We are considering the purchase of either a digital camera or a digital video camera. Our main goal is to get good still images that will produce a good quality 8-1/2 x11 print, a moving image is of secondary importance. Our budget is $3000 (Canadian). Any thoughts on the pros and cons of these two approaches? I think the digital camera will give us much better resolution and ease of operation but I am looking for as much information on this as possible. Any help you can provide will be much appreciated.

-- Wayne Cook (cookw@region.halton.on.ca), March 16, 1999

Answers

The Digital Video camera can not come close to quality of high end or even medium level still digital camera. In order to have a decent print at the size of picture you stated, you need high resolution camera, and that's where the Digital video cameras fail. I have the Canon Optura, it is a good Digital Video camera but a very poor still camera, unless if you like standard VGA (640x480). There are many good cameras on the market for you including the nikon CoolPix 900s or the new 950 (if you don't need much of zoom capability). There are a few real good Digital camera on their way to North America including the Canon & Sony. I believe you will be happy with these two new DigiCams (The specification of these two cameras, indicates two very impresive DigiCams). If you can not wait, check the Sony Mavica FD-91, it has a 14X zoom, and it is a solid product at XGA resolution (It won't stand up to the new Sony DSC-D700). The average quantity of pictures you can take per standard flopy disk is 8.

-- Fred (tabarrok@ariver.com), March 16, 1999.

digital video camera is just not an option for 8 X 11 printing. Printing is the most demanding application for digicams, requiring all the pixels you can get. video cams have less than 500k pixels (I think the current gen is mostly ~375k?), the forthcoming Oly & Nikon ~$900 (US) digicams have 2 megapixels. And these are pretty wimpy pixels, with each one representing only one of three colors, so even 2MB doesn't get you anywhere near perfect 8 x 10's, but your eyes decide.

So I guess the thing to do is look at printouts for yourself before buying and see what you think. Decide whether the instant results and convenience of digital is worth more than the quality of regular photo.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), March 16, 1999.