The Digital Camera "WOW!" Factor
Dateline: New York City, 2001. At an InfoTrends breakfast briefing in New York City I was told that digital cameras would be available for about $100 within 10 years. It was Wednesday, June 27, 2001, in the grand ballroom of the Manhattan Center on 34th Street. I recall thinking that this might be possible if the manufacturers used low-end CMOS sensors and limited resolution to about 1 megapixel. I was half right.
Digital cameras are available for $100 or less. CMOS sensors turned out to offer far more quality than expected and even many high-end cameras now use them. But those $100 digital cameras offer resolutions in the 8-to-12–megapixel range instead of just 1Mpxl. In the final quarter of 2010, I purchased two consumer-grade cameras. One was an upgrade for the camera I carry in my briefcase and the other was an upgrade for the camera my wife uses. I was surprised by the quality of cameras available at the lower end of the consumer camera range.
For Phyllis, I bought a Nikon L22 (red) to match her Ipod Nano (red).
I was looking for something small and light but with excellent image quality.
To carry around in my briefcase, I selected a Canon SX130 even though the SLR I use for "serious" work (the scare quotes are warranted) is a Nikon and I've used Nikons almost exclusively since the early 1970s.
I would have liked the ability to shoot in camera raw mode, but that's not
a feature available at this price.
Let's consider the specifications for each of these cameras.
| Nikon L22 | Canon SX130 | |
| Resolution | 12MP (4000x3000) | 12MP (4000x3000) |
| Sensor | 1/2.3" CCD | 1/2.3" CCD |
| Stabilization | Digital | Optical |
| Zoom (optical) | 3.6x | 12x |
| ISO | 80-1600 | 80-1600 |
| Memory | SD and SDHC | SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC, MMCplus, HC MMCplus |
| Battery | 2AA | 2AA |
| Video | 640x480 | 1280x720 |
| Size | 4"x2.5"x1.5" (15 in³) | 4.5"x3"x2" (27 in³) |
| Weight | 6.5oz | 9.25oz |
| Price | Under $100 | Under $200 |
- Both of the cameras offer 12Mpxl resolution (4000x3000 pixels) and a 1/2.3" CCD sensor. For more information about the utterly goofy way that camera manufacturers specify sensors, see Digital Photography Review's attempted explanation.
- Both cameras offer image stabilization, an attempt to eliminate blur caused by camera motion. The Nikon does it digitally while the Canon uses an optical system.
- The zoom range is the first of just a few large differences. Both cameras offer to expand the zoom range digitally, but this is never a good idea. Only the optical zoom range really counts. The more expensive camera has a longer range, as expected.
- Both cameras can change their sensitivities from 80 to 1600 ISO and, although the Canon can use more types of memory cards, it's a meaningless distinction.
- Both cameras also use standard AA batteries (alkaline or rechargeable), which means that you'll easily be able to find replacement batteries if your run out of power an an inopportune moment.
- Both cameras can capture video, too, but the Nikon is limited to a lower resolution than the Canon. Given the price difference, this is to be expected.
- And that brings us to size and weight. The Canon is about 50% heavier than the Nikon and considerably larger (27 cubic inches versus 15). It fits acceptably in my briefcase, but might not work as well my my wife's purse.
The overarching point, though, is that both cameras are capable of creating high-quality images.
An image from the Nikon.
This is part of Christmas dinner at Kayee's house. I used the "food" setting to capture this image.
The camera was hand held, without benefit of a tripod or any other device to steady it. I've always been fairly good at this, but the lack of motion blur on this late-afternoon available-light image surprised me.
An image from the Canon.
Here are Chloe (right) and Percy (left). This was also a hand-held shot using the existing light.
And This Means ....?
If you're among the small number of people who haven't yet converted from film to digital photography, now is the time to make the change. Digital photography offers so many advantages (cost, speed, and usability to name the first 3 that come to mind) that it's difficult to find reasons for hesitation.
For less than $200 you can obtain a camera that's more capable than the point-and-shoot film camera you've been carrying around. Film and processing costs don't exist in the digital world. And your choices are astonishingly broad. In just the $100–$150 range, B&H Photo lists nearly 100 choices.
An Entertaining, Educational Waste of Time
The Internet Archive does more than just archive the Internet. You'll find old versions of websites in the Internet Wayback Machine, movies, audio files, old radio programs and commercials, audio books and more. Everything on the site is either in the public domain or has otherwise been cleared for legal downloading. Let's take a look around.
The Wayback Machine used to have some old Technology Corner pages that dated back to 1996 (just 2 years after the Web was invented), but those are gone now. There's an immense selection of old-time radio programs and some historical broadcasts. You can listen to most of them online or download them.
For example ...
Visit the Internet Archive.
Spokeo: Too Much Information?
Our lives are not private. A great deal of public information has always been available from various government offices. But until recently, if I wanted to find out the value of your home, your age, or just about anything but your phone number, I would need to visit a court house and request the information. Now it's as easy as using your computer. And sometimes the information is even right.
