A Massive Widescreen LCD Sets Kyocera Apart From The Pack
By Wes Pitts
Perhaps the single
best feature of digital photography is the ability to compose
and instantly review your shots on the camera’s LCD. Yet,
most digital cameras still have tiny little screens that are
difficult to “read” and practically unusable in bright
daylight.
The first thing you notice when you pick up the 4-megapixel
Kyocera Finecam L4v or its 3-megapixel sibling, the Finecam
L3v, is the gigantic 2.5-inch widescreen DayFine LCD. It’s
huge, and while at first thought that may not seem like a big
deal, you quickly realize how dramatically the LCD’s size
and readability enhances your experience with the camera.
Composing
with the LCD is much easier than with a typical 1.5-inch LCD—you
can actually see details. Checking for stray objects
at the edges of your composition is possible, even when holding
the camera at arm’s length. The extra size and clarity
of this LCD is something to which one gets immediately accustomed,
making smaller LCDs now seem torturous to use.
The benefits of a large LCD such as this extend beyond composition
and image review. Consider the menus that we flip through to
change camera settings, protect or delete images, and perform
various other tasks. These menus are generally very small and
difficult to read, especially for those with less-than-perfect
eyesight.
Navigating these menus can slow you down when trying to get
the camera set for a given shot, which may cause you to miss
the decisive moment. The Kyocera
2.5-inch widescreen DayFine LCD helps make the menus much easier
to read and navigate. You can clearly read the menus
from several feet away.
In addition to benefits of size, the LCD found on the L4v and
L3v features Kyocera DayFine Dual Backlight technology. The
result is an LCD image so bright that you really can use the
LCD to compose and review shots, even in direct sunlight. The
combination of size, clarity and the extra-bright DayFine Backlight
results in the best LCD display that we’ve seen yet, by
far, on a digital camera.
Apart from the impressive LCD, the
Kyocera Finecam L4v is a straightforward point-and-shoot digital
camera. There’s a 3x zoom lens, providing 35mm-equivalent
coverage of 35-105mm. Three user-selectable metering patterns
are available: spot area, center-weighted and evaluation. While
you’re basically restricted to automatic image capture,
you can control ISO, white balance and exposure compensation.
Specifications Resolution: 4 megapixel Lens: 35mm-105mm (35mm
equivalent) Viewfinder: Optical Exposure Modes: Automatic
with exposure compensation Shutter Speeds: 8-1/2000
sec. Apertures: ƒ/2.8
to ƒ/7.5 Recording Media: SD Dimensions: 4.4x2.5x1.4-inches Weight: 6.0 ounces Estimated Street Price:
$399
Boost Your Viewfinder: OmegaSatter
DigiFinder
If you have trouble seeing your camera’s LCD clearly
outdoors, consider an aftermarket hood such as the DigiFinder
from OmegaSatter. The DigiFinder can be mounted to digital
cameras with 1.5- to 2-inch LCD monitors. Think of it
as a loupe for your digital camera.
This nifty accessory has a built-in magnifying condenser
lens. The focal distance of the lens magnifies the LCD
image without distortion, so you can clearly see your
LCD’s image, even in bright daylight.
Great for folks with less than perfect eyesight, it’s
also a terrific tool for those who like to set focus
manually, as the magnified image allows an easier read
of the details. List Price: $39.
Tamron
SP AF28-75mm ƒ/2.8
XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) Zoom
A New Family Of Lenses
That Will Help You Make The Leap From Film SLRs To Digital SLRs
By Mark Edward Harris
The new Di series
of lenses are Tamron’s Digitally Integrated optics. They’re
designed to meet the performance characteristics of digital
SLR cameras and image sensors. Like the other lenses
in the Di line, the new SP AF28-75mm ƒ/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical
(IF) Zoom is optimized for a digital camera, but it will function
fine on a film-based SLR body. If you’ve been thinking
about adding a digital SLR to your gear and you want to keep
it in the same system as your film camera or cameras (i.e.,
if you shoot Canon and you want to keep a fully integrated Canon
system), lenses like the new Tamron Di models give you an opportunity
to build a digital system that fully complements your film system.
The new Tamron 28-75mm
zoom, when fitted to a digital camera, gives you a “normal”
to slightly telephoto focal range. Obviously, this depends on
your digital SLR’s magnification factor. Other than the
full-frame image sensors that are available on a couple of very
high-end cameras, most D-SLRs have a sensor that results in
a magnification factor around 1.5x, which makes this lens approximately
equivalent to a 42-112mm ƒ/2.8.
Note that the magnification factor doesn’t affect the fast
ƒ/2.8 constant aperture.
Working with a lens that maintains the same aperture when zooming
in and out at ƒ/2.8 is very convenient in low light, and
it’s ideal for keeping depth of field to a minimum. Naturally,
the ƒ/2.8 maximum aperture is great for action shooting
because you can use a higher shutter speed. It also aids in
both manual and autofocusing, and makes it easier to see the
image in the viewfinder when composing.
