Eye Candy

Eye candy is often used as a not-so-flattering description of the superficial attractiveness of something. If you’ve played around with computer graphics software, however, you might know that it takes on a whole new meaning when prefaced with the name Alien Skin. That Eye Candy lit up the graphics industry when it hit the scene - plug-ins for Photoshop that you could use to create amazing effects and textures.
Alien Skin recently introduced the Eye Candy Effects Collection, which is a compilation of five of its standalone products: Eye Candy 5 Textures, Eye Candy 5 Nature, Eye Candy 5 Impact, SnapArt and Xenofex 2. These products continue as plug-ins for Photoshop (or other applications that support the PS plug-in architecture, including Photoshop Elements and Corel Paint Shop Pro). The product ships with both Mac and Windows versions on the same media, and the latest version has been updated for Photoshop CS3 and as well, the Mac version is Universal.
Installation is straightforward. If you have more than one program that supports plug-ins, the installation program prompts you to pick which one you want. Once installed, the plug-ins show up as a choice in the Filters drop down menu. Using the Eye Candy filters is equally simple. Once you have the image you want to apply the effect to loaded into Photoshop, you simply access the appropriate filter style. Typically, you are presented a work panel which has a preview of what the effect will look like when applied to the photo along with controls that allow you to adjust relevant variables of the filter such as granularity, strength and so on. Say OK, and the software does its magic.
While the price tag might seem a bit steep (US$399 from the Alien Skin website), you get more than 50 effects filters within the five-product set. Eye Candy 5 Textures offers a range of organic (e.g., animal fur), inorganic (marble) and constructed (brick wall) textures. Nature replicates shapes and textures appearing as natural phenomena (e.g., ripples, fire, icicles, smoke), while Impact is a mix of lighting and texture effects (e.g., brushed metal, glass, bevel). Snap Art offers what is commonly known as natural media simulation - in other words, it applies painterly strokes and textures to an image to make it look as though it were created using natural art media such as watercolour on paper, oil on canvas or coloured pencil. Xeonofex 2 defies strict categorization because the filters cover a range of effects. One of my favourites, called Mosaic, makes the image look as though it were created using irregular mosaic tiles. Another superimposes a jigsaw puzzle pattern over an image. The Crumple filter applies textures that make the image look as though the paper it was printed on were crumpled up, then flattened out; while Burned Edges applies simulated scorching around the perimeter of the image.
Most image editors like Photoshop ship with a range of special effects filters, so you might wonder whether you need these or not. If you don’t care for the effects filters that are already available to you in Photoshop, it’s not likely you’ll find much use for these. On the other hand, if you’ve exhausted them and are looking for new variations, or are looking for that one special effect that doesn’t come with PS, you might find filter happiness in the Eye Candy Collection. And if you don’t need the whole set, you can buy the individual packages separately.

