Camera for cockpit photography

I was browsing a CompUSA today and came across what looks like nearly
the perfect camera for taking photos from the cockpit. It's a Kodak
V570. 5 megapixel and a 23mm equivalent wide angle lens.

Here's a review:
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/ko...ew/index.shtml

The camera's tiny, the LCD is quite large and the wide angle lens is
about as wide as practical before going fisheye.

-Tom

5Z wrote:
I was browsing a CompUSA today and came across what looks like nearly
the perfect camera for taking photos from the cockpit. It's a Kodak
V570. 5 megapixel and a 23mm equivalent wide angle lens.

Here's a review:
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/ko...ew/index.shtml

The camera's tiny, the LCD is quite large and the wide angle lens is
about as wide as practical before going fisheye.

It's an intriguing camera, but I'm wondering how well the LCD works in
the cockpit. It doesn't have an optical viewfinder. The review says "As
is usually the case with Kodak LCDs, outdoor visibility is very good";
however, I just bought a Kodak V550 for my wife, and I don't think it's
2.5" LCD is any better than "fair" in bright sunlight ("fair" means I
usually can make out buildings and cars, so I know it's pointed in about
the right direction). The V550 has an optical viewfinder, so it's not a
problem, but no wide angle. It's a very nice camera otherwise, though.

At the moment, I'm thinking of the Canon S80 for the cockpit, which has
a 28 mm wide angle. It has an optical viewfinder and a big LCD,
visibility unknown to me.
--
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Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

www.motorglider.org - Download "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane
Operation"

I can tell you from experience that the viewfinder or even the LCD are
of not much use in the cockpit. I typically hold the camera too close
to my face to use the LCD. I don't look through the viewfinder as
that's also quite impractical. I just "point and shoot", typically
tring to take seveal shots while moving the camera a bit between shots.

THat's the cool thing about digital. No worries about wasted shots -
unless the composition goes away. I've learned how to hold it and be
reasonably sure of the approximate outcome.

My current camera is an Olympus 5060WZ (Wide Zoom: 28mm). The one I
used for that cover shot was a Nikon CoolPix. I had to generally hold
the Nikon alongside my head to het the wide angle shots. THe Olympus
works better due to the 28mm wide angle, byt I also still try to hold
it as far to the rear as possible.

The 23mm on that Kodak, and the MUCH smaller size would IMO provide
even more "usable" shots. If it had been available when I was shopping
a bit over a year ago, I would have seriously considered it. Just slip
it into a shirt pocket and it's always availavble. The Olympus is
relatively small, but not nearly as convenient. I have to be careful
about storage and keeping it secure while flying.

-Tom

5Z wrote:
I can tell you from experience that the viewfinder or even the LCD are
of not much use in the cockpit. I typically hold the camera too close
to my face to use the LCD. I don't look through the viewfinder as
that's also quite impractical. I just "point and shoot", typically
tring to take seveal shots while moving the camera a bit between shots.

I know that works fine for scenic shots with a wide angle. I'm not sure
I could make it work for pictures of another glider when the camera is
zoomed to the maximum telephoto. How do pictures of other gliders work
out? Of course, even a 120 mm (35 mm equivalent) zoom is not so great it
has to be aimed precisely, and 5 megapixels gives some cropping
flexibility.

My wife's V550 has a "burst" mode which takes 5 shots over a couple of
seconds, which might improve the chances of at least one good shot of
another glider, even with motion from flying, turbulence, and poor
aiming. I haven't had chance to try it yet in a glider.


THat's the cool thing about digital. No worries about wasted shots -
unless the composition goes away.

No more changing film in flight!

I've learned how to hold it and be
reasonably sure of the approximate outcome.

My current camera is an Olympus 5060WZ (Wide Zoom: 28mm). The one I
used for that cover shot was a Nikon CoolPix. I had to generally hold
the Nikon alongside my head to het the wide angle shots. THe Olympus
works better due to the 28mm wide angle, byt I also still try to hold
it as far to the rear as possible.

I don't understand the reasons for this.

The 23mm on that Kodak, and the MUCH smaller size would IMO provide
even more "usable" shots. If it had been available when I was shopping
a bit over a year ago, I would have seriously considered it. Just slip
it into a shirt pocket and it's always availavble. The Olympus is
relatively small, but not nearly as convenient. I have to be careful
about storage and keeping it secure while flying.

I agree a small camera (currently, I use a Minolta Dimage X, about the
size of a deck of playing cards) is much more likely to be in the glider
and get used, and safer to pilot and canopy.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

www.motorglider.org - Download "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane
Operation"

5Z wrote:

The one I
used for that cover shot was a Nikon CoolPix. I had to generally hold
the Nikon alongside my head to het the wide angle shots.

