Selecting a Digital Camera: Small is beautiful

© 2006 Lawrence I. Charters

Washington Apple Pi Journal, Vol. 28, no. 5, September-October 2006, pp. 6-8.

While it sometimes seems that everyone on the planet has a digital camera, it also seems that few people think they have the “right” camera. Many people buy whatever is on sale, or buy something based on an advertisement, or acquire a “free” camera as part of a car purchase or in return for a hundred box tops from Wheaties.

When personal photography first came into vogue, the Kodak Brownie reigned supreme. This simple, box-like camera (the box was made of cardboard) had no exposure controls or focus controls. You simply pointed the camera at your subject, held still, hoped the subject held still, too, and took a photo. After the film was sent off for processing at a film laboratory, you received the developed film and small, semi-focused black and white photos. From start to finish, the process usually took a week – or a year if the film sat in the camera, waiting to “finish a roll.”

Today’s cameras are much smaller than the Brownie (see Figure 1), don’t require film, and have automatic focusing and exposure controls. You can take one photo or a hundred, and immediately dump them into your Mac for viewing with iPhoto, iView Media Pro, or even Preview, if you wish to go slumming. If you accidentally open the camera, you never run the risk of ruining the photos by exposing the film since there is no film.

Figure 1: A lineup of cameras. On the left is a Kodak Brownie, then a Canon PowerShot G3, then a Canon PowerShot S-500 Digital Elph, and finally a Casio EX-S500.
Figure 1: A lineup of cameras. On the left is a Kodak Brownie, then a Canon PowerShot G3, then a Canon PowerShot S-500 Digital Elph, and finally a Casio EX-S500.

Ingrained habits die hard, however. People still think cameras are intended for events (vacations, birthdays, parades), and at any given time do not have a camera. Often, even a digital camera is bulky enough that it won’t comfortably fit in a purse, pocket, or even briefcase. This leads to the epic First Law of Photography, uttered by Johann Zahn in 1685: “You can’t take a photo if you don’t have a camera.”

Think small

Size matters, and while a digital SLR camera with multiple lenses and attachments might take the “best” photos, such an assemblage weighs a great deal; you need to hire a sherpa to carry everything around. In contrast, a “pocket camera,” such as Canon’s Digital Elph series, fits in a shirt pocket or purse, allowing you to carry it with you all the time.

Referring to Figure 1, most digital cameras are similar to the PowerShot G3 in the photo. They have a nice, comfortable grip that also holds the battery, a telescoping zoom lens, a nice viewfinder (the G3 even has a flippable, rotatable LCD screen on the back), and lots of buttons and controls. On the downside, it doesn’t fit in a pocket.

In contrast, pocket cameras, such as the Digital Elph S-500 and the newer Casio EX-S500 shown in Figure 2, make a virtue of size. The Digital Elph, second from the right, pretty much defined the concept of “pocket camera,” and millions of these are carried in purses, pockets, and backpacks every day. The newer Casio is half the thickness and weight; it fits even into a small purse or pocket.

Figure 2: The Canon PowerShot S-500 Digital Elph, on the left, is twice as thick as the Casio EX-S500 on the right. Both cameras take photos of roughly the same size, and both feature 3X optical zoom.
Figure 2: The Canon PowerShot S-500 Digital Elph, on the left, is twice as thick as the Casio EX-S500 on the right. Both cameras take photos of roughly the same size, and both feature 3X optical zoom.

Mobile phone vendors have tried to suggest that the ultimate pocket camera is a mobile phone. While this is a good theory, mobile phones make terrible cameras, for two reasons:

• They are, face it, terrible cameras;
• Because they lack a viewfinder, the only way to frame a photo is to stick your arm out and hope that the image shown on the LCD is properly framed and focused.

Arm’s-length photography?

Let’s consider the second point first: trying to focus a camera by holding it at arms-length and looking at a tiny LCD preview screen. This is almost impossible for people who are nearsighted; they literally can’t see the screen. It is also difficult for people with presbyopia (far-sightedness cause by age) as they may not have arms long enough to even see the screen.

In addition to focus and framing problems, holding a camera at arms-length makes the camera unsteady. Instead of the classic photo pose developed for steady photos — two hands on the camera, arms pressed against your side – you end up flailing the camera around at the end of your arm, hoping to catch a photo on the fly.

In Figure 3, you see the sad result: a South African woman, after planning for years to visit Stonehenge, managed to take bad, blurry photos by holding a camera at arm’s-length. She was joined by dozens of other tourists doing the same thing with mobile phones.