Picture this: five fun photo projects

If you're like most Canadian camera users, your precious photos end up in a "digital shoebox," otherwise known as your computer’s C: drive, while the occasional one is printed for a photo album or emailed to a relative. But your PC can do so much more for your snapshots than provide a convenient storage solution.
All you need is a little time, software and your imagination, and you can turn your photos into extraordinary projects that range from scrapbooking keepsakes and professional-looking DVD slideshows to jigsaw puzzle games and fridge magnets. Here are a handful of ideas to help you get the most out of your digicam and computer.
Jigsaw puzzles
What better way to keep the kids entertained on a rainy Sunday afternoon than with a fun and challenging jigsaw puzzle? Better yet, you can create your own jigsaw puzzles to play on the computer for free using your own digital photos.
Available at Download.com, programs such as Tibo Software's Jigsaw Puzzle or ADC-Soft's B-Jigsaw let you design your own one-of-a-kind diversions by simply importing photos from your hard drive (such as BMP and JPEG image files) and then choosing how many pieces the puzzle should be. Then, simply use your mouse to select pieces and snap them together - if they stick, it's a fit! You can also email the puzzle to friends and family to solve. Some products are free, while others are free to try before you buy.
Slideshows
Put a sentimental spin on your precious photos by creating a stunning slideshow, set to music. Not only can you view these homemade montages on your PC, but you can also copy them to a compatible PDA, cell phone or portable video player, email them around the world or burn a disc to watch on TV via your DVD player. A good pick is the free Windows Photo Story 3, a simple-to-use, powerful tool that lets you import your desired photos and select which order they will be presented in. You can also add captions, your favourite music or with the aid of a microphone, narration, too.
While there are many kinds of slideshow programs available, Windows Photo Story 3 also lets you edit your photos (such as remove red-eye, crop or rotate) and adds automated effects such as zooming in on a photo or slowly panning from left to right.
Fridge magnets
Proudly display your memories in a place you frequent often: your fridge. By purchasing magnetic sheets from business stores, such as Office Depot (roughly $20 for a 5-pack), you can create your very own fridge magnets with your favourite photos. Simply feed these sheets into your inkjet photo printer and select the desired photo size. You can fit four 3.5 x 5-inch photos on one 8 x 11 sheet (or two 5 x 7-inch images). After your printer spits out the sheet, carefully cut out the photo with scissors and you're ready for action.
If you want to get creative, cut the photo into various pieces (such as triangles) and let kids put together the jigsaw puzzle on the fridge. You can also create magnet borders to hold up your paper photos. Or why not buy t-shirt transfer paper to wear your loved one on your clothes?
Special effects
With the use of computer programs such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 ($129) or Microsoft Digital Image Suite ($139), you can let your creativity run wild by adding filters to your photos. You may have dabbled in creating black and white or sepia tone photos from your colour ones, but with the hundreds of filters included in these software packages, you can really get, well, experimental.
For example, you can turn your pics into an impressionism painting, charcoal drawing, antique image or stained glass photo. Frankly, you can lose yourself for hours by toying around with these filters - and kids love seeing the effects, too. How about turning one of your favourite kids photos into four multi-coloured Andy Warhol-esque prints to hang on your wall? Or you can print them out and use them in your scrapbook to impress friends.
Mugs, t-shirts, photobooks and more
Finally, if you've got a shot you're really proud of (maybe one of the kids without them making a silly face for once), why not tap into the many Internet services that will take your digital photo and ship you back a personalized product. Popular Web sites, such as Shutterfly.com, let you create stunning hardcover books using your favourite photos (US$30 for 20 pages).
Or you can order mugs, calendars, mouse pads, purses, coasters, aprons, tote bags, playing cards - you name it. Shutterfly.com also offers various children's storybooks - with your child as the leading character (US$10-$12).
Closer to home, check out places like your local photofinisher or the photo department in a store like Shoppers Drug Mart (which also offers a hardcover photo book creation service).

