===================================================================== "ROOTSWORKS: DIGITAL CAMERA NUMBERS," by Beau Sharbrough ===================================================================== I've seen a picture of the future. Or at least, the future of a picture. I'm speaking of digital images. When I wrote recently that digital cameras don't have the resolution of scanned images, I was absolutely inundated with e-mail from digital camera owners who made several great points. Some repositories prefer that you use a camera without a flash to make copies of documents (others insist on a copying fee and disallow the use of cameras). Also, some documents and photos are bound, and can't be scanned easily. Another benefit is that the camera goes to the cemetery as easily as the courthouse. It's also possible to photograph images and heirlooms in the homes of family members, which would be difficult if not impossible to scan. Some said that it's very easy to take a picture of the image they view in the microfilm readers. And many users said that they didn't care what the resolution numbers are; they like the pictures. You'd think I used the wrong fork at the FGS banquet; there was such a din. If there's one piece of generic technology that is revolutionizing family history, it's the digital camera. They're easier to use than PCs, and they are already performing a vital role in research. At the same time, they represent a maddening mathematical monster. Today, I'd like to talk about what the numbers mean. Next time, I'll talk about what some of the features are, and how people use them in genealogy. I won't tell you which one to buy, but I can tell you that you will have one soon--if you don't already. Back in June 2000, Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens wrote in "Genealogical Computing" magazine that she had recently paid almost $1,000 for a Nikon CoolPix 990 camera. At that time, a good digital camera was something that only a few wealthy genealogists could afford. Times have changed. That same camera can be found on the net, new, for about half that price today. Many other good cameras cost less. Not enough less for me to afford one, but a man can hope. The falling price of the camera isn't the only reason to buy a digital camera. Many of the uses of digital cameras can be duplicated with ordinary 35mm SLR cameras using film. However, a genealogist will incur the film and the developing and printing costs for every image she takes with a film camera, and one can capture digital images using media that is much less expensive than film. If you take a lot of pictures, you can save some money by "going digital." You won't have to scan the images to get them into your computer, either. It's not a total bed of roses, though-printing photos is still a relatively costly proposition. There are many factors in considering a digital camera, so to simplify, I suggest that for a genealogist, the important factors are: --- Software. What will you do with the pictures after you get them on your computer? --- Deleting. Sometimes you want to delete pictures from your camera to make room for more. --- Connecting. What kind of cable and port do you need to connect the camera to your PC? --- Price. You want to have enough money leftover to drive to the courthouse, cemetery, or reunion after you pay for it. --- Memory. How many pictures can you take at a time? --- Format. Sure, a lot of these cameras make JPG images. But can you get a TIFF file if you want one? --- Resolution. How many megapixels do I need, and what in the world is a megapixel anyway? A lot is better than a little, but you can't get a lot of everything on this list. You have to make some compromises. For that reason, I think that the choice of a particular digital camera is more personal than most tech buys. There's not just chocolate and vanilla, there's pistachio, and guacamole. Pictures created by digital cameras aren't like a typical painting. The pictures are created by a collection of millions of tiny dots, like something painted by a pointillist painter that's about one inch tall. If you can get the dots small enough, and close enough together, it looks like a straight line to the eye, and not a bunch of dots. Let's talk about those dots. BY THE NUMBERS The number you hear most often is the image resolution, in "megapixels." A pixel is a picture element-a single dot. It has a red, blue, and green component, as well as a light/dark measurement. Put it all together and you have one color pixel-a string of 1s and 0s between 36 and 48 numbers long. Fortunately, you don't have to be up on this to take a picture. A "One megapixel" camera produces an image that measures 1,280 dots across, and 960 dots high. On your screen, at 72 pixel-per-inch resolution, it looks as big as a poster. On a printer, at 600 dots- per-inch resolution, it looks like a wallet-sized photo. The following table shows several resolutions: Megapixels Dots across Dots high Total Pixels 1 1280 960 1,228,800 2 1600 1200 1,920,000 3 2048 1536 3,145,728 5 2560 1920 4,915,200 This leads to the obvious question: How many dots is enough? I think it's a bit like asking Rockefeller how much money it takes to make a man happy: "Just a little bit more." But let's be realistic, too. How much real estate does this resolution represent? If you are holding a 4x6 photo about 15" in front of your face, you are seeing approximately 2.5 million pixels. If you scanned it at fax fine resolution (about 200x200), it would only be 960,000 pixels. Make that picture an 8x10, however, and the number balloons to over 8 million pixels. The same size fax would be 3,200,000 pixels. In plain English-if you want to photograph an 8x10 document with the quality that you would expect from a regular film photo, you're going to need at least an 8-megapixel digital camera. I haven't seen any for sale yet, by the way. If you want to use a 3-megapixel unit, you can get an image of an 8x10 that is the same resolution as a fine fax. Fax images still look a lot worse than these images-they are black and white images and these are color-faxes have black spots in the middle of white areas that make them look like they've been Xeroxed too many times. There are examples of a birth certificate, both scanned and photographed, on the RootsWorks site (http://www.rootsworks.com/digicams ) so that you can judge for yourself how much resolution you think you need. Another thing that can confuse people is the zoom number. There are two kinds of zoom numbers-optical and digital. Most genealogists don't want to use digital zoom, but most are willing to pay something extra for a 3x optical zoom. The "3x" means that the image appears three times as close-10 feet instead of 30 feet, for example. In the next RootsWorks column, we'll cover memory types and some genealogical considerations. In the meantime, check out the RootsWorks Forums where you add to this discussion or ask more questions: http://www.rootsworks.com/forums (Copyright 1998-2003, MyFamily.com Inc. and its subsidiaries.) Reprinted with permission from "Ancestry Daily News"