BenQ’s new camera is totally different in it’s approach and quaintly re-defines innovation in digital point-and-shoot cameras. The camera has fairly standard features:  10-megapixles, 3x optical zoom and a large 3.0-inch touch screen display. It also has a Super Shake-Free Hotkey which provides crystal-clear action shots, with a built-in Red-Eye Remover, and 29 shooting modes, customized for specific environmental scenarios, which include a Night Scene mode to take clear pictures even in low-light settings.

On top of those, it also has an 16:9 HD mode with 1920×1080 pixels picture size, and an AF Assist Lamp which enables picture taking in dim light without any flash.

But that’s not what’s innovative about this camera.  BenQ had made the 3.0 inch touch screen display a whole lot more useful.  Various movements on the touch screen replace button functions on other cameras.  The touch interface assigns movements on the touch-screen to shoot pictures, zoom in on a subject and to view the pictures on the camera.

The “Tap to Shoot” function allows users to take a picture by tapping on the touch-screen display, instead of pressing on the shutter button.  You can also follow the subject on the touchscreen with your finger.  This focuses the camera on the moving subject, and letting go of the touchscreen captures the image.

To zoom in on the picture, draw a circle with the fingertip.  The camera will zoom in on the area up to (up to 3x optical zoom or 12x digital zoom).  Cropping can also be done by the same movements, and the cropped picture will be saved as a new file.

While browsing pictures on the touchscreen, swiping the display will move to the next picture.  Much like the movements on the iTouch or the iPod Touch.  Swiping also works for as controls while watching video.

Note taking can also be done with a “scribbling” feature, where you can write your comments or notes about the picture in real time.

The touchscreen features is a very intuitive approach, and does away with most of the buttons of the camera.  This surely puts the point-and-shoot back to a gentler learning curve for beginners.  And as anyone familiar with rich touchscreen controls, these features are a more fun than playing with the buttons.

BenQ, like a lot of electronics manufacturers have dabbled into photography because of the synergistic opportunities it provides.  They already have the manufacturing equipment, the parts and the software, and distribution network.  With the E1050t, BenQ is maximizing it’s leverage on technologies, and proposing a new way of using the camera.  It may not necessarily be better, but it is a different way to access the pictures and camera functions.

Definitely, with less buttons, it would be less intimidating to newbies and a lot easier to learn how to use.  At the same time, it has a novelty factor to it for early adopters and those who like touchscreen controls.  10 megapixels is not too shabby either, and the 3x optical zoom is about par for the market.

With the release of the HD video capability on Nikon and Canon EOS cameras, it seems that the direction for most DSLR would be to have high megapixel still photos and HD video recording.  For several years now, digital video cameras have had the capability to take still pictures, albeit in lower resolution than still cameras.  In the same manner, still cameras are also capable of low-quality video.

Now, there’s a growing list of digital still cameras which are HD-video capable and there are now video cameras capable of good sized digital pictures.  The only limitation of HD videos from still cameras is the file size.  Since the videos are stored in flash drives, the maximum file size is only 4GB.  For HD videos this translates to about 10 minutes of continuous shooting.  There are some who would say that this is a significant limitation seeing that most amateur videos are not edited.  Also, since this is HD, video editing needs a powerful computer (upwards of 2GB RAM with HD video editing software) which is not normally found in the home setup.

However, a new company called Red has merged high resolution still photography with really high definition video.  The Red One, their breakthrough camera can capture HD video in something called 4K mode.  which is four times the resolution of most other HD video cameras.  This is due to the 12MP sensor size. This is big for a video camera.

Another advantage of the Red One camera is that is can use Nikon or Canon lenses with lens mount adapters.  This is significant as not all HD cameras have interchangeable lenses.  Video cameras which have interchangeable lens capability can be counted with the fingers of one hand.  And to be able to use Nikon or Canon mounts is even more surprising.

For a video camera, it’s a whole lot better to use older lenses – those without an auto-focus feature.  While video the auto-focus function is not necessary; it’s a bother to have the shot blurring and focusing whenever you move the camera.

Given the hardware, the math of frame size and frame rate yields some interesting numbers.  At 60fps, the Red One can shoot at 3k size frames (3072 x 1536 pixels).  This is equivalent to an exposure time of 1/60 second for a comparable still camera.  Extracting the stills from the video is done with software from Red (the company).  The camera also comes with an HD video editing software.  But, of course, you can use any other video editing software capable of 4k-sized frames.  With this size HD-video, the computer has to be really powerful indeed.

The camera is a rugged and bulky machine.  The Red One does not come cheap at the price of $17,000 without any accessories.  But for this size video, it’s about four-times less expensive than other 4K video cameras.