Canon's Digital Rebel XTi

Welcome to the digital SLR world
After years of anticipating the move from film to digital photography, I’ve finally taken the leap with Canon’s Digital Rebel XTi and won’t ever look back.
A testament to the quality of Canon’s cameras is my Canon EF manual focus 35mm SLR, which my father purchased in 1974 and passed along when I enrolled in my first high school photography class. The camera still functions beautifully to this day, and is one of the reasons it took me so long to make the switch over to a digital equivalent.
When digital cameras entered the market, I first opted for the PowerShot S100 Digital Elph. I wasn’t ready to forgo the 50mm, wide angle and macro lenses I inherited with the EF (or afford the replacements) and figured the 2.1 megapixel point-and-shoot was a good introduction to digital photography.
I enjoyed the Elph, but immediately grew fascinated with the manipulation of my photos rather than the actual process of taking the shot. So when my Elph reached the end of its lifespan (due to the battery, not the camera), I decided to purchase a high quality scanner instead. In my eyes, this route was a third of the cost of a digital SLR and still allowed me to digitally manipulate those film-based SLR shots.
After a short while, I missed the convenience of a point-and-shoot, as fussing with the EF and a flash became a chore, as did scanning every photo I took. I soon found myself back at the photo counter, with a point-and-shoot in one hand and the Digital Rebel in the other. But I couldn’t justify the move when I still had a perfectly functioning SLR at home. I walked out with the PowerShot A620. (To avoid the pitfall of the Elph, I purchased a model that ran on AA batteries.) I kept telling myself that the Rebel was just a bonus camera – something I wanted, but didn’t really need.
I realized how wrong I was the first time I spent an afternoon with the XTi. This camera opened my eyes to the world of digital photography, allowing me to forget about Photoshop and renewing that long-lost interest in the process of photo taking itself.
This is in large part to the LCD screen, something I haven't had to opportunity to appreciate. The XTi’s 2.5 inch screen allows you to set your menu options and immediately review your shots to quickly determine whether those settings you are experimenting with are working for you or not. The instant gratification really encourages further experimentation with manual settings, which helps further refine your skills. All the settings are recorded and presented on the LCD screen, so you don’t have to rely on pen and paper or good memory to recall how you created that great shot. The screen displays images (which can be viewed at a 160 degree angle) with remarkable clarity so you can actually see the subtleties between different settings.
LCD screens tend to suck the life out of your battery (another reason I haven’t been a big fan), but the XTi includes an automatic shut off feature that kicks in every time you put your eye up to the viewfinder. This is supposed to help you compose your shot (minimizing distraction from the LCD), but the battery life saved is the true bonus here.
My first time operating a digital SLR, I expected complicated menu options and was surprised at how intuitive this model really is. Within the first hour of having the XTi out of its box, I was completely comfortable finding, selecting, and activating nearly all of the functions. And considering all the features and functions offered in this camera, the lack of frustration is key to a first-timer enjoying its use.
The XTi incorporates features for all users, whether introductory, intermediate or advanced. For introductory-level users, there are seven basic modes that offer the same ease-of-use you’d find in a point-and-shoot. The most noticeable difference for such a user would probably begin with the higher quality, contrast and colour in the shots (thanks to the XTi’s 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor). For those worried about too many megapixels clouding resolution and producing noise, the XTi’s CMOS sensor maintains high resolution with a 1.6x conversion ratio.
For those who enjoy experimenting with colour, six picture styles are offered (standard, portrait, landscape, neutral, faithful, and monochrome for black and white shots) that will adjust the tone, contrast, saturation and sharpness of your shots. You can also save up to three custom settings of your own.
An intermediate user will find the semi-manual functions helpful, such as better aperture priority, shutter priority, auto depth of field, auto exposure (with access to additional features) or even the full manual exposure setting. The shutter speed ranges from 1/4000 of a second to 30 seconds and includes the infinite bulb. (The shutter will sync up to 1/200 of a second with the flash.) There are a wide range of ISO settings (from 100 to 1600), which is especially intriguing for someone just moving over from film.
Also of interest to intermediate users are three auto focusing modes: one for stationary subjects, one for moving subjects, and one “smart” setting that will start or stop focusing for unpredictable subject movements. Three metering modes (evaluative, partial, center-weighted) are also provided. And new to this model are nine individually selectable autofocus points.
Advanced users should be fully satisfied with a histogram that displays either brightness levels or separate RGB values. You also have the ability to shoot in JPEG Large + RAW mode for advanced printing and editing, and have the option between sRGB or Adobe RGB colour settings. Seven preset options are available for white balance, which is also customizable.
Equipped with a DIGIC II Image Processor, the XTi provides the responsiveness, power and speed you need when you don’t have time to think twice about a shot. I broke in my XTi with a photo shoot of my sister’s newborn baby, capturing three frames per second in continuous shooting mode (which can produce 10 RAW images in a row) in-between crying fits and random naps. The XTi happily kept up with the pace. In the amount of time it takes for you to announce that you need to wait for the flash, the three-second recycle time passes and it becomes operational again. On a full charge, the battery allowed me to fill my 4GB CF card with hundreds of RAW shots. And the 0.2 second startup was near-immediate.
The EOS Integrated Cleaning System is a self-cleaning image sensor unit/dust removal system that Canon says is available “on no other camera of any make, at any price.” The XTi will literally shake dust particles off the CMOS sensor to keep itself clean. Further dust removal is possible by aiming at the camera at a white surface and “mapping” the size and position of the dust. This information is attached to your shots and once the files are transferred to your computer, the included Digital Photo Professional software will automatically remove it. The lens filter also includes an anti-static charge so dust doesn’t get attracted to your lens in the first place.
The XTi feels good and features a sturdy grip for your right hand. The body is lightweight, so you won’t feel a burden if you need to carry it around with you for a whole day. You have a choice between a black or silver body colour.
Ever since the first Digital Rebel was introduced in the fall of 2003, pricing has hovered around $1000, with Canon continually improving the quality for the price. The XTi comes with an MSPR of $1175 for the body-only kit and $1350 for the zoom lens. It also comes complete with a Mac and Windows compatible software bundle for photo editing, image noise reduction, direct printing, and the new dust delete data function.

