I shot a number of pho-
tos in each manual mode as well as many in which I let
the camera make the decision. I found that it worked
better when I made the choice myself based on the sub-
ject since the automatic selection didn’t make the choice
I would have made in many cases. The Super CCD SR
II sensor allows the Fuji S3 to offer effective ISO speeds
from 100 up to 1600 without significant noise at the
higher ISO equivalent settings. I did some test shots at
all of the ISO settings and found that noise was just be-
ginning to rear its ugly head in the 1600 shots. For most
applications this means that the full ISO range is com-
pletely usable.
The active area of the sensor chip measures 15.5 X
I don’t know if it will show up in magazine reproduction but se-
lecting the widest possible tonal range has retained detail in the
darkest parts of this old bridge without losing highlight detail.
58 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
23 mm, a size that produces an approximate 1.5X multi-
plication factor of the lens focal length. This extra magni-
fication is really great for adding extra reach to your tele-
photo lenses or the long end of your zoom lenses, but really
wreaks havoc on wide-angle lenses, turning a 28mm wide
angle into a 42mm boringly normal lens. Getting real wide
shots requires ultra-wide lenses or zooms that go ultra-wide
on their short end. Neither option is inexpensive, although
more lenses have become available in this once-exotic range
and prices are coming down.
There are 6.17 million of each type of sensor element
on the imaging chip. Thus, when the secondary sensor el-
ements are turned off, the Fuji S3 is a 6 Megapixel cam-
era. When both sets are active, there are 12.34 million ac-
tive sensor elements, and the S3 becomes a 12 Megapixel
camera. Images at the highest quality setting are 2848 X
www.digicamera.com
4256 (12.1 million) pixels, which means that the camera
firmware must be interpolating the missing pixels when
the secondary sensor elements are turned off. You can also
shoot at lower resolutions of 2016 X 3024, 1536 X 2304,
and 960 X 1440 pixels when you don’t need the full res-
olution. Additionally, you can shoot in JPEG or 14 bit
RAW. Fuji’s RAW files carry the .RAF file extension, and
can be opened with Photoshop CS and CS2, as well as
with Fuji’s own software. I found no need to use Fuji’s
software since I was already working with Photoshop CS2
when I was testing the camera. The Fuji S3 incorporates
automatic file rotation, a feature all cameras should have.
When I first started working with files from the test cam-
era this feature was really flaky, working sometimes and
not working at other times. A question to Fuji elicited the
information that there was a firmware update available on
their web site for download. I downloaded and installed
the new firmware, a very simple process, and the automatic
file rotation worked flawlessly. This brings up an impor-
tant point. Whenever you buy a new camera the very first
thing you should do is visit the manufacturer’s web site
and check for firmware updates. Check to see that the cam-
era you bought has the latest version of the firmware, and
if it doesn’t, you should upgrade immediately. This can
save you a lot of headaches.
One feature I found interesting is that the camera
offers what Fuji calls Virtual Film-Simulation Function.
This has two settings, one for less saturation and contrast
and one for more saturation and contrast. I would have
called them Astia-simulation and Velvia-simulation, since
that is how they look to my eye, although the setting to
boost saturation does not produce as much saturation as
I get from scanning my old Velvia transparencies. I found
myself boosting the saturation in Photoshop on nearly all
of the images I shot with this setting. I really liked having
this choice, though, since it simplified my Photoshop work
on the final images.
Another bit of flexibility I like is the dual card slots
that are revealed when you pop open the door on the back
of the camera. The upper slot accepts xD cards and the
lower slot CompactFlash cards or Microdrives. I’m not a
big fan of xD cards simply because they are so small and
I have a propensity to lose little things in my chaotic of-
fice, so I was happy that I could use my collection of Com-
pactFlash cards. Others without my tendency to lose things
can happily snap away on their xD cards. Better yet, put
in one of each and double your shooting capacity.
It is impossible to go into every detail of this new
camera in a review such as this. But Fuji has put the com-
plete brochure on the Finepix S3 Pro on their web site as
a PDF file. Just go to www.fujifilm.com and you will find
this camera under Consumer Products/Digital Cameras.
Top: I found that when I let the cam-
era automatically select its tonal scale
it worked pretty well most of the time.
These tomatoes look just as I remem-
ber them from the outdoor market.

Above: Sometimes the camera did not

automatically select the tonal range I
would have picked leading to blown
out highlights in the yellow apples on
the right of this shot.

