Wouldn't you know it? This thread was born just as I was preparing to leave for the weekend. This is a subject over which I obsessed for many months a while ago, and I had a lot of comments to post here. Now that I'm back, I see that most of what I had to say has already been said. That's actually one of the coolest things about this message board -- so many readers with so many backgrounds.
<font color=red>WARNING !!! Ol' Harv really rambles here. You gotta
really be into this subject to make it through this one.</font color=red>
My camera -- an Olympus C-2500L (same as Muhammad's, and best of all it's pretty much the same model number as my tractor, an
L2500 -- kinda spooky, huh? /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif)
For those of you who like the numbers, it has a max resolution of 1712 x 1368 or a little more than 2 mega-pixels. The photo images at that resolution are about 8 megs apiece uncompressed, or 2 megs with high-quality compression. Interestingly, that means you couldn't fit a single picture on a high density floppy disk.
I tend to use the high-res images with JPEG compression, so I get 16 pictures per 32MB SmartMedia cards (about the size of a large postage stamp), and I have 2 such cards so I can be downloading one while shooting the other, or at least I have a 32-picture capability when I'm on the road. If I'm shooting picts specifically for an online catalog, I drop the res down a notch and get 55 pictures per card.
This particular camera has features I needed for my online business -- namely, macro capability and through-the-lens viewing (SLR). This was necessary for me 'cuz I frequently need to catalog pictures of small inventory items, such as sushi. Macro is just plain fun, anyway (see attachment).
The camera has a serial connection for downloading, but it is slow. If you have a USB-equipped computer, you can pick up a SmartMedia card reader for relatively small bucks. I didn't have USB originally, so I bought a FlashPath Adapter, which looks like a floppy disk. It has a slot in the side into which you slide your SmartMedia card and then just shove it into your floppy disk drive. Pretty slick, I must say.
When I need prints, I cheat. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif That is, I fall back on that photo restoration business I used to run. You might be surprised to know that I produced professional-quality 8 x 10 prints with a $300 inkjet printer (an Epson Photo 700 -- 1440 dpi, 5 color). Now before you run out to buy one (or actually one of the newer models), take note -- to get professional quality it takes a
lot more than a printer. First it took me a couple of months to research and develop a color-matching system for my business. That's a system whereby the prints you scan, the images you see on your monitor and the final output from your printer have exactly the same "color balance". This ain't the time to go into detail here, but take my word for it -- it's
nontrivial.
Then there's the inks and papers. Don't get me wrong -- you can produce very satisfactory pictures with standard inks and decent inkjet paper,
but if you want true photographic quality prints that won't fade away to oblivion in a few months, you need to get pretty serious about your materials. I wound up building an air-brush spraying booth so I could apply a 2-part UV protection coating (at $185 per gallon) to create permanent, water-proof prints. I later switched to "archival" inks and papers when they became available. These inks last for 30 years or more, straight out of the printer (regular photographs, by the way don't generally last that long themselves).
A really good compromise for anyone who already has a good color inkjet printer is to simply use Konica's Photo Quality Inkjet Paper. It's a heavy, glossy paper that looks and feels like a regular photographic print. It works with regular inks, is water resistant and produces remarkable print quality. After trying a half-dozen other papers, I found the Konica stuff at my local camera store and continue to use it for some of my own "snapshot" quality prints.
There are also a number of small dye-sub (dye sublimation) printers on the market, and some cameras can attach directly to them, but I remain unimpressed with dye-sub quality, so I never persued such printers.
There are services popping up that will accept your images over the internet and then mail you the finished prints. A buddy of mine is giving that a try, so I'll let you know what I find out. Otherwise, if you can burn a CD, there are do-it-yourself print machines showing up in camera and photo stores all over the place. Some shops even have printers connected up directly to SmartMedia and/or CompactFlash readers, so you can just pop the card out of your camera and start printing.
There's a lot of cameras on the market out there, but I think I've jabbered
quite enough for one post. /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif
