I have enjoyed reading the posts from everyone on suggestions for a
digital camera for Brian's forester friend. I decided to chime in since
no one has mentioned at least one very significant point and some
others may need amplification.
He says: "Being an old photographer my current 35mm is auto-focus and I
now need a 2 diopter view finder."
In other words, he considers that he has bad eyes and *already owns* an
auto-focus 35mm camera. No mention is made of what this camera is but
it certainly seems to me that the first consideration is to buy a body
from the same manufacturer which can accept his current auto-focus
lenses and microscope adapter. This may still not be the best solution
but it seems to me is the required starting point for evaluation.
He also notes: "Often I use the macro mode on my 50mm lens. Although I
have access to a telephoto lens I almost always opt for 50mm."
Perhaps there is a clue here to the identity of the camera but I don't
know of any standard, OEM 50mm which has a macro "mode" on the normal
lens. Also, since he seems to prefer the field of view of a 50mm lens,
he may have to purchase a 28 or 35mm prime to maintain an equivalent
field of view because of the 1.5-1.6 crop factor of the typical DSLR.
Note that I said prime and not zoom since he also comments: "I currently
shoot with 400 asa at 2.8 f and preferably above 1/125th." This is
another point in favor of a DSLR and a fast prime. While several folks
have recommended various digicams it is the exceptional digicam that
offers f/2.8 at an equivalent of 50mm. And there is no digicam that I
know of that is going to produce a nice, noise free image at ISO 400 (or
possibly 800 to account for a slower zoom lens). Moose commented on the
desirability of focus confirmation with manual lenses in order to ease
use of the microscope. Perhaps he already has that in his film body but
the point is that he is already successfully using that body with the
microscope. However, the DSLR viewfinder will likely not be as nice.
Finally, the mitigating point in all of this discussion is that the new
objective is to feed a digital projector. Even the best of these things
are under 2 megapixels and more typically less than 1 megapixel. Piers'
suggestion to continue shooting film and get low resolution scans may be
the best solution of all.
Kodak Picture CD service is relatively inexpensive and offers scans with
resolution of 1536x1024 which is more than adequate for the job.
There are other scanning services offering even higher resolution at
competitive prices. The projection device will likely have a 3:4 aspect
ratio but I assume the projection software will resize the images to fit.
Chuck Norcutt
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