I am looking for a meg-pixel camera that accepts a VIDEO INPUT. I want to plug a color underwater camera into a digital still camera to capture still images. The color camera produces NTSC video. Does anyone know of a method of doing this. Do any of the digital cameras offer a method of importing images other than through the lens?

-- jeff zernov (jzernov@uslink.net), June 30, 2000

Answers

I don't believe you'll have too much luck. Digicams generally aren't designed to frame grab from NTSC color, they're designed to read and process the info produced by a much higher resolution ccd imaging sensor.

The video output is a "standard" feature because the manufacturers think there is value in it and I suspect because the chip which drives the LCD in most models has an LCD/video use origin probably from camcorders designed with LCD displays. Chances are it was very cheap to add the video out because it was already there in the LCD driver.

I realize you probably have a good reason for wanting a digicam to do this, but wouldn't it be much easier to find the video input on a camcorder or even a digital camcorder? You won't get any higher resolution out of the underwater camera even if you could find a digicam with video input. You'd still be limited to the output resolution of the camera itself, and possibly the capture resolution of the recording device if it were in fact lower.

The only alternative that springs to mind which provides similar portability and yields a digital image would be to use a laptop or palmtop(?) pc with a PCMCIA frame grabber card. You can often find PCMCIA frame grabbers on ebay, most are meant to work with mini cameras for portable video conferencing setups. You could probably also hang a "Snappy" or similar frame grabber off a laptop's parallel port.

Good Luck!

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), June 30, 2000.