HD video is a growing trend and it will take a while for the equipment and costs to be within reach of consumers.  There is that one other necessary piece of equipment which is not mentioned, or mentioned only in passing when HD video editing is mentioned, and that’s the computer and the video-editing software.  Might as well, as amateur digital video camera users typically don’t bother to edit their video.

There are still several niche photo opportunities out there if you’ll just think about it.  One of the more common is macro photography, as well as mating the still camera with a microscope for a science project or a attaching a camera to telescope for space or stellar photography.  There’s not much in terms of additional equipment except for the macro attachments, microscope or the telescope.

Though in terms of opportunities, underwater photography should be more common, there’s not too many who would want to go through the cost of a camera or a casing for underwater use.  There are alternatives, of course.

One no-brainer alternative is to use a disposable camera with underwater capability.  These point and shoot film cameras don’t have much depth to them but they are workable and well worth it, provided you know how to advance the film.  That’s because the film advance lever is it’s main disadvantage.  Most underwater disposable cameras do not advance the film far enough.  And when that happens, you can’t take the next shot.

Another alternative to an underwater camera is a camera casing for underwater use.  For the most part, these camera casings are quite expensive and are designed for a particular camera and lens unit.  Some water-proof camera casings are almost as expensive as the camera body.  The advantage of the camera casings is that they are rated to go deeper than point-and-shoot disposables.

These camera casings are not without their own set of problems, specially for beginners.  You have to test the seals once you enclose the camera.  And after testing the seals, only then should you go take the camera to deep water.  Unfortunately, it’s the testing which is crucial.  If the case was not closed properly, the seals won’t work, and the camera would get wet.  There’s no two ways about it.  And with a digital SLR, that’s a ruined camera right there.

For a really cool low-tech solution with partial results try a glass-bottomed tube or an aquarium.  These solutions are not costly, and could be done on the work bench.  These two solutions give different results.  The glass-bottomed tube is much like underwater photography on a glass-bottomed boat.  You’ve got a long cylinder with a wide diameter, with a glass or clear-plastic seal at one end.  To take pictures, you submerge one end of the tube into the water and you hold the camera at the other end.  There’s not much flexibility in terms of the shots, but you should be able to see the bottom, up to ten or 15 feet down.

The aquarium solution is different because you can have a different effect when taking pictures using it.  You don’t take pictures with the camera pointing down.  Instead the camera is pointed horizontally.  This allows shots of the waves as it touches the glass sides, as well as pictures with one part above the water and the other part under the water.

These low-tech solutions may not look like much.  But if you take into account the cost of an underwater camera or even a waterproof camera, the successful shots are well worth it.

Minox is an established brand in a niche all its own.  Well maybe not all its own, there are others out there in the space it occupies, but these are mainly low quality copy cats and not really competing with the Minox.  The niche is very small, and Minox invented it:  the spy camera.

Though the Cold War is all but history, Minox continues to make mini cameras which for all intents and purposes, really are spy cameras.  Minox designed cameras to be small and easy to hide and carry.  These cameras were also designed to shoot pictures unobtrusively, in the best possible resolution.

The company started in the late 1930′s and has weathered the transition from film to digital cameras quite nicely.  The latest products maintain the mindset of the mini-camera.

The new Minox camera is named the Agent M DSC (for Digital SpyCam). The Digital SpyCam is a 5MP camera in a very small form factor of of just 86 x 29 x 20 mm.  With a bright 1.5 inch viewfinder, you can take spontaneous, fast shots, even in low light condition. And when in doubt, the integrated flash switches on automatically.  Pictures are stored in mini-SD card (capable of storing up to 16MB of files) aside from the 128MB built-in memory.  It’s also capable of shooting 320×240 video in AVI-format.  Without the flash unit, the camera weighs 90 grams.  Aperture is f/3.0 and the focal length is 8.5mm, equivalent to 42mm on a 35mm camera.  It may not have optical zoom, but it does have 4x digital zoom.  Minimum focusing distance is at 0.5 meter.  The pictures can be downloaded by a USB 2.0 connection to a PC running Windows or Mac.

Another new product is the Agent M Digital Sunglasses Camera.  Looks like an expensive pair of sunglasses (with replaceable lenses too), it has a micro video camera integrated in one earpiece which can be controlled remotely and inconspicuously.  The other earpiece has an MP3 player.  Though I think it would be a bit suspicious wearing one of these indoors and away from the sun.

There’s also the Agent M Digital Belt Camera which masquerades as a belt buckle and enables videos being taken without being noticed.  The camera records in 3GP format with the controls within easy reach on the underside of the buckle.