Nikon's mid-range D80

After plodding along in the six megapixel camera space for a few years, Nikon popped the cork on a succession of 10 megapixel SLRs. The D200, D80 and D40x are all 10.2 megapixel models, but aimed at different users. In-store prices for this trio ranges from $900 to $1,700 (body only). The $1,700 D200 has magnesium body construction, weather sealing on the doors and other openings and a faster image processor, so it is aimed at a more extreme camera user. The most recent of the trio, the D40x aimed at first-time SLR purchasers, is a refresh of the D40, and among other things, bumps the resolution from six to 10.2 megapixels.
The price difference between the D40x (street price is just under $900) and D80 is just $200, so a fair question is what does the extra cash get you. There are a few performance as well as ergonomic differences between the two. The viewfinder system is different. The D40x uses a penta-mirror whereas the D80 uses a true pentaprism. The D80’s viewfinder magnification factor is closer to lifesize (0.94x vs. 0.8x for the D40x) and the eyepoint is slightly longer (19.5 mm for the D80 vs. 18 mm for the D40). The extra 1.5 mm doesn’t sound like much, but it may be just enough to allow eyeglass wearers to see the full viewfinder frame without jamming their glasses into eyepiece.
The D80’s autofocus system is also more sophisticated, with 11 selectable focus points (compared to three for the D40x). The D80 also has wider support for older Nikon lenses (the D40x’s support for older Autofocus systems isn’t as extensive, for example).
On the other hand, like the D40x the D80 has several automated scene modes. These are factory assigned presets for specific shooting situations such as portraiture, landscapes, sports, etc., and are usually found on point and shoot and entry-level models (like the D40x). Frankly, for the D80 I think the dial space is wasted on these functions, as the camera has the goods to attract a more advanced user.
One of the major adjustments SLR users had to put up with in the first couple of generations of consumer digital SLRs was the relatively low viewfinder magnification – the image was somewhere down that long dark tunnel. So when I picked up the D80 for the first time, the 0.94x viewfinder magnification was a joy to see. It’s eye-popping big, and that factor alone gave me a very favourable first impression.
And the favourable impression didn’t stop at the viewfinder – there are many things to like about this camera. It uses a two-wheel selection system that many other advanced cameras use (one under your thumb, the other under your index finger), a proven way to quickly and simply adjust two exposure vectors. (For example, in manual mode, one wheel controls f-stop, the other controls shutter speed.) A gratifying, large (2.5-inch) colour LCD sits on the back, and the menu system is well organized. One-touch buttons provide quick access to often-changed settings like white balance and image quality. If you’ve used a digital camera before, there shouldn’t be too much in the menu structure that will mystify you after a brief orientation.
A camera with good ergonomics will still fail if the image quality is below par. Happily, the D80 shines here too. When I bought my SLR a few years ago I considered it the best six megapixel model for under $3,000. But the superior image detail from the $1,100 D80 is obvious – 40 percent more pixels do make a difference in the detail that can be recorded. The camera has a number of settings that change the colour characteristics of jpeg images, so you can tune the settings to match the subject. Shooting in raw format means that basic exposure parameters like exposure, white balance (or colour temperature) and contrast can be modified at will after the photo is taken.
When the D80 was introduced, it was often described as a junior D200, since the features were very close but the D80 didn’t have the ruggedness of the D200. The body is plastic, not metal, but it’s smaller and lighter and for users like me, that’s a fair trade-off.

