I'm going to be producing direct mail brochures for an automotive dealer and will be taking photographs of their inventory - new cars, used cars etc. Will I need to get the highest pixel resolution camera? Or would this be overkill? The size of each image will be anywhere between 8 1/2" x 4" (largest) to 2" x 2" on the average.

Thanks for your input. jswhit

-- jswhitman (jswhitman@aol.com), August 19, 1999

Answers

Anytime you are going to paper more resolution is good. However you don't want to forget about details like blooming which is from bright areas in a photo, like the sun reflecting of a car windshield. Dynamic range to be able to resolve details in shadow. Good color balance so the cars look like the color they really are. A zoom lens can be useful in photographing large objects where you can't alway adequitely control the distance between you and the subject. Let's not forget cost either. I am partcial the Epson 750Z, it helps me justify buying it, no but really it has been a good camera. I have taken over 1000 photos with it in the 5 months. You might want to consider the Epson 850 digital camera when it comes out. There are plenty of others out there to consider also.

-- Bob G. (rgreg88721@hotmail.com), August 19, 1999.

I am not an expert on digital cameras(but I play one on TV ;), so far all that I have heard, is that more pixels in not necessarily better. There are 2Mp cameras that produce lousy pictures and 1Mp cameras that produce great ones. Something you might look into, since your subject matter is cars, is a camera that accepts lens filters (for example the Olympus D600L) Then get a polarizing filter. This would take care of the reflection and glare noted in the above answer.

-- david erskine (davide@netquest.com), August 20, 1999.

For your purposes I would strongly recommend one of the Sony line of Mavica cameras. The Mavicas use standard floppy disks for recording photographs and do not require expensive memory cards or special equipment for downloading into a computer. Real estate agents, law enforcement agencies, news organizations, and those with similar needs use Sony Mavicas almost exclusively because of the practicality of floppy disk storage. 850,000 pixels, such as in the Sony FD91, are more than adequate for your needs. Using a good inkjet printer such as the Epson 750 or 1200, you can get Kodak-like prints at 4 X 5 size or larger.

You can view specs for the various Mavicas at:

http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/dimaging/browse_the_products/digi tal_mavica_camera/mavica_models/index.html

Rodger

-- Rodger Carter (rodger.carter@wpafb.af.mil), August 20, 1999.

The comment on being able to use a polarizing filter is a very good one. I have never tried it with a digital camera but for outdoor shot with a 35mm it was great in being able to get rid of glare off of a car window. Also to comment on the Sony suggestion above on Sony camera. If you are planning on transfering your photos to more than one computer, like in the case of multiple people sharing a camera, the floppy disks may be an advantage. However if you are going to be the primary user and dealing with only one computer I would suggest a camera with compact flash and a card reader. I have one that connect to the parallel port on my computer that is fast and easy to use. Card readers with USB interface are becoming more popular and would probably be even better. Also compact flash work well with laptop computer with a simple adapter so you can plug them into the PCMIA port on the laptop.

-- Bob G. (rgreg88721@hotmail.com), August 20, 1999.

I didn't see a reference to budget, or time constraints of this project. If snapshot quality is your goal you are going to be served well by a meagapixel digital camera, but if you are after top quality images and dont need the images instantly skip the digital garbage.

A "regular" SLR from any reputable manufacturer - Canon, Nikon, Pentax, etc. combined with a drum scan of the resulting images is far superior to the digital output of prosumer digital cameras. The biggest drawback to this approach is time. Depending on your photofinishing/scanning source it can be 24 hours to one week to get the images back. If you needing hundreds of images to be scanned drum scanning can get pricey ($15.00 each for 100+ images), so consider Photo CD at $2.00 each/48 hr turn around. 100 images fit on one CD and still exceed any digital camera for quality.

-- Jim Scott (wgd@napanet.net), September 13, 1999.