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| 2000/4/13-16 [Consumer/Camera] UID:18000 Activity:high |
4/12 What's people's comments and opinions about APS camera? Is this
format going to stay and how does it compare with 35mm? I am
considering buying an APS SLR camera vs. an SLR with auto. focus.
(like a N70 vs. a Pronea 6i) Any informative URL is also
apreciated.
\_ philg has an opinionated review of APS here:
http://photo.net/photo/aps.html
\_ I don't have either of the ones you mentioned, but I do have
a Fuji APS camera with auto focus and zoom. I got it at Target
for less than $100. My father (a photography enthuisast, owns
several Roli-flex cameras) tells me that it is not as good as
35mm, but I can't tell the difference. Also its a lot simpler
to use. I just pop in the cartridge and turn it on. And if
you get one of the newer models, you can switch between
partially exposed rolls of film.
\_ If loading 35mm film is still 'hard' after the first few
rolls, you're probably someone who still uses Velcro shoes,
'cause you never could get the hang of that tying-thing . . .
\_ No I wear sandals. No laces, no velcros, no socks.
I prefer to keep things simple and straight-forward.
Loading was a big reason I disliked cameras, but with
the APS, I actually have finished a roll of film. It
took two years, but I still finished all 24 shots.
\_ I use APS for my UW photography. For recreational use, it is
probably fine, though many find the Panoramic setting to result
in grainy images. It definitely has limitations, and it's
slightly more expensive to shoot/develope, is much harder to
get decent 1hr service for, and outside of the USA is virtually
unseen (a big problem for me). -jor, http://www.jor.com/dive/aquashot
\_ "outside of the USA" is a big place: if you're talking about
the third world, sure, but here in Germany the section for
APS cameras and film is almost as large as the 35mm section
in most stores. In other places in Europe where I've had the
occasion to notice (Belgium, Spain, the UK), the situation
seemed similar. -- kahogan
\_ Even when I was in China, I was able to buy APS film. I
didn't try to get it developed there, though.
\_ My mom took my APS camera to India and she had no
problems getting it developed. They took 3 days though,
and she was in Banglore. Its pretty much the same in
most large cities (Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi) in
India. ----ranga
\_ You are of course correct. There is no APS presence in the
Caribbean where I go to dive. No results till I return. -jor
\_ isn't the problem with APS is it is both a pain in the butt and
expensive to get the film developed?
\_ APS is much simpler to use than 35mm. The development takes
about a day and the cost is 1 to 2 dollars more. IMHO, the
extra few bucks and time is worth it for the simplicity.
AFAIK, APS isn't targeted at the professional market, its
targeted at the oridinary fool market, where simplicity
is a big selling point.
\_ uh, simplicity is a function of the camera, not the film
type. how is a point-and-shoot APS camera simpler than
a point-and-shoot 35mm camera? APS will die for the same
reason the Disc did; the quality sucks and it's not really
any easier to use. -tom
\_ Film loading. Loading a 35mm film camera is
much harder than an APS camera. You need to
position the film just right, etc. Also, say
you have two different speed film, one for
outdoors and one for indoors. Try switching
between them while both are partially exposed.
Not possible in most 35mm cameras. In APS
no problem.
no problem. Also APS means no raw negatives
to deal with. You just save the film canister
and when you want to develop a partiuclar
you just look at the handy index print and
give the developer the number of the picture.
I disagree about the quality. It is almost as
good as 35mm that most people can't tell the
difference. I would pick simplicity over
marginally better quality most of the time.
\_ wow, you really are incompetent aren't you?
\_ so you have a Disc? -tom
(the quality of APS is more than marginally worse).
\_ If you buy an APS camera, get one of those cute super-petite
models, 'cause chicks dig 'em.
\_ I don't know if you are joking, but I have had random
chicks approach me when I was taking pictures with
my ELPH camera.
\_ It's much easier to find 35mm SLR with inerchangable lens than
APS SLR, but since you're getting Nikon, this is not a problem for
adapter. Scans from APS film are natually more grainly than those
you. (BTW, I have N70 and FM2.) I think APS film scanner costs
more than 35mm ones too. Mine (Minolta Dimage Scan Dual) costed
~$350 and scans 35mm, but it won't scan APS unless I buy a ~$100
adapter. Scans from APS film are natually more grainy than those
from the same type of 35mm film simply because the film area is
smaller. -- yuen
\- IMHO: if youa re serious about photography, get the SLR.
If you are not serious, get a digital in your price range.
Unless you are really into those panoramic shots I dont see
any reason to get an APS these days. --psb |
| 4/4 |
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| photo.net/photo/aps.html -> www.photo.net/photo/aps.html Every ten years or so, Kodak decides that 35mm film is too good for consumers. They do a survey and find that "97% of pictures never get enlarged beyond 4x6". They conclude from this that the enormous 24x36mm swatch of film they've been selling you is excessive. You'll barely notice the reduction in quality in a 4x6 print. And guess what, they'll charge you the same amount of money for film & processing despite the fact that they only have to use half the materials. I've heard that the main reason for the bad quality was the lack of a pressure plate to keep the film flat. They stuck tiny little pieces of film on the ends of plastic arms so that it was easy to rotate up to the next frame. My personal theory on what happened is that Kodak hired MBAs to do the surveys instead of photographers. Photographers know that one is lucky to take 10 great photographs a year. This is less true of casual photographers but even they probably have only a handful of images that they want to put up on the wall and look at every day. Had it been taken with a smaller format film, the grain would be the size of baseballs. It was a snapshot in a zoo, now part of the 18 infamous Heather Has Two Mommies. I never thought it would be a good image, but it turned out to be. Half the size of 35mm An APS negative is 56% the area of a 35mm negative. That's all that a serious photographer really needs to know about the format. There is an optically clear but magnetically sensitive coating on the back of the APS film. The camera has a magnetic head like what you'd find in a floppy disk drive. There is the obvious stuff like date and time and exposure settings. Communication with photo labs is expensive and they charge you for it. That's why a 4x6 machine print costs about 20 cents and getting one done at a pro lab, that sometimes won't even be as good, will cost you $20. APS lets you communicate with the photo lab by pushing buttons on the camera at exposure time. You can say "I want this to be panoramic", in which case the lab will print only from the center strip of the negative. You can say "I want this to be fake-zoomed", in which case the lab will print from only the center section of the negative, sort of as though you'd used a longer lens (except that image quality will be much lower because you're throwing away most of what was already a very small negative). The cartridge is used to store processed negatives so they can't get dusty. You can use half a roll and then switch to a higher speed emulsion for night-time pictures, then switch back without going through leader-retrieval gymnastics like you'd have to with 35mm. But they are making better film now Aside from $millions in PR, the reason APS won't flop like 110 and the disc is that today we have films like 19 Fuji Super G Plus. It really is possible to get an acceptable 8x10 print from a tiny negative. Kodak has even promised and delivered some improved emulsions in the APS format. However, any technology that makes APS film better is just as applicable to 35mm film. Fuji seems to be keeping its 35mm film right up to date with its new APS emulsions. The Bottom Line If you are reasonably serious about photography and are willing to be reasonably careful about choosing a lab and storing your negatives, 35mm is a better format. At least your images will have the potential to be great. It turns out that we're both correct, and you have to decide what you want. The main idea behind an APS camera is that it is idiot-proof and it takes fantastic vacation pictures in sizes like 4x6", 4x7", or even 4x12". Film Canister There is no leader on the film canister, it is an elliptical prism. You never see your negatives, they also reside inside the canister. Each canister is uniquely identified by a six-digit serial number marked on the outside for humans and magnetically written on the film for the processor. The cartridge also displays one of four icons: unexposed (circle), half-exposed (half-circle), exposed ("x"), and developed (box). The magnetic surface