Something more  common is the Agent M Digital Pen Camera.  This is a real working ball-point pen with a micro video camera which records in AVI format.  It also has a microphone integrated in the pen clip.  Videos are downloaded via a built-in USB port.

And there’s the special Agent M Spy Sunglasses 180°.  So called because it allows the wearer to see behind his back.  The secret is in the mirror-coating on the inside outer edges of the lenses, acting like rearview mirrors.  And like any other pair of decent sunglasses it also has UV protection.

These products may look like novelty items or toys, but Minox has been manufacturing well-designed durable miniature cameras for the past 70 years.  Going digital, these are not your grandfather’s tools.  Some companies make instant classics, and Minox is one of those.

A common photo opportunity for the amateur photographer is a group picture.  People, specially kids, have a natural tendency to have their picture taken.  And no occasion is complete without the attendees being photographed in groups, with the host, or in various activities.

Using manual SLR cameras, most of the shots are set and composed, to ensure that everyone is in the picture and that.  This usually results in a picture of people as if they were in a police lineup:  all of equal distance from the camera, looking in one direction and waiting for the shot (or flash).  And this is the reason why group pictures always look so formal.

Of course, there are workarounds to this.  With film-based cameras, it’s to use the manual setting, and to shoot when the

Increasingly, digital cameras have included face recognition software.  Embedded in the camera is a software which checks for faces in the field of view and ensures that the people in the picture are in focus.  This is a neat feature, though the implementation varies between camera brands and make.  Some cameras can only include up to 5 people, and though this is currently the baseline, expect that succeeding cameras will be able to frame more people.

One offshoot of this is that the photographer now takes more time framing the shot until all the people in the view finder (or LCD with Live View) are recognized by the software.  And again, depending on the software and camera, this is several seconds on top of the camera’s auto-focus function.

Face recognition software relieves the photographer of the job of making sure everyone is in focus.  This results in more dynamic pictures, with less formal and wacky poses, and more depth of field.  Depth of field is defined as the difference between the minimum and maximum distance that subjects are in focus.  This is a function of the aperture setting.  The higher the f-number, the deeper the depth of field is.  However, the higher the f-number is, the more light is needed.

Put another way, a wide-angle lens will have a better depth of field for a given f-number compared with a telephoto lens.  That’s because the wide-angle lens captures more light.  By the same token, for a film-based camera, the more sensitive the film (higher ISO-rating) the better depth of field you would get.  That being said, most lenses have depth of field markers which indicate the distances objects are in focus.

As a useful rule of thumb, to ensure that all the people are in focus, people should be between 10 and 15 feet away from the camera.  This will also make sure that the flash will reach the persons in the back and those in front don’t reflect too much of the flash.

This also serves as a useful workaround if you want to shoot fast without worrying if the shoot is blurred or not.  Whether the camera is a film-based of digital, and it doesn’t matter if it has face recognition software or not, set the camera on manual mode and shoot when the subject is within the prescribed distance.  Lag time between shots will also be minimized, allowing you to take the next shoot almost immediately.

There are some things every person takes for granted.  Eyesight, for instance, is an easy enough ability which is low priority, till you lose it, you start having problems with your eyes, or you start having headaches.  For an SLR camera (film or digital), most everyone will say that the most important part is the lens.  And most everyone will also say that they bought the lens without any idea how well it works besides the zoom factor or the f-number.

Most lens buyers would not take the time to shoot a picture before buying a camera.  In fact, practically nobody notices that a kit lens may not give the sharp pictures.  And to think that there are some lenses out there which are more expensive than the camera body.

The most common problems for a lens are barreling and pin-cushioning.  To understand this better, understand the main feature of a fish-eye lens: the edges are curved and the middle is enlarged.  This is barreling taken to it’s logical end.  Named after the way a barrel has curved sides, barreling is a side-effect of wide-angle lenses.  The wider the angle (like that of a fish-eye lens) the more pronounced the barreling.  For regular wide-angle (28mm for a 35mm camera) this should be nonexistent or insignificant.  But with a shorter focal length, barreling would be inevitable, and would be only a question of how much does it affect the picture.

On the other end of the spectrum, pin-cushioning occurs when the straight lines on the edges of a picture curve inwards.  This effect is more common with long lenses.  Barreling and pincushioning are both sides of the same coin, and it’s an indicator of how good the zoom lens is.

