Digital Camera Guide, page 4, continued from previous page
Who Uses Professional Lite Digital Cameras?
With the prices of digital cameras dropping, and the quality rising, professional lites offer the best quality and features that the small business owner, designer, doctor, and professional photographer require. Keep in mind that the quality these cameras deliver is in relationship to their CCD (charge-coupled device) chip, features, and price. Even a pro lite camera can't beat the image quality of a well-exposed 35mm slide. But, as we mentioned in Chapter 1, the gap between the quality of digital cameras and film cameras is narrowing.
Doctors use these cameras to monitor a patient's healing progress, and dentists document their work if the camera has good close-up capabilities and a flash that is not too harsh.
If you want to sell your house on the Web, the combination of the Kodak DC 260 or Minolta Dimage EX 1500 Zoom (to shoot the pictures) and ScriptGenerator by Digitella (to produce the HTML code) makes putting pictures on the Web a cakewalk. This camera and script combination leads you through the picture-taking process, making sure that you get the best picture of the house and any rooms you want to highlight. While you're shooting, you can label each picture as the living room, bedroom, and so on, and tell the camera where to place the pictures on the Web page--left, right, or center. ScriptGenerator creates the HTML code for the Web page, complete with your pictures and labels.
The combination of digital camera and scriptable software from Digitella or Flashpoint is changing cameras from picture-taking machines to computers that take, process, and produce images and a presentation framework for diverse uses.
Professional photographers use pro lite digital cameras to document lighting, sets, props, and locations and to shoot low-end catalogs. A photojournalist could use any of these cameras as a visual notetaker--and snapping a few photos of a hesitant subject and then playing them back on the LCD screen is a great icebreaker.
Why Not Use Pro Lite Digital Cameras?
If you need to make big prints, or if you're looking for a digital camera whose output equals that of images shot to Kodachrome film, then even the professional lite digital cameras don't offer the image quality you need. Considering how quickly the technology is improving, there will be a pro lite digital camera good enough for you in the near future. But at the time of this writing, if you're a museum or medical professional, or a professional photographer who needs to meet or exceed the quality of film and beat the deadline clock, then your only choice is to move up to the next category, professional digital cameras.
Who Uses Professional Digital Cameras?
People who shoot lots of pictures and require the highest quality possible are the primary users of professional digital cameras. The more pictures you take, the more time you save when you use a digital camera instead of film, and of course, time is money. Professional digital cameras don't show any bothersome film grain, and many deliver a wider dynamic range and better color fidelity than film. Many auction houses, museums, and high-end catalog photographers that demand the highest quality and the most accurate color have replaced their film cameras with digital cameras.
Critical professionals, such as fashion photographers and catalog photographers are working with professional digital cameras every day to produce high-quality work.
An additional benefit for a photojournalist working with one-shot digital cameras such as the Kodak DCS 520 or Canon D2000 is the ability to get files to the newspaper picture editor via modem or portable phone. This beats having to drive back to the office to develop film. And more importantly, the photographer can stay with the story longer to take more pictures.
So, Why Isn't Everyone Using Professional Digital Cameras?
For many, professional digital cameras are an interesting exercise in technology, and we certainly hope that their prices will come within a range in which more of us can afford to buy them. Obviously, most people can't even think about spending $2,000 to $50,000 for any camera. Thankfully, most of the time you don't need the image quality that these cameras are capable of producing.
Whereas deluxe point-and-shoot and professional lite cameras are like a perfect snack for the smaller image-quality appetite, the professional category is like a Thanksgiving feast. We hope you don't eat roast turkey with all the fixin's every single day.
Next: Gadgets, summary and closing...
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