Left: The enhanced color mode, which

I called Velvia mode, was just right to
bring out the colors and textures in this
rusty metal.

Right: After parking on an upper lev-

el of a parking garage I made this shot
of reflections in the side of a glass build-
ing. The camera was set to automati-
cally select tonal range, and seems to
have got it exactly right in this shot.

www.digicamera.com DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 59

 FEATURE
emember that old Epson

R printer that’s stored

somewhere? The one
gathering dust in the attic or base-
ment because you couldn’t bear to
part with it after you bought that
new super-duper model? Well,
check the sidebar to this article and
if it’s on the list, give it shake and
wake it up—it’s about to spin out
longer-lasting images than it ever
thought it could.
Even with new dye-based inks
formulated to extend print life, pig-
ment-based inks will give you
longevity that lasts for generations.
Pigments withstand light, humidity,
ozone and temperature variations
much better than dyes, which is why
most printer manufacturers are
gradually moving over to them. Dye Furthermore, MediaStreet says
based inks will gradually fade away they have patented a technique
(yes, that’s a pun ) and hundreds of thousands minis- that keeps their pigment ink
of printers will be left high and dry. cule particle sizes ranging from .12 to .18 particles from agglomerating
But MediaStreet (www.mediastreet. microns won’t clog up printer nozzles de- (sticking together) which some other pig-
com), a third-party ink and paper manufac- signed to spray small dye droplets. Since the mented inks are prone to do, and that results
turer, offers a pigment-based ink just for those smallest nozzle opening on an Epson print- in continually clogged printheads. This, obvi-
older (and even some newer) printers. They head is 25 microns (that’s twenty-five, not dot ously, is not a good thing because at best it
claim their specially-formulated Generations 25)—it’s as easy for MediaStreet’s pigment requires multiple cleaning cycles that waste
G-Chrome Ink virtually matches (and in some particles to pass through the printhead as it ink and at worst can totally incapacitate your
cases exceeds) the rich color gamut of Ep- is for a flock of chickens to strut through an printer if you don’t use it regularly.
son’s own pigment-based inks and that its open barn door. Having several older Epson inkjets hang-

Using archival dye

inks in an Epson
pigment ink printer
60 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com

