Our work group is looking for a digital camera for documenting defects in mechanical parts as small as 1/2" in diameter. Our final images will be used both print and on screen. Options for macro optics and flexible lighting will help insure the success of our project. Our target price at this point is around $1000. Any suggestions for camera brands that meet these needs would be greatly appreciated. Any practical suggestions on actually using digital cameras for closeup work with flexible lighting would be doubly greatly appreciated!

Kevin Merrell

-- Kevin Merrell (kevin_merrell@hp.com), January 10, 2000

Answers

I have been using the Sony Mavica FD-7 and recently purchased an FD-91. I havent used the other brands on the market, since the FD-91 fills all my web design needs perfectly. Its optical glass, true 14x zoom lens will let me more than fill the frame with a size 14 trout fly (about 1/2") It is sometimes necessary to use auxiliary lights if the camera is so close to the subject that the flash overshoots it. It is possible to photograph an object that is actually touching the lens. As far as I know the Mavicas are the only cameras with real optical (as opposed to digital) zoom lenses. No other attachments are required for extreme close ups, outside of some extra lights as I mentioned. These lights can be one or two clip on work lights with 100 watt bulbs in them. The camera can be white balanced for them easily.

I also like very much the ease of use of standard floppy disks as a storage medium. The quality is good enough for moderate sized prints (about 3 1/2 x 5 inches) and more than good enough for viewing on the monitor or for including in a web site. There are some good freeware programs available for organizing and printing the pictures.

If you would like to see a few samples, please e-mail and I will attach a couple.

The FD-91 is the top of the Mavica line at just under the price you quoted.

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), January 11, 2000.

Kevin: Just a thought here... How many parts do you have to photograph? If you need to photograph lots of parts then a Sony with a floppy disk (which holds an average of about 12 pictures) may be difficult to use. If you only need to photograph a few then I agree that the Sony FD-91 would work very well for you.
If you do have a lot to shoot you might consider on of the high end web cams (some newer units from Kodak have pretty darned good resolution for a web cam) and shoot directly onto your computer. Even a high capacity memory device that could hold a lot of pictures may not be ideal if the volume of pictures you generate will be high.
If a disk based of memory device based camera is what you would prefer then you should also consider what you intend to do with the result. The FD-91 has a very good picture quality with a resolution of 1024 X 768. This is just fine for presentation in a web browser and 4 X 6 prints. If you need to be absolutely certain to capture extremely fine details, and or print 8 X 10's then you need to consider a higher resolution camera. I'm a fan of the Olympus line - they have excellent optics, fabulous picture quality and are ergonomically well-designed. I own an FD-91 and love it - but resolution is not my top criteria since I shoot mainly for the web.

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), January 11, 2000.

Comments that mavica have "very good image quality" are laughable when one compares mavica against other digital cameras.

The truth is that mavica has the absolte worst image quality on the market today. There is no shipping digital camera that has worse image quality than a mavica, period! -- all non-mavicas are better than mavicas. It's true that the level of quality is mavica is good enough for lots of people, especially people just using it for the web. But for anyone for whom image quality is critical, mavica is the unquestionably worst possible choice. If you think I'm an anti sony bigot, I own a 505 and love it. :)

To the person asking about macro, do yourself a favor and get a nikon 950. Or you could try a reversed 24mm lens with macro coupler on a 505 and some slave flashes if you wanted to get really

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), January 14, 2000.