Give yourself an assignment

How do you get good at something? Practice. On the face of it, that seems like an obvious prescription until you ask the natural follow-up: practice what? One of the time-honoured practice techniques that photographers use to maintain their edge is the self-assignment. This is exactly what it sounds like: tell yourself to shoot something specific, give yourself a deadline, and then complete the assignment.
These exercises help you achieve many things: expand your boundaries, train your eye to see in a different way or give your creativity a tune-up. Before the rise of digital equipment, the self assignment could turn into an expensive indulgence since a lot of shots would be rejects but you’d still have to pay for film processing. With digital, that ongoing cost isn’t there, so you can feel free to shoot dozens or hundreds of images on your road to photographic self-improvement.
Self-assignments work best if they push you out of your comfort zone. If you always photograph outdoors, there’s nothing like an indoor assignment to force you to explore your camera’s ISO settings or how to use flash and other artificial lighting techniques. If you always shoot landscapes, assign yourself portraits and a whole new set of challenges and possibilities will open up.
Self assignments can help you re-train your photographic eye by forcing you to look differently at something, particularly something you’ve seen so often it’s become invisible. This could be a building or monument or even a nondescript scene you’ve walked by dozens of times before. Give yourself the assignment to take 25 different photos of that subject during a fixed period of time. This will challenge you take another look and push beyond the “nothing here worth photographing” mentality. You might try shots from far away, or macro shots of interesting details You can explore the differences between taking the object’s lit and shadowed sides, or choose different times - morning, afternoon and night - to shoot the subject.
Sometimes you need to get over shutter shyness, so try a speed shoot – 50 exposures in five minutes for example. That’s a frame every six seconds, and when you have to shoot that fast, you don’t have the luxury of analysing each shot, but neither will you have the chance to talk yourself out of taking it. It can help you see and shoot on an entirely new level – almost by reflex.
Sometimes you can work it from the other end. Rather than 50 shots in five minutes, restrict yourself to just one frame for your entire session. Rather than suppressing your analysis as the speed shoot does, this assignment will train you to study the subject even more deeply, and help you pick out the single most significant aspect you want to photograph.
Another exercise on the theme of restricting yourself is using just one lens, which means just one focal length. Most of us have a zoom lens on our cameras, so a variation that achieves the same thing is to limit yourself to using just one zoom setting. If you always seem to be shooting with the lens set at telephoto, give yourself an assignment to shoot only wide angle photos for a day. Zoom lenses tend to make us lazy because it’s much easier to hit the zoom control than physically move closer to or further from the subject. Perspective depends on subject to camera distance, however, so you’ll get quite different compositions by moving you and your camera to a new vantage point. This is a particularly good assignment for us zoom-addicted shooters.
You can build a self assignment on virtually any theme: colour (photograph only red things for a day), shape or pattern (look for star shapes) or location (if you live in a big city, look for the 10 or 20 most interesting shop windows). For other ideas, type “photography self assignment” into a search engine and you’ll come up with lots of different approaches.
Once you’ve finished your shoot, it is important to go through the images and analyse them. You can revel in the great shots you’ve created, but often you’ll see a frame and think, “that’s not what I was expecting.” Figuring out why something didn’t work is as important as celebrating what did.

