Lately many top brand digital camera companies have been offering advisory notices that some of their cameras might have faulty CCD sensor chips. The problem is the same for most of the affected camera brands: images are not displayed correctly on the LCD. At the time of this newsletter the camera brands that have made this announcement are Canon, Fujifilm, Knoica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus , Ricoh and Sony. Most of these cameras are the smaller consumer digital cameras. Below are links to Digital Photography Review’s articles on each brand. It would be a good idea to see if your camera is one of these with possible problems. And make sure if purchasing a camera you don’t purchase one of the faulty cameras listed.
Canon: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0510/05100602canon_ccdproblem.asp
Fuji: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0510/05100403fuji_advisory.asp
Konica/Minolta: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0510/05101101km_ccdalert.asp
Nikon: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0509/05092801nikonadvisory.asp
Olympus: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0510/05101403oly_ccdadvisory.asp
Ricoh: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0510/05101402ricoh_ccdadvisory.asp
Sony: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0510/05100701sony_ccds.asp
Sony prosumer digital camera; the unique and radical Cyber-shot DSC-R1, due to the camera's sensor and lens. This is the first all-in-one digital camera to utilize a large (APS size) sensor, to be precise a 10.3 megapixel CMOS unit measuring 21.5 x 14.4 mm which is essentially a slightly smaller version of the sensor used in the Nikon D2X. It's also the first APS size sensor to provide full time live preview to the camera's LCD monitor or EVF (electronic viewfinder). This means that there's no mirror box or prism making the camera more compact and allowing the lens to be positioned much closer to the sensor. Equally as important and interesting is the lens which provides a 24 - 120 mm (equivalent) five times zoom with a maximum aperture of F2.8 - F4.8. For the whole article go to the Dpreview’s http://www.dpreview.com/articles/sonydscr1/
As you can see this camera has a much larger sensor then its predecessor the Sony DSC-F828. Larger sensors have many advantages over the smaller sensors found on most “Point-n-Shoot” digital cameras.
- Higher Resolution:
Usually the higher the Resolution of a photo can give you a sharper more detailed picture. You are also able to create larger enlargements of your photos taken with the larger chip (be aware the higher the resolution the faster and more memory required for your computer).
- Higher ISO settings and less “noise” at the higher settings:
ISO has to due with the speed at which the sensor chip captures light and is similar to ISO rating for film (ex. ISO 100 might automatically set the shutter speed to 1/60 and at ISO 400 1/250), thus allowing for a faster shutter speed creating less camera blur then at a slower setting. This is very helpful in low light situations and sporting events where people might be in motion. It also helps to reduce the “noise” (the strange blocks of colors and distorted pixels).
It is hard to understand the difference in sensor sizes. So below is an illustration that puts the various
As you can see there is a big difference in sensor sizes. You will probably start seeing more Point ’n’ Shoot Digital Cameras using the APS size chips due to their above listed benefits. At this time if I was going to spend over $800 on a camera it would be a DSLR. This is because of the multiple lens selection you can have for a DSLR camera. But who knows in the future the Point ‘n’ Shoot might be as good as the DSLR? This is just another example of the fast changing technology in digital photography.
This tip is directed at the “Workflow” part of digital photography. Remember digital photography is a two-part process: take the photo and work with the photo using a Photo Editing Program (i.e. Photoshop, Elements, Camedia, etc.). A computer is necessary for this task so that is what my photo tip will be about computer “Hard Drive Maintenance”!
Your computer has a Hard Drive (HD) that stores all the information you put into it. This can be text, photos, music, videos, graphics, etc. These files can start taking up a lot of memory on your hard drive. As your memory decreases your files might not be able to be saved within a specific location, so they get scattered throughout the hard drive making them “Fragmented Files”. Because fragmented files are not next to other similar files the hard drive might have to search the entire HD for the next file. This takes time and the HD has to work harder then it should.
So to prevent “Fragmented Files” from occurring it is important to have plenty of free space on your HD (I would suggest no less then 20% and 40% is better). This allows for some large file dumps and room let over. Also after you remove a lot of files from your HD you should run a “De-fragment” program to place all similar files next to one another. It depends on how many downloads and deletions one makes for when to “De-Fragment” their HD. It is best to do this more often at first until you find out just how fast you cause files to be fragmented. And again the biggest cause is lack of HD space.
If a person has never performed HD maintenance on a computer before (i.e. eliminating bad links, and De-Fragment your files), it would be advantageous for you to have someone very knowledgeable to help you the first few times. It can be tricky and you might accidentally erase important information or files. Files can be hidden also and even as you delete unwanted files they can still be in Temp files that you cannot readily see.
This just happened to me! I could not understand why my computer kept crashing. After finding out the HD was full (even though I was deleting unwanted files) and almost 80% of my files where fragmented, I discovered that I had 20 Gigabits of temp files on the HD that were hidden and broken (could not be accessed). After deleted them and running the De-Fragmenting program two times, I came up with 30 Gigabits of free memory on the HD and no fragmented files. The computer now operates faster, and the HD hardly makes a sound. Before the maintenance was performed, every time I went to open a photo the HD would make lots of noise and finally the photo would pop up. If this is happening to you consult a person knowledgeable in computer maintenance. (If you are not sure how to do HD maintenance get knowledgeable help and ALWAYS backup your files before you perform HD maintenance)
