I am new to the arena of digital photography and have found the imaging resource web site invaluable. I narrowed down my search of cameras to the following: Nikon CoolPix 600, Olympus 400Z, and Toshiba PDR M1. In terms of dollar/ value, I am inclined to go with the Toshiba, but here is what holds me back and this is my question. Can the Toshiba camera "stitch" photos together in the same way that the Olympus cameras can (i.e. make very wide panaoramas, or fuse many photos into one giant photo), or is this something done just as easily with Image Composer or some other software? Also, it looks like the Toshiba needs about 10 seconds between shots. Is this true? Is there a way to speed this up so that I can take a burst shot. Finally, if it was your money, would you just go with the Olympus 340 instead?

-- luke james (luke.j.sanna@ac.com), January 20, 1999

Answers

The Olympus D400Zoom is a step above the other 2 cameras. it is equivalent to the Nikon CoolPix 900. The Olympus D340 is the equivalent to the others i.e. they are megapixel cameras without a zoom. The new 340L model just introduced by Olympus has additional built in memory to speed the time between shots even more.

The Enroute brand of stitching software provided with the Olympus can stitch any of a number of image formats (Jpg, bmp etc) together. It is really magical the way it does its work and it is not brand dependent. You will have to buy it with the other vendors products. Of course with the Olympus you have to buy a case and AC Adapter, so you will wind up paying for some extras no matter what camera you choose.

-- Ben Gordon (bengordon@earthlink.net), January 21, 1999.

I'll second the vote for Enroute's Quickstitch program: You *could* stitch images together in Image Composer (I've done it years ago in Photoshop), but you also *could* empty your swimming pool with a teaspoon! If you're seriously interested in stitching photos together, you will sooner or later end up buying QuickStitch - It's that good! As noted, it will work with files from ANY camera, but Oly includes it in the box with their unit.

As to burst speeds, no, there's really no way to significantly speed up the capture time. You get a little boost by using a higher compression ratio (lower image quality), and a larger boost by going to the smaller image size altogether (eg, 640x480), but it's not worth it in my view.

-- Dave Etchells (hotnews@imaging-resource.com), January 23, 1999.