ing around, I decided to test the process on a Sty-
lusPhoto 870 that had been used on one of our
digital photography workshop cruises and then
stored. The first step was to clean its nozzles thor-
oughly with a special cleaner called Jet Jrano
(try pronouncing that, though if you’re from Sara-
jevo it should be easy). I downloaded MediaS-
treet’s 7-color-purge pattern image, snapped in
the two cleaning cartridges and ran about a dozen
cleaning cycles until the paper showed no ink.
Because the printer had been in storage for about
four years, it required more cleaning cycles than
if it had been in use, but there’s more than enough
cleaner to do the job and plenty left over to flush
out the printhead again should you decide to re-
vert to dye-based inks. By the way, nothing dras-
tic will happen if you still have a few drops of the
old ink in the printer’s system; it will quickly be
overpowered by the new ink.
Now the moment of truth. I popped out the
cleaning cartridges and inserted MediaStreet’s
pigment ink cartridges. Setting my printer to 720
dpi and its speed to high (the combination I had
always used with good results) I knocked out my
first print. Bummer! I had faint white lines running
through sky and other solid-colored areas. OK,
let’s read the instructions. Aha! “Use the highest
dpi setting on your printer and turn high speed
off.” At 1440 dpi, that produced a much better re-
sult—there were still some faint white lines in the
sky areas but you really had to make an effort to
see them. Other areas of the print were fine. (If
my printer had been capable of 2880 dpi, Medi-
aStreet assured me that every print would be per-
fect. As it turned out, about 95% of them were fine
at 1440 dpi.)
Why the big deal about using the highest
printer resolution (which lays down
smaller dots of ink)? You need small-
er droplets of ink with pigment-
based inks because the dots do not
spread out and blend together as
they do with dye-based inks; there-
fore many smaller dots must be
placed closer together to give the
appearance of a smooth, continu-
ous tone. Most people avoid using
higher dpi settings because they
think each higher multiple uses twice
as much ink. Not so, says MediaS-
treet. What the printer does at high-
er dpi settings is simply break up larg-
er dots of ink (that would
normally
be laid
down at
lower
resolu-
tions)
into
smaller
ones—
the vol-
ume of ink
used essentially stays the same.
What I found to be a killer, though, is that the
printer has to think a lot more about where to
place the increased number of dots. So what used
to take me 2:20 to output a 6 x 8-inch print, now
took 8:05, quite a bit longer. Another down side is
that I had to be careful not to run my hand over
the surface of a glossy print until it dried thor-
oughly or the ink would smear. Overnight usual-
ly did the trick. Lustre and matte surfaces, though,
dried quickly.
Aside from longer print life, there’s a mod-
est saving by using MediaStreet’s pigment inks;
they’re about 10-15% less expensive than using
the manufacturer’s inks. I ran 26, 8 x10-inch prints
before the color cartridge was depleted (black
was only a third gone). Figuring a 3:1 ratio of col-
or to black, the cost of ink for each print would be
about $2.10 (a cartridge set costs about $68.00
and paper prices vary according to their sur-
faces). I found the color quality to be just fine,
though if you want the best results you should
use MediaStreet’s color profiles, available at their
site. That puts your output in the more capable
hands of your imaging program rather than at the
mercy of the printer driver. Profiles also optimize
the output of the ink so you can get better results
at lower dpi settings.
What if profiles for the paper and dpi set-
tings you might want to use aren’t available? No
problem. MediaStreet will custom-make as many
profiles for you as you want—at no charge! While
other firms might slam you for $40 to over $100
each for custom profiles, you can download a col-
or target at MediaStreet’s site, print it out, send
it to them, and they’ll email you the profile in just
a few days. This allows you a perfect match be-
tween your printer using their inks
and papers– or any manufacturer’s
paper that you want them to profile.
Now that’s a deal!
It was good to hear my old
printer humming along again. I was
able to justify being a pack rat—it’s
hell for me to throw anything out, I
mean, you never know when it
might come in handy, right? Now,
at least, one of the hundreds of ob-
solete and useless items I have
stashed away finally has proved my
point, thanks to MediaStreet.
—Arthur Bleich
www.digicamera.com
MediaStreet Compatible Epson
Printers, and Cleaning Tips
Here are the Epson printers that will accept
MediaStreet’s G-Chrome inks:
• 780 • 785EPX • 825 • 870
• 875DC • 890 • 900 • 925
• 1270 • 1280 • 3000 • 7000
• 9000 • R200 • R300 • R320
If your printer has been sitting around
awhile, you should make sure it’s functioning
properly before switching to pigment-based
inks. It may need several cleaning cycles to
clear the nozzles so they lay down a proper
pattern. If you still have dye-based ink car-
tridges in the printer, start by running a nozzle
check to see if the printer is functional.
Epson printers go through progressively