Figure 3: While most of the crowd listens to an audio broadcast on a handset, one woman tries to both listen to the handset and take an arm’s-length photo of Stonehenge. Fortunately, at least Stonehenge wasn’t moving, though it appeared to be in the photos.
Figure 3: While most of the crowd listens to an audio broadcast on a handset, one woman tries to both listen to the handset and take an arm’s-length photo of Stonehenge. Fortunately, at least Stonehenge wasn’t moving, though it appeared to be in the photos.

Some camera manufacturers have stopped including a viewfinder in smaller cameras, making sharp, steady photos very difficult. Casio, with its EX-S500, addressed this problem by building electronic image stabilization into the camera. This works surprisingly well; in Figure 4, you can see a crowd cheering on the University of Maryland Lady Terps basketball team, and the image is sharp and crisp. Photos taken at the same event with a Canon Digital Elph look more like very colorful abstract art.

Figure 4: This photo, taken at a University of Maryland Lady Terps basketball game, used the Casio EX-S500’s built-in image stabilization. The shot was taken at 1/80th of a second, without flash; quite a feat for a pocket camera.
Figure 4: This photo, taken at a University of Maryland Lady Terps basketball game, used the Casio EX-S500’s built-in image stabilization. The shot was taken at 1/80th of a second, without flash; quite a feat for a pocket camera.

Opportunistic photography

Because of their small size, you can take a pocket digital camera anywhere, and take photos when you probably weren’t expecting photo opportunities. In Figure 5, you can see a building attacked by a really, really large great white shark. You just don’t see this kind of event every day. Without a camera, friends and relatives must rely on a thousand words or more of description.

Figure 5: Discovery Channel decided to decorate its headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, with the head, fins and tail (honest, the tail is out of sight at the other end of the building) of a great white shark. Thanks to a pocket camera, this unusual sight was captured on digital film, and sent to incredulous coworkers and relatives. Attempts to get people to call the shark “Sherman” were, alas, less successful.
Figure 5: Discovery Channel decided to decorate its headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, with the head, fins and tail (honest, the tail is out of sight at the other end of the building) of a great white shark. Thanks to a pocket camera, this unusual sight was captured on digital film, and sent to incredulous coworkers and relatives. Attempts to get people to call the shark “Sherman” were, alas, less successful.

In addition to shark-eating buildings, pocket digital cameras come in handy for car accidents, interesting weather patterns, strange signs posted by even stranger people, interesting attire, and countless other oddities of daily living. Unlike the days of the Kodak Brownie, the results are also available instantly, ready for posting to a Web page, pasting in a PowerPoint or Keynote slide, or E-mailing to hapless victims.

What do you need in a pocket camera?

  • Make sure the controls fit your hands. There is such a thing as “too small;”
  • If you are nearsighted or farsighted, see if the viewfinder has a diopter adjustment; with luck, you’ll be able to use the camera with or without glasses;
  • Megapixels are important; get at least a five-megapixel camera;
  • Digital film is important, too, and cheap; get at least a gigabyte flash card or, if it is cheaper, two 512 MB flash cards;
  • Don’t worry about having dozens of different “scene modes;” most people never remember how to set them, anyway;
  • Don’t bother with black and white or sepia modes, either; you can do this after the fact with Photoshop, Photo Elements, or iPhoto, whereas it is impossible to add back color that was never there;
  • Don’t worry about flash. Yes, there are times when a flash comes in handy but, generally speaking, flash photos look bad unless you’ve spent countless hours perfecting your technique;
  • Look for a camera with a metal body. Not metal-colored plastic, but real metal.

Once you get your camera, practice, practice, practice. Practice taking photos indoors, without flash. Practice taking photos outside, of both objects near and far, and of moving and still objects. Practice copying these photos into your computer and looking at them on that big, bright beautiful screen.

Don’t do what a friend did. She spent months agonizing over a camera, and finally selected a Canon PowerShot Digital Elph SD-700, a superb camera. She practiced taking photos, but never bothered transferring them to her computer, relying on the tiny screen on the back to make judgments on her work.

Then, after saving for several years, she took the camera on a long trip to England. Despite my fear that she would run out of storage (she only took a single 512 MB flash card), she bragged that she spent two weeks taking photos and never filled up the card.

When she returned, she found out why: all the photos were tiny, 640 x 480 pixels. Because she’d never viewed them on her computer, she’d purchased a six-megapixel camera, capable of 2,816 x 2,112-pixel photos, and managed to shoot everything at the lowest possible resolution. Needless to say, she was bummed.

Get a camera you can take anywhere. Take lots of photos. With a little practice, you’ll surprise yourself.