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West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
List hosted by www.tscnet.com
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Hi Bill,
I used a Nikon CoolPix 950. It takes pictures that are practically
indistinguishable from a good 35 mm camera.
It has a built-in 3x optical zoom (and up to 6x zoom with digial zoom, which
I don't like to use). I used either the regular lense alone or with a Nikon
2x telephoto converter, giving me the equivalent of 38 to 230 mm on a 35 mm
camera. 230 mm is perfect for taking pictures of sailboats several hundred
yards away.
The pictures you're seeing on the internet are not the highest resolution or
quality the camera can produce. I reduced the resolution to 640 x 480 and
used .jpg compression to make them load faster over the internet. You
should see them in full resolution at 2.1 megapixels, (1200 x 1600 pixels)
and without compression. They're good enough to blow up to 8 x 10
enlargements without getting grainy at all. They're virtually
indistinguishable from 35 mm prints.
To take sailing photos from far away and still get a full-frame shot, I
wanted a 200 mm or higher zoom lens of excellent quality. For really sharp
pictures, what counts is optical zoom. Digital zoom is just a marketing
gimmick. You can do digital zooming with any good software on your
computer.
Only two cameras, the Sony CyperShot 505 with the Carl Zeiss lenses and the
Nikon Coolpix 800 and 900 series have top high quality lenses with high
powered optical zooms. Those two cameras have the best lenses to be found on
a consumer (not professional) digital camera. The Sony has some *very* nice
features, but you can't save the pictures in "raw" uncompressed format, so
enlargements don't come out quite as perfect as the Nikon, but danged close.
If you're willing to get within a hundred yards or so of your sailing
buddies to take pictures, then there are lots of other digital camers that
will do a fine job for a $200-$500. Even a good 1.3 megpixel camera will
take fabulous pics for internet viewing, but the largest good-quality print
you'll be able to get is about 3 x 5. Prices have dropped drastically in the
last few months as the first 3+ megapixel digicams have been introduced.
You can get a really good 1.3 megappixel camera with a big memory card for
under $400.
http://www.dpreview.com/ has excellent reviews of the better digicams. Click
on "reviews" on the left hand side. I found it far more useful than most of
the "shopping" pages or computer magazine sites.
This is the first time I've used Photopoint. It's free and very easy to
use. I don't know how long they'll keep the photos around, though. I'll
have to ask Kent to put the best of the bunch up on the Potter Yachters'
website.
Fair winds,
Judy B
-----Original Message-----
From: bill payne [mailto:bilpayne@gte.net]
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 5:30 AM
To: wwpotter@tscnet.com
Subject: photopoint
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West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
List hosted by www.tscnet.com
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Doc,
Thanks for the great photos. What kind of camera did you use? Have you
used Photopoint before? Satisfied with their site?
Bill Payne
p15 #1075
Pilgrim
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> West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
> dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
> List hosted by www.tscnet.com
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>Ahoy all,
>
>The weather wasn't as bad as NOAH predicted. Front after front passed
thru,
>and sometimes there was no wind and it was warm and humid, sometimes it was
>blustering up to 20 knots and cold (around 45).
>
>Dave Norris showed up to brave the weather, but showed his good sense as a
>skipper and stayed inside the estuary, just in case the weather got bad in
a
>hurry.
>
>Jerry Barrilleaux and I help Chris Beatty rig his brand new dark blue
hulled
>P19 for the first time.
>
>And I played with my new digital camera! I've posted a few pictures from
>the PY Sail today at
>http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=274007&a=2038826
>
>Fair winds,
>Judy B
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 29 2000 - 03:27:10 PST