stronger cleaning cycles so if the first doesn’t
do the trick (as determined by printing out a
nozzle check pattern), keep going. After
three cleaning cycles (checking the nozzle pat-
tern after each one), print an image (or the Me-
diaStreet color pattern) and run a nozzle check
again. If it still shows an irregular pattern, run
some more cleaning cycles in groups of three.
Don’t overdo the cleaning cycles. If the
nozzle pattern continues to show gaps in the
same places, let the printer sit overnight, which
will usually help dissolve clogged ink, and then
run some cleaning cycles (in threes) again. If
that still doesn’t do it, you can try an easy “in-
dustrial strength” cleaning method
(http://tinyurl.com/5motv).
Why not just clean your printhead with Jet
Jrano from the beginning? Because you’ll have
no way of seeing the whole nozzle pattern
since Jrano is a clear liquid. Jrano works best
when used to flush dye-based ink from a print-
er that is printing up to specs, with all nozzles
firing cleanly. If you must use Jrano as the first
step (because you may not have a set of func-
tional cartridges in your printer), be sure to run
a nozzle check with the G-Chrome ink after it’s
been installed.
Finally, always leave ink cartridges in Ep-
son printers when they are idle or in storage
because the cartridges create a seal against
air entering the ink feeding system which can
interfere with the nozzles firing correctly. If this
happens, a few cleaning cycles will usually
take care of it. –AB
DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 61
 IMAGING WORKSHOP
If you put the words “Photoshop Actions”
into Google, you’ll come up with 1,020,000
hits! These include actions that are for sale and
a remarkable number that are totally free.
Lights,Camera,
n action is a series of computer
A commands that can be saved and
used to accomplish repetitive tasks.
You can write your own action and
save it for future use. You have to
be perfectly logical and specific in your com-
mands or else it won’t work. You can’t record
every command in an action that you might
want to, and it usually takes me a few tries be-
fore a homemade action works perfectly.
Photoshop comes with a bunch of pre pro-
grammed actions. One that I like is the sepia
toning action. You start with a single layer
◗ “Porcelain Skin” - A retouching action from craigsactions.com was used on this portrait of my wife Janet. It gives you a result in layers in which you can
decide what features are sharp and which ones are soft focus.
62 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
Al
Actions!
color photograph. When you run the action, it
does the following things:
1. It copies your color photograph onto a new
layer and desaturates it so it appears to to black
and white.
2. It adds a Hue Saturation adjustment layer al-
ready pre-set to Colorize with the Hue slider set
to 30 and the Saturation slider set to 25.
The beauty of this is that you don’t have
to know any of this—your picture is automat-
ically a pleasant sepia. If you like to play, like
many of us, you’ll open the Hue saturation
adjustment layer and fool with the settings. If
www.digicamera.com
Francekevich
you slide the saturation value to the right, the
picture gets more sepia and eventually becomes
a very vivid and garish orange. If you move the
hue slider, the picture changes to a number of
toned photograph treatments from green to blue
to brown, etc. If you really like to play, you can
change the opacity of either of these two lay-
ers and you’ll get a blend of pure sepia and full
color. You can also put a mask in the middle lay-
er and by painting in it with a medium value of
black, you can make part of the picture color
and part sepia.
Most actions work this way. Some of
 them merge the layers as their final step. In the
actions palette, you can uncheck this final step
if you want to play with the layers. Some actions
stop and ask you to input different values to suit
your taste. The author of the action can’t antici-
pate every type of picture or the taste of the
user.
I think most people like to use actions because
they do something without too much user in-
volvement. For the curious crowd, actions are very
educational because you can see how the author
went about creating a certain effect.
What got me started with my exploration of ac-
tions in general was the announcement by Kodak
of a free series of actions that augment their
plug-ins that I wrote about in the January 2005 is-
sue of this magazine (“Four Amazing Plug-Ins
from Kodak”). These actions are free, but you have
to own the plug-ins for them to work. I used their
Air Dimensional action on my self portrait. It
modifies what their Gem Airbrush Professional plug-
in does. My illustration in January of a fashion mod-
el’s face was a straight application of the plug-in
used full strength and it was perfect. When I
used this filter on portraits of “civilians”—people
without make-up or special lighting, the full
◗ “Puzzle” - A jigsaw puzzle effect from actionxchange.com. I ran it with 20 pieces but it can be run strength version looked artificial. I got around this
with 30 or 56 pieces as well. Each piece is its own layer so you can turn off pieces or even copy them
and move them. by running the plug-in on a separate layer and us-

