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SCMP Reporter

In my younger days, late autumn would mark the beginning of a huge annual research project - choosing my Christmas gift.

 Hours upon hours were spent peering at the colourful toy sections of the large, musty catalogues stored in my mother's kitchen drawer.

 After a fair amount of begging, the toy of my dreams would sometimes appear under the Christmas tree.

 The joy often evaporated as reality set in. Sometimes, these toys were not quite as wonderful as they appeared on the glossy pages and by New Year my treasure was forgotten.

 The lesson was that advertisements often make things seem far more wonderful than they actually are.

 On the list of top 10 questions asked by friends and co-workers, advice on buying digital camera ranks second behind: 'A funny thing happened with my WinSock connection. Can you help?'  I do not do Windows, but I can tell you that if you bring home a new digital still (as opposed to video) camera, you may find that it looked a far better buy on that glossy MTR billboard than after you downloaded your first batch of photos.

 Let me tell you something, boys and girls: there isn't a Santa Claus and there is only one way to get a good digital still camera - fork out your hard-earned cash, and lots of it.

 In a conversation with a marketing executive from a firm that makes digital still cameras, he painted wonderful, rosy images of the future of mankind a la digital camera.

 Immediacy would be the thing, he said. Photos will be shot on impulse, viewed and then thrown away. This was the gist of his vision.

 He told me about how his son, a continent away, had a new girlfriend.

 The couple took a digital camera along as they went for a night on the town. The next day, dad opened up his e-mail and there were pictures of son and girlfriend at the hottest club in London.

 Communication was what imaging was about, he said.

 I hope he never has to pick up his son's girlfriend at the airport with nothing but that digital photo to go on.

 Considering the particular camera model the couple was using, I doubt that our marketing executive has more than the vaguest idea of what she looks like, or what his son looks like these days for that matter.

 Most digital still cameras yield images that make a Polaroid look like a fine art print. If you want to match the quality of a 3R (3 inch by 5 inch) print, there are at least 20 digital cameras on the market that, for most purposes, can meet or beat film.

 The only catch is that they start at $70,000.

 I am not completely condemning digital still cameras.

 Their time will come - and quite soon - and if you use photographs in your business, now may well be time to buy.

 My uncle is a perfect example. He is a real estate appraiser and uses a point-and-shoot camera to take photographs of houses.

 He then scans 3R prints, inserts the images into reports, and prints them out on an inkjet printer.

 For him, the savings in time and money would make up for the cost of the camera in no time at all.

 Indeed, digital-still cameras already have started to revolutionise some small businesses in the United States, as they make photography a virtually zero-cost, zero-time affair.

 Restaurants photograph the daily special and then print it with a copy of the menu.

 Real estate agents photograph a house and then use a notebook computer to download the images and incorporate them in an ad, all before leaving the customer's home.

 For these users, an inkjet print is good enough, and $7,000 to $15,000 is a reasonable investment. But, that is a minimum amount that you must spend to get a camera with the quality and versatility that business users need.

 For those of us whose wallets are slightly more earth bound, expect image quality to be a bit on the 'impressionistic' side.

 Even before looking at image quality and price, there are other things that have to be considered.

 With a conventional camera, you go out and shoot pictures, take the film to a shop and in an hour have prints.

 Digital cameras change things quite a bit.

 Go into the field with one of these and one of two things is likely to happen.

 Number one, you will run out of storage space after less than the equivalent of one roll of film.

 Number two, and more likely, your power supply will run dead.

 Digital stills, particularly the ones with liquid crystal displays, eat batteries.

 Assuming all goes well, you have another headache when you get home. While the photo shop does all the work on a 35mm film, digital stills are strictly do-it-yourself.

 You will spend far more time in front of your computer downloading and editing pictures than you thought.

  If you were scanning, you would only scan the one or two images you really wanted.

 With a digital camera you do not have the luxury of editing before you sit down at the computer.

 Unless you plan to drag everyone over to watch slide shows on your monitor, you are going to need a hard copy of some sort.

 Regardless of how good or bad the digital image is, it will be difficult to match the quality of a 3R print from film when all you have to make prints is an inkjet printer.

 Next you need to store these images. After all, you cannot throw digital images into a shoe box like conventional prints.

 That means two things.

 First, you need storage space. Remember that each image will take up at least as much room as a large word processor document and perhaps as much as several megabytes.

 Secondly, you need some way to find the images once you have stored them. That means some form of archiving software or thumbnail browser.

 Actually, it means just one thing: money.

 The bottom line is this. The digital camera's day will come, but it is not here yet.

 The quality is way too low and the price is way too high.

 Once the unit is attached to a computer, the expense and labour involved to produce and store images is more than most people realise.

 If you really need to digitise the occasional image, you can get a good bed scanner for less than what you would pay for most cheap digital still cameras.

 In the long run, the combination of a conventional camera and a bed scanner will give you a much more versatile and practical package.

 What is more, if you choose your scanner carefully, the quality of your images will embarrass most digital still cameras, including models costing 20 times as much as your cheap flatbed.



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