Looking for digital camera to use in macro mode for fine detail of subjects ranging from 1 x 4 cm up to 10 x 15 cm. Flash may be optional with plenty of ambient lite available. I want to store images on CD data base and use them in powerpoint for slide or electronic projection presentations. I'm worried about loosing detail when compressing to slides and again when projecting. Is maximizing resolution with the Nikon 950, Oly 2000, Fuji2700 or ? best way to go or will the image transferring defeat the finer resolution? Any info on this rarely discussed topic would be greatly apreciated.

-- pj stark (pjstark@yahoo.com), April 27, 1999

Answers

Certainly the Nikon 950 can get to microscopic levels in macro work, but you're also right in thinking that that much resolution is probably overkill for presentations. - Most data projectors are 800x600, or 1024x768 pixels at the very best. Doesn't matter if you have a 6 megapixel digicam, 1024x768 is all you'll see. OTOH, if you're having your slides output to film by a service burea, then you'll be wanting all the resolution you can get! Check the Macro test sample in our Comparometer(tm), and you can get a quick reference of how close all the different cameras we've tested can get. As to others, we haven't tested them, but some of the Ricoh models will get very close also, are lower res than the Nikon, and so would probably be less expensive. The Oly 2000 does a good job on Macro also, but not to the microscopic levels that the Nikon does. 1x4 cm would be pushing it for the Oly, but it does have a provision for add-on macro lenses, and Olympus makes some fine ones...

Hope this helps, good luck!

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), April 29, 1999.

See my response under the topic heading "Converting Slides to Digital format" I have been able to get very nice macros measuring 14x20mm without any special equipment with my Nikon 950.

-- charles metzger (cmetzger@earthlink.net), May 02, 1999.