◗ “Midnight Sepia” from atncentral.com produces a full color effect ◗ “Air Dimensional” — Kodak’s action that works in conjunction with their Gem
that has a sepia feeling. Airbrush Filter produced this result automatically on my self portrait.

ing a mask, applying it where needed to smooth out skin but not using it on
hair and other details that were better sharp. The beauty of using this free ac-
tion is that it somehow does this automatically and produces a result that does-
n’t need further work. I can see portrait photographers running this action with-
out even looking, it’s that good. Further information on this and the other ac-
tions for the other filters is available on their site at www.asf.com.
Another source for a series of actions that are geared to professional por-
trait photographers is www. craigsactions.com. These are for sale and
evolved from Craig Minielly’s very successful Canadian photography studio
that operates under the trade name of Aura (www.auraphotographics.com).
Craig told me that he wanted to standardize effects that he had perfected over
the years and put them in a form that other people on his staff could run them
even if he wasn’t standing over their shoulders. Some of his actions are very
advanced such as converting files to CMYK as preparation for printing
brochures and ads. The ones that I favored were the ones that worked on peo-
ple’s faces. I used his Porcelain Soft Skin on a portrait of my wife Janet. Craig
has two versions of this. In the first, the whole picture turns soft and you paint
in the details on the mask to restore the areas you want sharp (hair, eyes, lips).
In the second version (the one I used), the soft layer is hidden by a black
mask. At first the picture looks like you haven’t changed it at all. Here the
object is to paint in the mask using a white brush to soften the areas you
want to smooth out - mostly skin. This action and the Kodak Air Dimen-
sional are similar but not identical. The Porcelain Soft Skin action is more
ethereal looking and the Kodak Air Dimensional flatters the subject
without appearing to diffuse.
Two other sites that sell actions are www.fredmiranda.com and
http://actions.home.att.net
Fred was a pioneer with actions and first wrote an interpolation ac-
tion that increases the size of a digital photo file in 10% increments. Up
till Photoshop 7, this was one of the best ways to interpolate a picture.
The interpolation in Image Size in Photoshop CS, using Bicubic Smoother
largely eliminated the need for “staircase interpolation” although some
experts still use it along with bicubic smoother. Now Miranda has a mul-
titude of actions that do various things at very moderate prices.
Noel Carboni is a long time amateur photographer and a professional
software engineer. He has a set of actions called dSLR Tools that he sells
for $15. Noel has identified certain common problems in digital photos
and wrote this set of actions to deal with them. So far I’ve only tried a cou-
ple of them before the deadline of this issue and they work well. dSLR
Tools contains many actions in one package.
Next I went to www.actionxchange.com which immediately took
me to an Adobe site. Here there was a wealth of downloads , both ac-
tions, brushes and tutorials. Adobe wants you to log in and pick a pass-
word. I downloaded an action called “Puzzle effects”. It was written by
Panos Efstathiadas and allows you to turn your picture into a jigsaw puz-
zle. You can choose the number of pieces - I used twenty, but you can
go to as many as 56. The way the puzzle is constructed, each piece is a
separate layer. That way you can turn off pieces and see through the puz-
zle to another image, or even copy and move a piece. The action paus-
es when the first piece comes up and lets you change the direction of ◗ “Sepia” — This interesting sideview was produced using a sepia action
that comes with Adobe Photoshop.
the light and the emboss effect. Once you accept it, all the pieces are ren-
dered the same way. The pieces are not simply a line in the shape of a students and I photographed in my old advanced studio class at SVA. It
jigsaw piece. They have a three dimensional look with a highlight and turned a commercial still life into a painterly classic looking still life. I think
shadow, just like a real jigsaw puzzle. A beautifully designed fun action. it would work well to create a perfume ad effect. Very pretty.
A friend told me about another site - www.atncentral.com. This con- The same site contains many other interesting actions which I haven’t
tains many actions some of which are beautiful, some are funny, and some tried as yet. They should keep me busy for quite a while. ◆
are utilitarian. I liked one called “Midnight Sepia, V2” by Dave Jaseck. Al Francekevich is an award-winning advertising photographer who teaches studio tech-
It produced a dark soft romantic look which I applied to a still life that my niques and digital imaging at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Casio EX-Z750, continued from page 47 using the LCD as a viewfinder in direct sunshine, so I doubt I’ll
Overall image quality from this camera is excellent for its class, ever need the optical.
if a bit on the overly saturated side. This can easily be minimized if The Z750 is the best thin-zoom yet from Casio. It’s a
you find your results a bit too Disney for your taste. gleaming marvel of miniaturization, feature innovation, and
appealing user interface design. –DM
Movie modes
This camera offers a boatload of features for moviemakers. The
MPEG quality is high. You can now use Casio’s Best Shot mode
with movies, making it easy to adjust to challenging lighting
situations. the Past Movie function lest you capture five seconds
of motion before a still shot is taken, and the Short Movie setting
lets you create an 8 second movie centered on a still in the
middle. You can use Motion Print to select up to eight frame to
convert to a still photo, and Movie Playback Zoom lets you
zoom in and move around within a playing movie. They’ve even
included three editing modes to eliminate unwanted “footage.”
When your masterpiece is done, you can pop the camera in its
dock and use the new AV out jack to connect it directly to your
home theater equipment.
With all this functionality, still Casio managed to make the
X750 even slimmer by beveling the edges of the case. the optical
viewfinder is ridiculously tiny, but it works. I had no trouble
64 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com
REVIEW Epson Perfection Photo 4990
A second, more detailed look at a powerful, affordable scanning solution