Barreling and pincushioning are less common in primary lenses, as these fixed-length lens were designed not to have these effects.  There are 18mm wide-angle lenses with minimal barreling. Minimal meaning that it’s noticeable but kept low, and therefore acceptable.  And for fixed length long telephoto lenses, pincushioning is almost nonexistent.  At least these problems do not appear or are kept to a minimum.  It would be a shame to have a 400mm reflector lens with noticeable pincushioning.

There is only one way to check if the lens has this problem and that’s to take a picture, preferably of straight horizontal and vertical lines.  If it’s not possible to take a picture and develop it, you would have to content yourself in looking through the viewfinder.

For a point-and-shoot and bridge cameras with large magnification (5x and up), expect barreling and pincushioning to appear in shots with the wide-angle and maximum telephoto shots.  There’s nothing anyone can do about this, as the lens are not interchangeable.

However, there is a workaround and it depends on studying the camera.  Take test pictures vertical lines.  The multiple shots should be from the widest angle to the highest zoom.  Study the resulting pictures and take note at what lens lengths the barreling and pincushioning becomes pronounced.  And if you don’t want these effects to appear (and ruin) your pictures, then don’t use these arbitrary lens limits.

If we were to judge an industry maturity by the percentage of volume sales compared to an older (and more mature or graying) technology, then it’s safe to say that the digital camera industry has come of age.  The sales of digital cameras (excluding camera cell phones or cell phone cameras) have for several years now outstripped the sales of film-based cameras.

Another mark of a mature industry is the segregation into market niches.  There have been no significant market segregation for film-based cameras in recent years.  In contrast, there has been a lot of new niches in the digital camera market.

One such segregation is what’s called the bridge camera.  It’s no longer a niche, but an industry all its own.

A bridge camera is a high-end digital camera which bridges the gap between digital SLR’s with interchangeable lenses and point-and-shoots.  As a half-way point between these two markets, bridge cameras however are tend to be on the higher end of the middle pricing.

Among the selling points of the bridge camera is the ease of use (like a point-and-shoot) with lots of options for shooting styles and conditions, and a relatively large optical zoom range of at least 10x.  Most bridge cameras have the regular features like white balance, landscape mode, portrait mode, a night mode, sports mode, as well as a some SLR settings which include full manual mode and aperture-priority settings.  Additionally, some bridge cameras also have the option to save to TIFF or RAW.

What makes this line appealing is the capability for lens attachment, much like SLRs.  The lens has a screw groove for filters, and add-on lenses like multipliers and macro attachments.

For the most part, the bridge camera is where the manufacturer, puts its advanced features for the point-and-shoot lines.  This gives the avid amateur photographer or hobbyist the feel and features of a digital SLR with the capability to switch to relaxed point-and-shoot photography.

Source: PopPhoto.com; Tokina Auto-Focus Lenses

With new model releases of digital cameras, what the regular consumer sees of specifications is usually the camera resolution, the number of pixels.  What’s less obvious is the how sophisticated the software that’s included in today’s cameras.  Better and faster auto-focusing, better optical zoom, faster continuous or burst shots, do not mention the amount of mechanical movements inside the camera and increasingly, in the lens.

Although auto-focus motors were initially built-in to the camera body, motors started to be included into the lens during the early 1990′s.  This resulted in faster focusing and zooming and quieter cameras.  Camera manufacturers like Nikon and Canon also had an edge against third-party lens makers who develop and market mount-compatible lenses, simply because they knew the software to control the lens functions.  It has taken some time but the major third-party lens manufacturers, which include Sigma, Tamron and Tokina, have all caught up with the camera makers in including autofocus mechanisms into their lenses.  But more importantly, the lens manufacturers have also included anti-shake mechanisms in the lenses.  The mechanism includes sensors and gyros to detect small movement.

Shake is a common problem, and depending on the situation, may not lead to blurred pictures.  In some instances, some blurring is expected.  For instance, a head-on shot of a participant in the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain will have blurs.  And it’s even if you use a tripod, there is a certain amount of shake involved when you use an SLR (whether digital or film-based).  And since shake cannot be totally controlled even when using a tripod, the software/hardware in lenses which minimize or eradicate shake is a welcome development.

There’s a rule of thumb when it comes to handheld shooting:  The shutter speed denominator should be larger than the focal length in mm.  As an example, with a 50mm primary lens, the shutter speed should always be faster than 1/60 second.  If the shutter speed is slower than 1/60s, then use a tripod.  Otherwise, the shake would be noticeable.

As long as you are using a primary lens, there should be no problem remembering the “shutter speed threshold” (if we may call it that).  However, when using a zoom lens, it’s hard to check what the focal length is just before shooting the picture.

