Jim,
WOW.....I never knew the Mavica camera I had was a dream camera for a lot
of people. *L* Seriously tho, it does take good pictures if your subject
is about 2 feet away. Altho it is a still digital camera, and has a 10x
zoom, getting close to a shell that is less than an inch in length seems to
work reasonably well, tho once you reach that "certain spot", it becomes
blurred. I took a Cypraea felina form fabula specimen, 14mm in length, very
glossy, and beautifully dark colored, and shot it at different distances
and in different light conditions. When an overhead lamp was cast upon it,
I noticed I could not get in close for a good up-close shot because the
light from the lamp ( about 20 inches above the specimen) caused a
tremendous brilliance of light and the shell appeared almost white ( even
when shot with no flash!)
So my problem lies herein.......how can I take a decent upclose shot of a
small specimen (<25mm) and still capture it's color and pattern very well
even if the picture isnt totally crisp......I have tried taking pictures of
shells outside in natural shaded light, and that seems to work a little bit
better, I wonder if the problem is the lighting, or the camera? I can take
a super upclose shot of the shell and capture a portion of it very well,
but the rest is very blurred. I have thumbed thru the manual for the camera
more times than I can count and tried nearly every flash and setting
combination or no flash and combination setting the camera has. I wonder if
I can get additional lenses? Or perhaps I need to save some money and
invest in something that wont be obsolete in 6 or 7 years like the Mavica
with floppy did.?
I have seen the newest Mavica that takes the cd, but now I wonder if that
investment would be worth it, or should I get something that uses a memory
card and has more megapixels, or, do I invest in a newer scanner which some
folks seem to rely on for pictures? ( my experiences with a high tech
scanner for pictures is they leave a sort of rainbow like sheen ( like
motoroil on water!) in the picture) !
Any ideas?
~Lyle
> [Original Message]
> From: Jim Miller <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 1/21/2006 2:02:13 AM
> Subject: Re: Photos on new forum
>
> >Thanks for the info on the photo equipment. I have a nice Sony digital
> >still camera (a Mavica that takes the 3.5 disc) that I bought some 4-5
> >years ago. It takes good quality pictures but I think it lacks the
> >megapixels to create the high resolution pictures I see these days such
as
> >yours, basically the pictures while they look good are not....."crisp" I
> >think thats the word i can best describe it.
>
> Hi Lyle,
>
> I originally realized that I had answered you online (on Conch-L) -- uh
oh --
> and was going to move this offline, but others may benefit from this
exchange.
>
> The Sony Mavica, when it was first introduced, was incredible compared to
> anything else available. For a while it was actually a sort of "dream
camera"
> for a lot of people. However, the limiting factor eventually became
> the 3.5-inch
> floppy drive. Since these will only hold 1.4MB of data, there's no room
for
> bigger images with more megapixels. So Sony then upgraded the Mavica
> to work with the smaller recordable CDs so it then produced a 2.1
megapixel
> image, which these days is pretty limited in terms of resolution. It
won't be
> long before it will be impossible to even get the 3.5-inch diskettes
>
> Since all digital cameras (well, I should say most "prosumer" digitals)
shoot
> at the computer-friendly 72 pixels per inch, the more megapixels a camera
> has, the bigger the image. 4 x 6 inch prints, like you'd get from one of
the
> one-hour labs would actually need at least a 2 megapixel image to work
with.
> And even that would look a bit soft, particularly when compared to prints
> made from 35mm film. These days, most "experts" agree that a four
megapixel
> image is the minimum for a nice, sharp 4 x 6 print. However, there's more
at
> work than just the number of megapixels.....
>
> See, a really good two or three megapixel camera can produce an image that
> is actually better than some cameras with 4 or 5 MP. Why? Because the lens
> is better to start with. And then the microprocessor that's onboard a
really
> good camera will produce better individual pixels with less aliasing.
When it
> comes to digital cameras, a cheap lens and poorly designed processor will
> never cut it. If you go back and look in your old issues of American
> Conchologist,
> you'll see the issue where I first wrote about my trips to Baja.
> There's a Murex
> princeps on the cover of that particular issue. That cover was
> actually shot with
> a "lowly" (in today's terms) 2 MP camera! Take a look at the detail. It's
quite
> sharp. The reason is that the camera I used had an excellent lens and a
great
> processor onboard. I then used Extensis Pixel Smart software to "up-res"
the
> original image to a hefty five MP, which back then was unheard of. But it
does
> show how you can get a very good image if you start with a good -- even if
> low pixel-count -- image. When printing on a good inkjet printer (almost
all
> the inkjet printers today are awesome), you'd up-res a 72 pixel image to
> at least 200 pixels per inch.
>
> Well, as I write this, I'm starting to realize that I could go on for
> many pages.
> The bottom line is that the more megapixels you have to start with, the
better.
> My Nikon 8700 is an 8 MP camera, though when I compared my images to
> those of a 6.2 MP professional digital SLR, they look a bit soft.
> That's why those
> pro cameras can get by on fewer megapixels.
>
> Okay, I'll shut up now.
>
> Best regards,
> Jim
>
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