66 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com

T
here’s no question about it: digital
photography is here to stay and there
are more than a few photographers
who’ve made the jump entirely from film.
Instead of checking their slides with a loupe,
they’ve graduated to “pixel peeping” the LCD
on the back of their digital cameras, check-
ing for sharpness and good exposure. How-
ever, film has certainly not disappeared and
there are still many people who prefer it. Fur-
thermore, chances are good that most pho-
tographers who now shoot exclusively with
digital cameras still have quite a few
slides and negatives tucked away
somewhere. A good film scanner
might be thought of as a “roset-
ta stone,” easing the transition
from the old ways to the new and
even giving some long-forgotten
shots a new lease on life.
Most affordable scanners designed
for home use fall into two categories:
dedicated film scanners and flatbed
scanners. The former is designed to
accommodate only film while the lat-
ter can scan prints too.
Not too long ago most would
agree that flatbed film scanners
were not quite ready for prime
time. Those early models added
film scanning as an after-thought
to a device that was primarily
designed to scan documents
and prints. Sometimes scanning
film meant the purchase of an
extra adapter and the results were
barely good enough for an 8x10
inch print. Epson can take credit for
refining the flatbed film scanner with the in-
troduction of its latest model, the Epson 4990
film scanner. I must confess that I had my
doubts. Could this new device really deliver
a noticeable improvement over my old Ep-
son 2400 dpi scanner?
The 4990 arrived at my door with Epson’s
usual attention to packing detail. Setup was
relatively easy; just be sure to follow the well-
written instructions closely for unlocking
the scanner’s carriage mechanism. Epson is
also very emphatic about installing the dri-
vers prior to connecting the scanner, which
supports both USB and Firewire connec-
tions. I chose USB to connect to my PC. The
installation was a breeze and my Windows
XP system had no problems with any of the
hardware or included software.
Software bundle extraordinaire
Speaking of software, Epson has pulled out
all the stops and includes quite a bundle:
LaserSoft Imaging SilverFast 6.0 SE, Adobe
Photoshop Elements 2.0 (minor gripe here;
www.digicamera.com
Adobe is up to version 3.0 of its El-
ements software), ABBYY Fine-
Reader Sprint OCR, Epson Scan
driver with Epson Easy Photo
Fix and a new Epson Copy Util-
ity. There is an option for selecting
or de-selecting which components
you wish to install or not, as the case
may be.
Once everything was set up and
working properly, I started off with
some reasonably well-exposed
35mm slides that I shot on a trip I
made to Hawaii last fall. The Ep-
son Scan software has three
modes to choose from: an Auto
mode for beginners, an Inter-
mediate mode with more scan-
ning options, and an Expert
level offering the most control
over the scanning operation. I
selected the expert level and
dove right in.
I happen to own a much old-
er “cousin” of the 4990—an Epson
2450 scanner—and was hopeful that the new
model would be a noticeable improvement;
I was not disappointed. The Epson 4990 gave
me scans with much better shadow detail
than my older model was capable of. The
colors were spot-on using my calibrated
monitor and the scans really did justice to
the saturated Velvia film that I used while
shooting on the Big Island. A 2400 dpi scan
of a 35mm slide took a little over a minute,
which is certainly an improvement over my
older model.
DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 67
REVIEW

The Hasselblad Test

Next, I tried some good old 6x6 slide and color negative print
film that I shot using my trusty Hasselblad medium format cam-
era while on a trip to Yosemite a few years ago. Many of the shots
were taken in bright, afternoon sun and thus there was quite a
bit of contrast. This scanner handled it all with aplomb. In fact,
there was shadow detail in the scans that I had never noticed be-
fore when using my old 2400 dpi scanner. I made a few prints us-
ing my Epson 2200 and must say I was impressed by the results.
For anyone who has spent hours de-spotting negatives and
slides, the included Digital Ice software can be a God-send. Even
though scan times are increased substantially it’s worth it because
I can walk away and do something else while my scan is “cook-