Spokeo says it's 
"Not Your Grandma's Phonebook" and it's not. Because much of my personal information has been available online for many years and because I use the Internet a lot, it seemed that investigating myself might not be particularly useful. So I selected an acquaintance who doesn't even own a computer. I gave Spokeo her name and the city where she lives.
Here's the result:
- Complete name, including middle initial.
- Exact street address, city, state, and postal code.
- Google map showing the location of her house.
- Her approximate age, sex, marital status, and approximate value of her home.
- Photo of her home, size of the lot (in square feet), size of the home (in square feet), the number of bedrooms, and the number of bathrooms.
- Additional social, neighborhood, and wealth information would be available if I would be wiling to pay $36 per year.
If you don't know the person's name and city, but you do have an e-mail address, phone number, or user name (wow!), Spokeo can help. User name? "Spokeo's username search finds online profiles with similar usernames. Spokeo's username algorithm searches across social networks, blogs, photo albums, dating sites, music networks, video sites, e-commerce stores and other public web services to help locate the owner's profiles, names, photos and other public information associated with the username. Spokeo's username search is free to use without registration. The top people search names on Spokeo this week are Steven Johnson, James Jones, Karen Martinez, Susan White, James Lopez, and Mark Jones."
Phone Tag
- I gave Spokeo my cell phone number and all it could tell me was that the owner of the number probably lived in Worthington.
- I gave Spokeo my Google Voice phone number and all it could tell me was that the owner of the number probably lived in Worthington.
- I gave Spokeo my home phone number and it showed me an aerial view of my house, said that I'm married, and offered (for $36 per year) to tell me my exact address, my full name and my wife's full name. It also provided some demographic information (income, age, home value, and sex) for the neighborhood.
You Have E-Mail
- When I gave Spokeo my office e-mail address, it scanned lots of social networks and found absolutely nothing.
- I then gave Spokeo my primary home e-mail address. Spokeo reported my exact age and listed several articles that I have written.
- What about my TechByter address? I expected Spokeo to find a lot of information based on this address but it found virtually nothing.
How About User Names?
When I gave Spokeo "techbyter" ...
- It found an account that isn't mine on Multiply.
- It located my Twitter account.
- It offered to search 4 dating sites (for $36 per year) but I already know that I'm not on any of them.
- If offered to search Vimeo if I would upgrade and it reported that I have a video on YouTube.
- It also found this website.
Worried?
This kind of open access may worry you or you may think that it's perfectly normal.
Either way, it probably doesn't matter very much what you think. This kind of open access exists. While the ability to obtain this kind of information isn't new, the ease of collecting it is new.
Short Circuits
Checking Out
I was standing in line at a grocery store the other day when I noticed a sign that said the store would stop accepting checks and traveler's checks on a date early in 2011. They'll take credit and debit cards and they'll still accept cash. But no checks. The check's slow descent into oblivion seems to be speeding up.
We still need checking accounts, of course, although I learned this week that about 10% of US citizens don't have a checking account. Wow! So we need checking accounts, but not checks. I write maybe 10 checks per year. Nearly everything I buy goes on a credit card and, when the statement arrives, I transfer the funds online.
Even the Internal Revenue Service is doing away with checks. If you owe money, you can pay electronically. If you have a refund coming, the IRS can deposit it directly to your bank account. But what about those people who don't have a bank account?
This year the IRS will provide some refunds by adding the refund to the taxpayer's debit card. Using tax refund debit cards will eliminate the cost of printing and mailing paper checks and will make it possible for those who have no bank account to get their money sooner.
The IRS plans to send letters notifying about 600 thousand eligible taxpayers about this year's pilot program. The tax refund debit cards option will also be offered to nearly 2 million US workers who are paid via a payroll debit card.
Printing checks was once a solid, profitable business but that is changing fast.
Shorter than Short Circuits
I ran across a few things this week that are worthy of mention, but aren't long enough even for Short Circuits. So here they are.
- Download a trial copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium and you might win it (or a $10,000 home-office makeover). Adobe makes the offer.
- I've known Rick Altman for a long time and for nearly a decade he's been doing an annual PowerPoint Summit. This year, he's running a spring tour in 8 cities and if you'd like to improve your presentation techniques, it would be a day (and $300) well spent. Details: http://www.betterppt.com/workshops/
- Now available: The White House Tapes. Between 1940 and 1973, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon secretly recorded a total of nearly 5000 hours of meetings and telephone conversations. This site makes recordings and transcriptions available.
- Google takes an old page from the playbook as Larry Page plans to take over as Google CEO from Eric Schmidt. Page and Sergey Brin are Google's co-founders. Schmidt will stay on in another capacity. (And, by the way, the Google Page Rank that you may have heard about wasn't named for Web pages but for Larry Page, the guy who wrote the algorithm that calculates it.)
- Also, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is on medical leave again, having written to all employees, "At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company." Jobs said that he hopes to return but, in the meantime, asks that his privacy and his family's privacy be respected.
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
