Check out this URL for some new portrait shots taken from Oly 2000, Nikon 950, and some super expensive canon thing. Web site maintainer: You guys should add this link to your news items!

http://www.dreamarts.co.jp/magazine/nishikawa/contents/990328/

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), April 02, 1999

Answers

Olympus wins out to me. Too bad it uses Smartmedia cards.

-- Lurch (lurchtt@aol.com), April 04, 1999.

What's wrong with SmartMedia? Why are you "down" on them?

-- DD (oops@yahoo.com), April 05, 1999.

I agree the Olympus has the Nikon beat especially in the area of flesh tones and highlights. The Canon was too red of flesh tones. All are good images but it save a lot of time when you don't have to go in and tweak every photo to correct for things like flesh tone. It also means you can keep you original JPEG file and not have to save the photo to a different format, with probably bigger file size to avoid recompression of you edited photo.

-- Bob G (rgreg88721@hotmail.com), April 05, 1999.

There is nothing wrong with smartmedia. There was also nothing wrong with Beta VCRs either. Both are marginally superior but are not the main stream. The compact flash size in megabytes is jumping out ahead of the smart media.

-- Bob G (rgreg88721@hotmail.com), April 05, 1999.

when I go to that web site, I can't get it in English.....

-- Elizabeth Karan (ekaran2235@yahoo.com), April 07, 1999.

If you're using a PC you have to shut down, unplug the unit, go to the nearest CompUSA and buy a MAC! Start you new MAC and go to the URL then the Japanese will be legible...not gibberish. BUT, unless you have studied your butt off, you still won't be able to read it so, print it out and go to your nearest Sushi bar and ask one of the NON-Native workers to read it for you. Got that?

-- aha (oopa@yahoo.com), April 07, 1999.

The analogy of smart/compact to VHS/Beta is not totally equivalent. Since most users were renting commercial films which were very difficult to stock in multiple formats, there was tremendous pressure to standardize on a single system. Since the cards are a commodity reusable hardware item, there will not be the same market pressure for a single standard.

[There is a rumor that VHS triumphed ultimately because Sony would not permit porn to be distributed in Beta... biology wins...]

jay

-- jay (holovacs@idt.net), April 08, 1999.

The situation with SmartMedia is as follows:

1. Smaller capacity, more expensive media; 2. Poorly designed contacts (the wipers take material off of the contacts on the SmartMedia every time the media is inserted/removed, and eventually scratches and loss of plating results). The pin contacts seem more durable to me. Now if they plated more heavily... but the cost would increase even further.

Ron

-- Ron Reznick (trapagon@earthlink.net), April 13, 1999.

The situation with SmartMedia is as follows: 1. Smaller capacity, more expensive media;...

The last time I checked SmartMedia was considerably cheaper. . .

-- Joel (JJW998@ATT.Net), May 01, 1999.