68 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE www.digicamera.com


ing.” I try to keep my slides and negatives
stored properly but dust always manages to
sneak in and a few of my older negatives had
managed to get a nasty scratch or two. I
could have easily spent an entire evening
squinting at my monitor, zapping spots with
Photoshop’s clone tool. Fortunately this was
unnecessary for the most part and I found
only a few problem areas that managed to
out-fox the Digtial Ice software.
I did find that sharpening the scan using
Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask is quite neces-
sary—even more so for my medium format
scans. However this came as no great sur-
prise and once I found the appropriate
amount and radius, the results were excel-
lent. Scanning at its highest optical resolu-
tion (and 48-bit color depth), the resulting
files were so huge they threatened to use up
most of my available disk space; fortunate-
ly I didn’t need mural-sized prints so I set-
tled on scanning my 6x6 negatives at 2400
dpi. This gave me the ability to compare re-
cently-made prints with some I’d made a
few years ago with my old Epson 2450. I
must say there’s no contest; the 4990 prints
win hands down with a big improvement in
shadow detail—most likely due to the much
improved 4.0 Dmax rating of this new scan-
ner.
Verdict: What’s not to like?
After using this scanner several weeks I feel
that I can recommend it wholeheartedly.
Sure, if you have the money you can buy a
more costly dedicated film scanner that will
likely deliver moderately better scans, but
the Epson 4990 will still give results that are
in the same ballpark as some that cost three
times as much and the more expensive scan-
ners can’t scan a print if called upon to do
so. For most photographers who don’t need
mural-sized prints this will likely be all the
scanner they’ll ever need.
What’s not to like? While the film hold-
ers are an improvement over my old Epson’s,
they’re still a bit flimsy and I suspect easily
broken. I must admit that they do do a much
better job of holding the film flat than the
old Epson’s film-holders did and that can
be very important for obtaining a good,
sharp scan. As mentioned earlier, it would’ve
been nice if Epson had been able to work
something out with Adobe so that Photo-
shop Elements 3.0 could have been bundled
with the scanner instead of version 2.0. Oth-
er than those two admittedly small gripes I
cannot think of any reason not to recom-
mend the Epson 4990 flatbed scanner very
highly indeed. –Beau Hooker
www.digicamera.com
Epson Perfection 4990
General Specifications
• Flatbed single pass color scanner
• 4800 dpi optical resolution
• 4900 X 9600 dpi max hardware
resolution with Epson Micro Step
Drive
• 48-bit color scanning with 4.0
dynamic range for transparencies
• 16-bit grayscale scanning
• Color CCD line sensor
• USB 2.0 & FireWire (IEEE 1394)
• Maximum Read Area: 8.5" x 11.7"
• Zooming: 50% to 200% (1% step)
Scanning Speed
• High Speed Scan mode - (4800 dpi)
• Monochrome (bi-level): approx 12.3
msec/line
• Full Color - approx. 12.3 msec/line
Outstanding Features
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DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE 69

