[SGVLUG] Camera recommendations?

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Dustin
> 
> ... went hiking ... and seem to have left the camera
> 
> The thing I found most annoying about the old one was the 
> shutter delay

what is it with you and "low latency" nowadays?  first it was audio, now it's your digital camera :)

[ok, kidding aside -- actually, I'm interested in the same thing as I have a far more fleeting "event" to watch for than "oooh look, the kid smiled, and it wasn't gas this time!"]

What I have to suggest isn't necessarily any less expensive than the really good camera, but certainly has a low-latency between pushing the button and capturing the scene: a video camera.  What I have is a sony TRV-30, which a few years ago was a top-of-the-line single CCD camera, but nowadays should be far less expensive.

The camera has a digital photo mode that is "1.3 megapixels" [1300x1050 or so (*)] as well as "vga" mode [640x480, suitable for webpages] and as an added bonus, acts as a digital video recorder that can record an hour of video per tape.  The camera has two interfaces -- firewire for video and usb for the memory stick.  The USB part worked "out of the box" under SuSE since early 8.x days, and while the firewire video capture works just fine under windows, it *was* a little spotty under linux -- admittedly, I haven't done much lately as my dad is borrowing the camera "at the moment" for a project he is working on, so I haven't tried the latest releases of "things" [dvcap, main actor, broadcast2000/cinelarra, kino, etc.] I imagine they would be much better nowadays.

Tom

(*) Unless you are a photo-snob, 1.3 megapixels will produce an 8x10 (11?) suitable for a family scrapbook  (remind me in advance of a meeting and I'll grab a couple of samples)

Magazines and newspapers, however, are likely to turn up their noses at anything less than 5 megapixels [which is understandable -- they "print" at 1200 dpi or better, and if you think about it "5 megapixels" ends up being 2.5k by 2k -- IOW, on a pixel-per-dot basis, a 2.5k pixel "wide" picture would be 2 inches wide in print...]