Let there be Lightroom

I recently popped an eight-gigabyte memory card into a 10 megapixel SLR and the frame counter jumped to more than 650 RAW images. With that much capacity, most of us can shoot all day. When the time comes to sort through all those images, however, we might start questioning the wisdom of taking so many. This is where Adobe Photoshop Lightroom can preserve our sanity.
Lightroom represents a new breed of software designed specifically for photographers. It has the elements for cataloguing, image editing and output preparation, but all take place within a common interface. There are entry-level packages that offer the same unified functionality, but Adobe is aiming this product at professional photographers. If you shoot prolifically and capture in RAW file format, Lightroom should be high on your short list whether you consider yourself a professional or not.
Lightroom divides your workflow into five stages that are clearly labelled on the top bar of the main screen. Hit any of the steps – Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print or Web and you are in that module. The modules use a common interface – the working area is in the centre, with adjustment or information panels to the left and right. Along the bottom is a filmstrip ribbon. As you select the various modules, the side panels that hold toolsets change to offer the types of adjustments and manipulations appropriate for that activity. It’s a nicely integrated interface because it reinforces the feeling that you are within the same image bank, regardless of what you are doing.
The Library module is where the main sorting, ranking and other cataloguing functions take place. Here you can access folders, EXIF camera data, rankings and keywords. There is a quick edit panel available here too, although for more extensive image processing you’d move to the Develop module.
Lightroom handles most common image types, but it excels at RAW image workflow. If you’ve worked with the Adobe Camera Raw utility that comes with recent versions of Photoshop, you’ll recognize Lightroom’s Develop module. The organization is similar and there is a common set of tools. However, Lightroom pushes the boundaries of RAW adjustments a lot further. A split-toning panel allows you to adjust hue and saturation for shadow and highlight areas independently, and the tone panel has sliders for highlight and shadow adjustment. As well, a Hue-Saturation-Luminance panel allows you to adjust the image along eight spectral segments: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple and Magenta. And if your images suffer from sensor dust or other spot defects, the Develop module even includes a spotting tool that you can choose to use either as a healing brush or a clone tool.
Three modules handle the most common types of image output: slideshow, print and web. The Slideshow module provides a basic method of presenting a series of images. The integration with Lightroom’s image database makes this process very straightforward and fast, as you can select a series of images either by sorting keywords or other parameters, or by creating an entirely new collection using the Quick Collection feature, and then simply make the slideshow – no exporting them or copying them to a different location, and no need to open a separate application. You can adjust slide and transition duration, add text titles and music, and include framing or background effects. The features in the slideshow module are fairly sparse compared to other packages designed specifically for presentations particularly in the number of transitions and other effects. Nevertheless, it’s more than enough to create a simple but elegant slide presentation.
The same benefits of integration are apparent in the Web module. Once you have a group of images, it is very easy to make a web-ready gallery. You can preview it in a web browser and then upload the collection to your website.
The Print module offers a series of templates – if you want to make a contact sheet, for example – as well as colour management and layout adjustment tools. There is also an identity plate toolset that allows you to put a text watermark or other label over your images.
I have been using the Bridge application that comes with Photoshop CS2 to catalogue my images, and moving to Lightroom was a smooth transition. The underlying technologies in Bridge plus Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom are similar, but Adobe says Bridge has features that make it useful for a broader range of activities – graphic arts, for example. Lightroom is for photographers specifically. Thus, for example, Lightroom’s catalogue can be built of both online and offline image collections, whereas Bridge works more like a file browser accessing only what is currently online (including connected external hard drives).
The common ground that brings the two together is the sidecar XMP file, which holds adjustments settings, keywords, etc.. Both Bridge and Lightroom understand the XMP file and if you choose to save adjustments to XMP in one, the other will be able to read those settings. There are a few more RAW adjustments available in Lightroom’s raw processing panel, but if those are written to the XMP file, Bridge will properly read them (although it will not be able to modify them).
This is one of the reasons why my transition from Bridge to Lightroom was so painless. I have several thousand images in my archive, which resides on an external USB hard drive. Using Bridge, I’d started cataloguing some of them with keywords, and when I created a new catalogue using Lightroom, those keyword tags were preserved, saving me from having to re-categorize those images.
Because Adobe ships both Mac (Universal) and Windows versions of Lightroom in the same box, I was able to test the software on both platforms, although the systems were nowhere near equal. The fastest machine in my stable right now is a one-generation old CoreDuo MacBook Pro with two gigabytes of RAM. (Apple claims the current Core2Duo machines are even faster.) Moving through the collection or sorting subgroups is very fast. Even on a single core Centrino notebook with one gigabyte of RAM running Windows XP, the experience is quite good, although the jerkiness and discontinuities in performance that comes from a single core processor is often evident.

