Camera Oasis

When I edited Kodak's now-defunct online magazine, I wanted to do an occasional story on great photographers of the Life magazine era who worked mainly in black and white. The two I focused on were Loomis Dean and Fred McDarrah. Mr. Dean captured the famous photo of the Andrea Doria cruise ship as it sank. Much of his career was spent with Life and, before that, the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus, as a PR photographer. He had his own small elephant for publicity photo purposes. I interviewed him in the early 2000s, at his home in Venice, Florida, using then state-of-the-art digital audio tape. The tape survives. But we couldn't come to terms over use of his images, for which he owned the rights. So the story never appeared online. Loomis died in 2005. You can see some of Loomis' photos on the www.life.com website, or go here. Fred W. McDarrah captured the Beat poet movement and Greenwich Village life in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some of the earliest g...

KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera I really wanted to try this one out. Sort of an iPod Touch for photography. Great concept. Then the specs were published. The lens -- the most important part of the camera, period -- is a 5X zoom. Starts at 35mm, racks out the 175mm. Not bad. Then I glanced at the lens specs. At the widest angle, 35mm, the lens starts at f4.8. (Translation: S-L-O-W.) On some cameras, f4.8 is the spec for the lens at its farthest zoom, not its nearest. The last camera I had with a lens that slow was a 35mm point-and-shoot Nikon. Compare this with my 3-year-old Canon G6, which has a similar lens length. The lens starts at f2.0. It lets in three times as much light as the Slice's lens. PR people tend to tut-tut people like me for dwelling needlessly on "speeds and feeds." But, in reality, a camera with an f2.0 or f2.8 lens needs less light than a lens that's hamstrung at f4.8 at the start. That means you either need to be closer to your subject, use flash ...

Why aren't there any digital cameras with shutter buttons on the top left of the camera? SLRs, pocket cameras, ... pretty much every camera you can buy today requires actuating the shutter with your right index finger. Less than half the world is left-handed. But among that group are artists, photographers, actors, and directors. All of whom have some influence on the general public. Couldn't a digital camera maker connect with an under-served market segment simply by introducing a camera with power- and shutter buttons on the left side of the camera? Just asking.

Best Cameras Deals, Coupon Codes Discount, Rebates at Dell Best Buy, Newegg and More! I cannot stress enough that H/P walked away from digital cameras over a year ago. They bailed. Couldn't compete. Their products were less than reliable, and probably have no customer support. I can't tell you which cameras to buy. But I can provide great rationale for which you should avoid.

Even those of us in the PR world get swanked. Remember this geeky looking Fujifilm instant-film camera I shared a few weeks back? I'm told it's from 1998. Still homely, however.

Seriously: how long did you think camera companies could churn out higher- and higher-megapixel cameras before consumers became fatigued with it all? They're figuring out that a new 12- or 14-megapixel camera isn't a necessity when jobs, hours and salaries are getting cut. That 6- or 8-MP camera most of us bought a year or two ago will do fine, at least until the recession moderates. As a result: Ritz Camera filed for Ch. 11 bankruptcy protection this week. Hundreds of stores, stocked with Fuji, Nikon, and Olympus cameras that no one's buying. Most Ritz stores were mall-based, within easy clobbering range of the Target or Best Buy across the parking lot. If you bought a camera from Ritz, I hope you didn't pay extra for a Ritz warranty. Ritz's court filings say they owe Nikon USA more than $20 million. That kind of liability isn't going to make things easy at Nikon. Take good care of that D90 or D300; customer service may get whacked. Olympus downsized a portion ...

Blundered into a Wal-mart this week, and found a clerk and a customer in the photo department, sorting through cameras. The customer wanted a camera that would stitch together multiple photos to make panoramas. (Many Canon and Kodak cameras do this, or come with stitching software that makes it a breeze to do it on your computer.) The customer and the clerk were baffled. This feature wasn't in the little camera cheat book that Wal-mart gives its photo departments. Because I've actually used this feature on a Kodak Z1285 camera, I picked up a box. After a good 5 minutes of squinting, I found the "call-out" on the box -- in a type-size that an ant would have trouble reading. I helped sell Mr. Customer a camera that met his needs, and that's a good thing. But here's a word of advice to all camera manufacturers: USE BIGGER PRINT on your packaging! The people buying your products do not walk into Wal-mart with magnifying glasses or photographer's loupes. Want...