The Garret Tree
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
  Digital Photography: How about a good battery?

The photo blogs are debating a post by Edmund Ronald in Ziff-Davis's Publish site.
Pro's Appetite for Megapixels is Sated.

Ronald believes that the race for a the number of megapixels is just about over, that what the world needs is better megapixels... It appears that new 39 megapixel digital backs were announced for the medium format digital camera but the megabucks required for that many pixels is going out of range for even the top pros.

He says

Then there is the issue of noise: In fashion and architecture, pros want higher sensitivity, desperately. To capture sharp detail in several focus planes, you need to stop down a lot.

The current low sensitivity of the backs translates into a need for lots of light. This means bigger strobe generators to supply more joules.

A couple of comments

My first thought when it came to megapixels was the old statement attributed to Bill Gates about memory, something like who would ever what more thant 640K? We welcomed more memory when it came first, programs became more powerful and ran faster. Of course these days memory means money for monopolies, the more bloated the program, the more you need and leads you into the never-ending upgrade circle. So in this Ronald is somewhat correct, we want enough megapixelage(is that a word??) to give us resolution but not that puts it out of reach of our pocket books.

I bought my first digital, a Panasonic Lumix with 2 megapixels after I saw a column in the Washington Post that said the Lumix with its Leica lens was better than a 5 megapixel camera with cheap glass. That's true, I blew up landscapes from the FZ1 to 13" x 19" with no appreciable loss of quality. I now have a Lumix FZ3 as my carry-everywhere camera. (And Panasonic has just come out with a 8 megapixel Lumix but an upgrade will have to wait until my bank account is in better shape).

Noise

It is about time cameras had better sensors. Using a digital camera at night (and even some film cameras with auto focus) is like a bad episode of Star Trek, "Sensors are down captain!" There is not only the problem of noise but sensor degradation. The camera doesn't know what it's doing. I shot the Toronto Distillery Jazz Festival in 2004 with my 8 megapixel Minolta A2 and the darker it got, the more problems I had. A couple of weeks later at Toronto's Greek food festival, The Taste of the Danforth,when I wanted to shoot the nightscape, I didn't bother with the digital, and went back to film, so I could look through the good old SLR viewfinder, which is a lot clearer than a sensor that looks like the reception on my family's first black and white TV (using an aerial) on a stormy night in northern British Columbia.

What I really want is a great, long life battery

I'm going on a wilderness camping trip for the Simcoe Day long holiday weekend. So what do I take with me?

Once again I'm leaving the Minolta A2 at home. I'll take the Lumix and my Minolta film camera. Why? Well why hasn't any manufacturer bothered to do something about 1)battery life 2)recharging those batteries in the field? Neither Panasonic nor Minolta offer a direct DC attachment for their battery chargers. I am taking with me an inverter from Canadian Tire, plugs in to a car or boat's DC (lighter) outlet and converts it to ordinary AC 120 volt household current. Except it's not my car (we're car pooling), we're not always going to be close to the parking lot and the draw of the inverter will, over time, drain the battery. The camping solar chargers are made to step down the voltage and connect direct, which doesn't as far as I can find out, help charging the battery.

Again it's probably a question of cost--a four day digital battery may be like a 30 megapixel screen, (then again it may not) but why can't the manufacturers get together and 1)reduce the number of proprietary batteries to a few standards and 2)come with some digital photo industry standard solar recharger that will work anywhere? I mean one where there is a pod for the battery itself, not attaching it to the current charger. A solar panel, a pod for the battery and just leave it alone for a few hours....


Technorati Tags
,,
,,,

 
Links to this post

Links to this post:

Create a Link



<< Home
I write in a renovated garret in my house in a part of Toronto, Canada, called "The Pocket." The blog is named for a tree can be seen outside the window of my garret.

My Photo
Name: Robin Rowland
Location: Toronto, Canada

I'm a Toronto-based writer, photographer, web producer, television producer, journalist and teacher. I'm author of five books, the latest A River Kwai Story: The Sonkrai Tribunal. The Garret tree is my blog on the writing life including my progress on my next book (which will be announced here some time in the coming months) My second blog, the Wampo, Nieke and Sonkrai follows the slow progress of my freelanced model railway based on my research on the Burma Thailand Railway (which is why it isn't updated that often) The Creative Guide to Research, based on my book published in 2000 is basically an archive of news, information and hints for both the online and the shoe-leather" researcher. (Google has taken over everything but there are still good hints there)



New blogs as of Sept. 2009
Robin's Weir
Tao of News

ARCHIVES
November 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / April 2007 / May 2007 / August 2007 / September 2007 / October 2007 / December 2007 / January 2008 / February 2008 / March 2008 / April 2008 / May 2008 / June 2008 / August 2008 / September 2008 / November 2008 / January 2009 / February 2009 / March 2009 / April 2009 / May 2009 / August 2009 /



    follow me on Twitter

    A River Kwai Story
    A River Kwai Story
    The Sonkrai Tribunal