Camcorder stills

An exercise in photographic futility?
It’s happened to all of us. You’re out and about shooting video and an unexpected opportunity for a great still suddenly presents itself. Your camera is stashed away in your bag, but you remember that your camcorder has a photo mode. You flick a switch and snap off a half dozen frames, happy that the shot opp didn’t slip away. But later that night, as you review the day’s haul, you come across the stills and find that they’re noisy, poorly lit and badly coloured. You shake your head, switch off the monitor, and wonder where it’s written that all stills taken with video cameras have to suck.
You could blame a variety of things. For starters, camcorders typically don’t provide controls for settings like shutter speed and aperture. Then there’s the hard fact that their processors are generally geared for rendering video, not touching up stills. But while these and other issues bear significant weight, the biggest problem is that camcorder image sensors just don’t capture as much visual information as the sensors inside most digital cameras.
Quick word on image sensors: They’re made up of thousands or millions of tiny photodiodes that capture light. Assuming a shot is captured at the image sensor’s maximum resolution and undergoes no compression, each pixel in the final image represents the light captured by a single photodiode. (Hence, a sensor with five million photodiodes is capable of generating a five megapixel picture.)
The problem with consumer camcorders is that their image sensors typically have far fewer photodiodes than those of digital cameras. Lower end models can have less than half a million, while expensive high-definition models max out at around three million. But wait, you say, my camcorder can take pictures at resolutions of four, five or even six megapixels. The math doesn’t add up.
According to Panasonic Canada’s Dan Kesselring, the incongruity occurs because camcorders often turn one pixel into multiple pixels. “Pixels on a still camera image sensor are basically small and square,” explains Kesselring, “while pixels on a camcorder image sensor are more rectangular and typically much larger. By dividing or shifting individual pixels on a camcorder image sensor we can create more pixels. It’s pretty standard within the industry.”
The upshot is that while your five or six megapixel camcorder photograph might have a few million more dots than the image sensor that captured it, there’s not really any additional image data in the picture. The pixels have just been divvied up a bit.
The moral? “Always take a still camera with you,” says Kesselring. “A camcorder’s camera function can come in handy sometimes, but it just hasn’t reached a point yet where it can replace a digital camera.”
Not that we don’t trust Mr. Kesselring, but we decided to see for ourselves. We test drove three camcorders that have received critical praise for their video quality with an eye to evaluate their photography functionality. Given what we’ve learned about how video cameras capture stills, the results of two of the models we looked at were predictable, but we were modestly surprised by the third.
Canon DC22 ($549) http://www.canon.ca/
This entry level DVD camcorder from Canon has relatively straightforward still photography functionality. You can’t capture pictures while recording video, and image setting options are rudimentary. Just flip from video to camera mode and press the photo button to take 2 megapixel stills. No fuss, no muss. How do the shots look? Let’s just say you probably wouldn’t want to spend the two bits it would cost to print them. The only legitimate situation to use the DC22’s still image mode is if you happen to catch a glimpse of a Sasquatch and haven’t time to pull out your camera - the resulting grainy, off-colour picture will fit right in with all the other photos ever taken of the mythical beast.
Panasonic SDR-H200($1,099) http://www.panasonic.ca/
Panasonic’s premier hard disk camcorder employs a 3CCD system, which basically means it uses three separate sensors to record each of the three primary colours. The difference in video quality can be significant, but it doesn’t really have an impact on stills. Each sensor is made up of about 700,000 pixels, for a combined resolution of 2.1 megapixels, but Panasonic splits these pixels to deliver photos up to 3.1 megapixels. Image quality surpassed the DC22, but not by much; some shots had more authentic colouration and a bit less noise, but they still wouldn’t pass for pictures captured by a dedicated digital camera.
Sony HDR-HC7 ($1,499) http://www.sonystyle.ca/
Hands down one of the best consumer camcorders on the market, Sony’s high-definition, Mini DV HDR-HC7 has a video image sensor with a whopping 3.2 million pixels from which it can generate stills up to 6.1 megapixels in size. However, while test shots showed a clear advantage in image clarity and resolution, the lighting was still on the dark side—even in bright outdoor settings. Still, the HDR-HC7’s photos were easily the best of the bunch, and might even be capable of going head-to-head against shots captured with an entry-level digital camera.