What resolution was the Cover Shot? The SSA is telling us that only
Film or Professional Digital cameras are good enough to be published???

Also, Thanks for sharing that photo with the world. it was (is)
Beautiful!

http://www.ssa.org/test/Covers/Cover200307_large.jpg

Paul

Generally the shot must have at least 300dpi for magazine printing.
5Z wrote:

The one I

used for that cover shot was a Nikon CoolPix. I had to generally hold
the Nikon alongside my head to het the wide angle shots.


What resolution was the Cover Shot? The SSA is telling us that only
Film or Professional Digital cameras are good enough to be published???

Also, Thanks for sharing that photo with the world. it was (is)
Beautiful!

http://www.ssa.org/test/Covers/Cover200307_large.jpg


--
Charles Yeates

ZS "Jezow" PW-6U & PW-5
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/yeatesc/world.html

Charles Yeates wrote:

5Z wrote:

The one I

used for that cover shot was a Nikon CoolPix. I had to generally hold
the Nikon alongside my head to het the wide angle shots.


What resolution was the Cover Shot? The SSA is telling us that only
Film or Professional Digital cameras are good enough to be published???

Also, Thanks for sharing that photo with the world. it was (is)
Beautiful!

http://www.ssa.org/test/Covers/Cover200307_large.jpg



Paul

Generally the shot must have at least 300dpi for magazine printing.

Fortunately, Tom was able to persuade them to use his 2 megapixel
picture, which is about 160 dpi. It takes about 7 megapixels for 300
dpi, and it's simply not neccessary if it's a high quality picture that
uses the full frame.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

www.motorglider.org - Download "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane
Operation"

In article ,
Charles Yeates wrote:

Paul

Generally the shot must have at least 300dpi for magazine printing.

Which means that 6 megapixels is good enough for printing at 10" x 6.7",
which is a lot larger than, say, the Gliding Kiwi page.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

In article ,
Eric Greenwell wrote:

Fortunately, Tom was able to persuade them to use his 2 megapixel
picture, which is about 160 dpi. It takes about 7 megapixels for 300
dpi, and it's simply not neccessary if it's a high quality picture that
uses the full frame.

As someone who designs and implements halftoning screening systems
professionally (see http://www.megadot.co.nz/) I agree that using images
with a dpi exceeding the lpi (lines per inch) of the halftoning
screening is not necessary or useful on most natural images (people,
scenery). This is typically something like 175 lpi in glossy magazines.

It is pretty important though to not have the photo dpi be only slightly
different to the halftoning lpi for aliasing reasons -- either make it
*exactly* the same, or else make it different (higher) by a factor of
1.5 or more.

Hard diagonal edges between contrasting colours do benefit from higher
dpi, right up to the basic resolution of the imagesetter used (typically
either 2400 or 3386 dpi). 1200 dpi is about the lower limit for really
crisp looking text. Nothing looks worse than hard-edged jaggies. If in
doubt use PhotoShop to resample your image to 300 dpi or 2x the printing
lpi (if you know it) using bicubic interpolation. That will create
enough anti-aliasing to avoid jaggies on the printed page. And the
magazine editor will never know :-)

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

One thing that I have found very useful for pictures of gliders is a
digital camera that can save images in RAW mode. Gliders are bright
white, and this makes it very diffucult to get a good exposure. The
glider may come out dull grey, or more likely it will be a completely
washed out white ghost, with no variations in shading to suggest its
shape. When saving images in JPEG, the image is not only compressed, it
is also reduced from 10 to 8 bits per pixel in the camera. This
effectively discards 2 stops of exposure latitude that you can use in
photoshop (or equiv.) to correct exposure problems, and give the glider
some shape.

Unfortunately the Kodak camera apparently only saves in JPEG mode. The
Olympus 5050/5060 and many others have a RAW mode that gives you a lot
more control over the image by saving the data exactly as it is
captured from the CCD imager, without irreversible processing in the
camera. This requires a lot more memory per shot, but Moore's law is
making that a non-issue.

5Z wrote:
I was browsing a CompUSA today and came across what looks like nearly
the perfect camera for taking photos from the cockpit. It's a Kodak
V570. 5 megapixel and a 23mm equivalent wide angle lens.

Here's a review:
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/ko...ew/index.shtml

The camera's tiny, the LCD is quite large and the wide angle lens is
about as wide as practical before going fisheye.

-Tom