The anti-shake mechanism and software in lenses helps a lot in this situation.  In most instances, having this feature allows the photographer to have sharp pictures even when shooting two or three stops down depending on how steady the photographers hands are to begin with, as well as the camera weight, and lens length.

Anti-shake or image stabilization is a lot easier with point and shoot.  Digital point and shoot don’t have the same complexity as DSLRs.  The smaller lens, smaller sensor size and lighter body don’t add up to as much blur as DSLRs.  In fact, the main source of blurs for point-and-shoot SLRs is the auto-focus as it might not have focused properly before the shutter button was pressed.

My son took out the old Canon SLR camera during the weekend and started asking technical questions.  He’s been playing around with the Kodak ZR lately, and as part of his school curriculum, they’d be studying photography next year.

 

He’s a late bloomer, as his younger sister has been interested in photography since she was in grade school, and using the Canon.  I’ve retired the SLR a while back and was using a motley group of digital point-and-shoots from Sony, Pentax, Fuji and Canon.

 

To answer his questions I had to go back to the basics of photography:  light, and the capture of light.  After a short discussion where we also connected the Kodak to the TV in order to better see the metering and on-screen info, he started a more thorough study of the manual SLR.  It’s not really a full manual, but in order to explain the relationship of the camera elements, I had to use the manual features.

 

Even with the use of a point-and-shoot and digital cameras, it all boils down to the capture of light and the relationship of the focal length, the aperture, and the shutter speed.  (Admittedly, the ISO rating is slowly losing significance.)  And the best way to explain the inter-relationship of these elements is to use a manual setting.

 

I gave my son an assignment:  to use the old Canon SLR to take some shots and study how to use the controls.  We will, of course, have to buy film for that exercise.

 

I also pointed out the depth-of-field markers on the Canon’s 50mm lens.  It’s quite hard to explain the concept of depth of field if your digital camera has a very deep depth of field, where everything is in focus.  Though it has interesting effects for various shots.

 

During further discussion, I explained that there are some shots where the only option is to use the camera’s manual settings.  And, in fact, there are some circumstances where it would be faster to shot multiple subjects or take multiple shots with the manual settings.  This is due to the auto-focus taking up to two seconds (depending on the camera) to properly read the subject.  I’ve ruined shots because of the auto-focus feature.

 

And I am still not too trusting of a digital camera’s white-balance.

 

On a whim, I took out some old copies of photo magazines and showed him a photo of the regular gear carried by an Italian photojournalist, Ferdinando Scianna.  When on assignment, Scianna carried six SLRs.  He uses  four Nikons with prime lenses,  two of which are full manual camera FM2s.  He uses the FM2s for their mechanical reliability, and besides, these don’t have any batteries.  His other Nikons are a N6006 and a N8008.  The prime lenses on the Nikons were 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 180mm. He also carried a Canon EOS 10S with 20-35mm zoom and a titanium-bodied Olympus OM-4T with a 70-210mm zoom.  That was in 1992.

 

Nowadays, I doubt if there is any reason why a professional photographer would use a manual camera.  Except for the concern of running out of battery power for a photo journalist.

Source: GSMArena.com

For a while, there I thought that camera manufacturers were the only ones interested in higher megapixel ratings.  Now, it seems that even cell phone cameras are in on the race for higher megapixel capabilities.

The newly released Samsung M8800 cell phone has an 8-megapixel camera built-in among other features.  With the range of features that it has, the list looks more like an enumeration for a camera more than for a phone.  As expected, it is auto-focus with two LED flash and with two video settings:  WVGA (720×480) and VGA (640×480) @30fps video recording.  Additionally, it has a face recognition software with smile and blink detection.  It also has a shake reduction software.  It can shot at an ISO 1600 rating.  For video playback it also has DiVx video.

Yes, it’s being marketed as a phone first, camera second.  However, note that it has a geo-tagging capability for the pictures.  That means that the picture file will contain information of where in the world it was taken.  This is due to the built-in software and the GPS receiver.  At the moment, most camera makers are still in the planning stage of implementing geo-tagging in their cameras.

The camera has no WiFi capability, but it uses a micro-SD for data storage.

It would do well to remember that Samsung also markets a whole line of electronic products which include electronic cameras.

The mega-pixel race for cell phone cameras is escalating fast as there are 10-megapixel cameras coming out soon.

As an aside, breaking news will most probably be increasingly through first-hand eyewitness video from camera phones, as the London tube bombing several years ago has shown.  The videos from the tube were by regular commuters waiting for their train, and capturing the videos using camera phones.

The Samsung M8800 is set to be sold in France by mid-October, 2008 and starting at 550 euros (about US$800).

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