on the film holds your bits, so be careful to keep it away from things that will erase your credit cards or floppy disks! Those nasty plates on the checkout counter have fields of around 300 Oe, enough to erase your credit cards and do funny things to audio tapes, but they shouldn't affect APS film. Printed on the back of each photo is the ID number of the roll, the picture number, the time of exposure (optional), as well as camera-specific printing. For example, my Canon ELPH can print "Happy birthday" (or four other phrases) in one of five languages. This printing is done by the developing machines, which read the magnetic bits off the back of each frame. I'm thinking of setting the camera to write "I love you" on the back of my prints in Japanese. The camera can also write hints to the printing machines (like "I didn't get as much light as I wanted"), so most of your vacation pictures are keepers. Camera I bought a 21 Canon ELPH for $295 from 22 B&H Photo. Girls find it very cute and tiny and always ask where they can get one. The viewfinder automatically masks itselfs to match the mode (classical, HDTV, or panoramic), which is nice, but the viewfinder corners are blurry. The only other thing that I dislike about the camera is that I sometimes press the "on/off" button by accident. This makes the lens extend and stretches the leather case, but hasn't caused the camera to fail. For example, I'm looking at a picture of a dinosaur taken at the Minnesota Zoo at 5:40pm on 96/6/22, and I believe that Minnesota is -5 from GMT, so the local time was 12:40pm. You load/unload the ELPH (like all APS cameras) through a hatch, and I am sure that anybody can do it. My camera cannot do mid-roll swapping, but it will not load exposed film, etc. Summary If you want to fill up photo books and send 4"x or 5"x prints to relatives, APS is for you. If you tend to be caught without a camera, APS is for you. Compare my Canon ELPH to Philip's 23 Yashica T4 Super and you will be amazed by the size difference---but mine has a zoom as well! If you want enormous enlargements to hang on your wall, APS is not for you. It has the following problems: It only has a bilinear CCD, meaning one 1024 element array is for green, and one is for blue/red. This has more noise and less color resolution than a trilinear array. In fact, scanning from a small print on a flatbed is better than this scanner. If it had more pixels one could scan at a high res and downsample to reduce the noise, but this scanner only captures less than 700,000 pixels. The images are suitable for TV display, and web pages (although the noise will make jpeg compression less efficient and I would not want to use it for *my* web page). I can only recommend this scanner because it is cheap and there are no real alternatives for APS yet except scanning prints. For casual photography, even 8x10s are quite nice (assuming you don't use the ISO 400 film). I have three primary photography tools, ranging from APS to 6x6. Any good photographer does the same (albeit they may stick to one format--for awhile I used an Olympus Stylus instead of the Ixy). First, the format still sells a fair amount of film, which is amazing considering how long it has been since a high quality 110 has been made is amazing. I shoot 110 to 4x5 and find that for certain things the better 110 cameras deliver very good results as long as you keep the enlargements down to 8x10. The lack of a pressure plate is only really an issue at f-stops larger than f/2. I have high quality 110 cameras from Kodak with 4-element Ektar lenses, as well as many high quality Minolta models. All offer more than adequate results for the "typical" shooter. I was very sad when Fuji stopped selling Super G 100 in 110 - now it is Super G 200 Plus. I really wish they had made Reala and NHG 400 in 110, as I feel they are the two best color neg films available in those speeds. What killed 110 was the fact that it was a mature format used for non-professional applications. As for APS, I don't have any real problem with the frame size, as I also have some lovely 5x7 enlargements from 1/2 frame OL... |
| www.jor.com/dive/aquashot -> www.jor.com/dive/aquashot/ Aquashot Photography in California Rework Notice - Redo of this section coming along quickly now. This page covers the experiences I've had with the Aquashot cameras, a very inexpensive way to do UW photography. With an total entry cost of around $300 for the complete kit, it makes a good stepping stone for the beginner, and an acceptable solution for the more casual photographer. It can't do everything the Nikonos can, but it's about 1/4th the price. Travelogues - these are trips where I took several rolls of film. The best images are shown, along with comments on where I went wrong/right with the camera. The older pages are fully html, but for the more recent ones, you may need to load the commentary separately. |