The new 28-75mm lens is very compact, a feature we always appreciate
when adding new gear to a bag. It weighs 18 ounces and measures
2.9 (diameter) by 3.6 inches (length), with a filter diameter
of 67mm. The lens is currently available with mounts for Canon,
Nikon-D, Minolta and Pentax.
With the Di series, Tamron expects to deliver a complete range
of new lenses that will cater to the specific characteristics
of digital SLRs. The SP AF28-75mm ƒ/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical
(IF) Zoom certainly made an impression on us. We’re excited
to see where the line goes from here. List Price: $543.95.
Highlights • “Di” series
optimized for D-SLR image sensors (also works on a film
body with the same mount)
• Compact and lightweight
• Fast, constant ƒ/2.8 maximum aperture across
the entire zoom range
Track And Organize Image
Files Easily With This Powerful
Software Package
By Rob Sheppard
Once in a while,
you come across something that truly makes working in the computer
easier. Directory Opus 6 is a Windows-specific
program designed to replace Windows Explorer. This Australian-originated
program (it’s easily ordered from the Web) does a great
job of letting you quickly see and organize files on your hard
drive; it’s like Windows Explorer to a new power.
The
program lets you open two (or more) file folders, right next
to each other, so you can readily drag and drop files.
You see exactly what’s happening because the folders are
fully open. These opened folders are called listers, and you
have a great deal of control as to how they’re arranged.
Actually, the whole interface is highly customizable—from
the icons that show up to the colors used to the images that
can appear behind your files.
I like to put my digital camera images into folders based on
particular shoots, then sort them there. Next, I copy selected
items to new, more specific folders, such as “Flower Close-Ups
2003.” Directory Opus makes this easy to do. You can open
a folder and display thumbnails of all the photos in it, and
the size of the thumbnails can be changed. Photos can be quickly
deleted or renamed as needed; it’s just like using a light
table for sorting slides. Then you open a new folder in a second
lister. Photos are dragged and dropped from one to the other.
Metadata (information the camera records about how the photo
was taken, such as shutter speed, ƒ-stop, ISO setting,
etc.) is displayed in a readable manner when you put your cursor
over a thumbnail of an image.
Nearly everything about the interface can be customized to meet
your needs, and you even can save multiple arrangements for
use as needed. Web price: $139.95.
A Flatbed Scanner With
A Built-In Print Feeder To Automate The Otherwise Laborious
Task Of Scanning Your Prints
By Erin Darling
After installing
the software and connecting the HP ScanJet 5500c, I popped a
stack of 20 4x6-inch photos into the scanner’s built-in
Automatic Photo Feeder, pressed a single button, and kicked
back with my laptop to check e-mail. Less than 10 minutes later,
I was absolutely convinced I could never again live without
this scanner. My photos were scanned
and neatly arranged in a folder automatically created by the
HP Photo and Imaging software, ready for my perusal.
I’ll never scan photos one by one again!
The convenience
of batch-scanning a slew of photos is addictive—it’s
a decadent, luxurious ability that makes the idea of individually
scanning the many hundreds of photos piled up around my office
utterly abhorrent. The ScanJet 5500c produces high-quality images
easily—what more can one ask? Well,
this little machine will not only scan, but it will scan directly
to the Web, to a printer or to e-mail.
If you happen to be a control freak like me, the scanner’s
driver software is initially somewhat frustrating—getting
things “de-automated” and set up exactly the way I
want them took a fair amount of adjusting. In the end, I was
able to personalize the setup the way I wanted, but it did take
some time. However, if you just want to hit a button and have
the scanner do its thing without much fussing, the interface
is user-friendly and highly capable. While the scanner’s
exposure and color correction aren’t on par with programs
such as Photoshop, they will accomplish basic adjustments that
pass muster for non-professional Websites.
There’s also a Transparent Material
Adapter, which allowed me to scan from slides and 35mm negatives.
While I found the transparency adapter to work alright, the
results aren’t going to make me list my dedicated film
scanner on eBay anytime soon. The ScanJet 5500c produces transparency
scans that are merely adequate, but can be serviceable, depending
on the level of quality you need. It shouldn’t come as
any surprise that the ScanJet 5500c can’t quite reach the
quality of a proper film scanner, as I’ve yet to find a
flatbed that does. For prints, though,
the quality of the resulting scans is top-notch. Scanning
documents gives users several options, including importing OCR-readable
text directly into text-editing programs, scanning text as an
image, or scanning text along with graphics. All of these functions
work flawlessly—no need to wait with dread as the scanner
hums along, wondering what sort of hieroglyphics will appear
on your screen when it’s finished.
The ScanJet 5500c is fast, efficient,
reasonably priced and chock-full of customizable features—this
is a great scanner for photographers who might have a few stacks
(or a few hundred stacks) of prints laying around that you’ve
always “meant to get around to,” but have put off
from sheer dread of the hours it would take to get them all
digitized. Well, fear not, my friends—you’re officially
delivered from the tedium. List Price: $299.
Highlights • Multiple-scan capability
allows you to go through a stack of prints effortlessly
• Transparency adapter for scanning slides and negatives
• Easy to use with a variety of automated one-click
functions