o, this is not about Mazda and its weird
N “zoom-zoom” commercials (though I’ve
owned two Mazda rotary engined cars I
never understood that one). It’s about our kind
of zoom, the twist of the lens that brings you
closer.
Zooming seems hardly a topic worthy of an
entire column, but when it comes to digital cam-
eras it is. Not for experts perhaps, but for those
relatively new to digital cameras who have to
make a decision what to spend their money on.
So I want to point out a few things about zoom-
ing and digital cameras, what types of zoom
there are, and what to look out for.
Interestingly, while almost every digital
camera has a built-in zoom lens, that really was-
n’t the case with film cameras. Most just had a
standard fixed lens, and if you wanted to get
closer you either cozied up to the subject if you
could, or you marked up the print and then
asked the photolab to enlarge the part you were
interested in. You could get zoom lenses of
course, but mostly for single lens reflex cam-
eras. I had a couple for my succession of Nikon
SLRs, but among serious photographers they
were frowned upon as an easy way out, a short-
cut tool that took the art and craft out of taking
pictures, a lens that was a jack of all trades but
a master of none. That may or may not have
been so, but for digital cameras it’s irrelevant
(unless, of course, you’re a hard core photog-
rapher who thinks that zoom lenses are an easy
way out).
Anyway, when I got my first real digital cam-
eras back in 1997 or so I was surprised that
most had an internal zoom. I quickly found out
why. If you only have 640x480 or 800x600 pixels
to work with, you couldn’t take a picture and
later enlarge the parts you liked. The resolution
just wasn’t there. The resolution of those early
digicams was so low that you always had to get
as close to your subject as possible. You sim-
ply couldn’t afford to crop later. A zoom helped
because it let you get closer, thus getting
halfway decent pictures even at the low imager
resolutions of the day.
So a tradition was born. Digital cameras
have zooms. It’s hard to find one that doesn’t.
For some reason, 3X has become the standard.
3X means that the picture you take at full mag-
nification looks as if you were about three times
closer to your subject.
So let’s talk a bit about what to look out for
with zooms. First, make sure you have a very
clear understanding of the difference between
“optical” zoom and “digital” zoom. Optical zoom
is the real thing. It actual uses the optical mag-
82 DIGITAL CAMERA MAGAZINE
View Finder
Conrad H. Blickenstorfer
Zoom, Zoom
nification properties of the lens to bring you
closer. Optical zoom uses all the pixels in your
camera. Even at full zoom, image quality will be
as good as without zoom. Digital zoom is dif-
ferent. This is simply a trick. “Zooming” here
means nothing more than zeroing in on part of
your picture, then enlarging the picture by dou-
bling or tripling the size of each pixel. You get
no more detail because there is none. You sim-
ply get a low resolution, blocky picture no mat-
ter how many megapixels are in it.
Fortunately, only a few digital cameras
these days have nothing but digital zoom. It’s
mostly the really tiny, ultra-slim ones. I’d stay
away from those. You can actually get very
small, very slim cameras that have real optical
zooms—more on that in a minute. If you do have
a digital camera that only has digital zoom, don’t
use the zoom. You’re better of taking a picture
and then using your image editing software to
zero in on the area you want to enlarge and
make the best of it.
Most digital cameras today actually have
both optical and digital zoom (just as most cam-
corders do). You may have seen labels like
“3X/4X.” That means 3X optical magnification
and 4X digital magnification. Sometimes you
might see a claim like “18X” total zoom. They
get that number by multiplying optical zoom
times digital zoom. By now you probably real-
ize that 6X optical times 3X digital is much bet-
ter than the other way around.
Above I said that today even very small
cameras can have optical zooms. Thanks to
amazing miniaturization and ingenious folding
mechanisms, the likes of Minolta and Sony have
found ways to put a full 3X optical zoom inside
tiny cameras without the lens barrel sticking
out at all! That’s because the lens actually
moves back and forth inside the little body and
then uses a mirror system so that the lens nev-
er protrudes from the camera. I love that tech-
nology as I dislike lenses that motor out by an
inch or an inch-and-a-half from an otherwise
very sleek and compact camera. I like to be able
to take an ultra compact with me and simply
slide it in my pocket when I don’t use it. That’s
easy with one of those little wonders with com-
pletely internal optical zooms, and more cum-
bersome with those that have a zoom lens mo-
tor in and out.
A final word about digital zoom: not all dig-
ital zoom is useless. Some of the leading digi-
tal camera companies have found ways to clev-
erly enhance the usefulness of digital zoom.
Some use tricks that make digital zoom act al-
most like optical zoom. The secret is that you
www.digicamera.com
can only use it in the lower resolution modes of
the camera. You set a 5-megapixel to, say,
1024x768 mode. The camera then makes use of
all the unused pixels to create a much better
digital zoom image than you’d get otherwise.
There are other similar tricks. And often you ac-
tually get very good pictures by applying digi-
tal multiplication wisely. Just don’t go for the
maximum combined zoom and expect a razor
sharp image. Incidentally, if you do plan on us-
ing the digital zoom, having a camera with an
“anti-shake” feature helps to steady the pic-
ture (as does, of course, a good old-fashioned
tripod).
How much zoom do you need? The stan-
dard today is 3X optical, and that isn’t bad. How-
ever, one gets spoiled and these days I find I
want more. 3X just doesn’t get you close
enough, and for all the reasons mentioned, I
generally stay away from digital zoom. Fortu-
nately, 4X and even 5X optical zooms are be-
coming more common even in lower priced
cameras.
For those who want to get closer yet, there
is a whole class of cameras with massive op-
tical zooms ranging from 8X to 12X. Such big
zoom lenses generally dictate the shape of the
camera. Don’t expect 10X optical in a sleek lit-
tle compact. However, if you don’t mind a de-
sign dominated by its lens, some of the big-zoom
cameras are amazingly small, light and handy.
And there is truly nothing like having a massive
optical zoom when you need it. With a 10 or 12X
camera you can discreetly stand away from the
action and yet be right in the middle of it. That
can let you make shots you’d otherwise never
get. Keep in mind, of course, that optical zooms
create a different look. They “flatten” the im-
age by bringing the background and foreground
together. Our eyes and brains do notice when
something is out of the ordinary. It can be an
interesting look, but be aware of that.
Finally, for those who know a thing or two
about photography, make sure you understand
the correlation between digital camera zoom
data (like 5.8 to 17.4mm) and traditional film cam-
era zoom specs (like 38 to 114mm). Both are 3X,
but while film cameras always use the same
numbers because the film is always the same
size, with digitals you may see 4.6 to 13.8mm or
6.7 to 20.1mm and both mean 3X. That’s because
digital imagers come in many different sizes.
So now that you know a bit more about
zooms, go and get the kind of camera that suits
your needs. And experiment a lot. It’s fun and
it’ll help you get the most from your digital cam-
era. ◆