[philmont] Backpacking Camera ?

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:36:56 -0700, "Donald S. Roberts" <donald@hummellawfirm.com> jammed all night, and by sunrise was heard saying:

> Before you go far down the solar charger path, perhaps you should answer the
> question as to whether you have found rechargable batteries that will drive
> a camera for any length of time.

I brought a solar charger along last summer, and while it did what it
was supposed to do, you really do find plenty of days in which you're in
enough shade to make it ineffective. I was shooting HDV video, so I
needed more than the usual juice, but I would strongly recommend
bringing the batteries you can, whether or not you have a charger.

> It has been my experience, and I've tried
> all kinds of rechargable batteries with all kinds of different number of mAh
> ratings, particularly very high ratings, that the 1.2 v rechargeables just
> don't drive a digital camera well at all. They seem to drain very quickly
> and have no staying power, even if they will drive the camera at all.

> Cameras want 1.5v batteries, regardless of mAh ratings.

Not true... virtually all modern digital cameras are designed to work
with 1.2V NiCAD or NiMh batteries just fine. But do keep in mind, the
capacity of even the top, most expensive NiMh cells out there just
matches that of your typical, run-of-the-mill Alkalines. The highest
capacity NiMh cells in "AA" form run 2600-3000mAh, versus the
2800-3000mAh rating on a typical premium Alkaline, or 2000-3000mAh for
AA 1.5V Lithium batteries.

So basically, storage-wise, the best NiMh are very comparable to any
others in power storage. There are issues in all cases, and some of it's
entirely based on your specific camera. Also, keep in mind that
commerical NiMh AAs have been made with as low as 500mAh capacity (some
of the Chinese OEM batteries my company sold with our R/C controller
were 800mAh). It's also important to know that some NiMh chargers are
not designed to deal with higher capacity cells, and will time out
before the cells are charged. High quality chargers (as used in the R/C
market) use peak charging (you charge an NiMh cell until the voltage
flattens out, or a NiCAD until it flattens and then dips a bit), but
cheap chargers just charge based on time... fine for a lower capacity
cell, no good for a modern one.

It was long accepted that rechargeables lasted long than alkalines in
high current use... photographers have been using rechargeables for
their flash units, I got probably double the capacity out of a set of
NiMh's vs. AA's in the last digital still camera I owned that used AA's
(that was four cameras ago). The reason is simple: rechargeables have
very low internal resistance. This is why they're used in R/C cars and
Hybrids... they can pump out insane current levels with little problem.

 Alkalines have relatively high internal resistance. If you're just
trickling current, it doesn't matter, but if you have current surges,
you're losing a good deal of the Alkaline's power in heat.

Now, when you buy a "premium" Alkaline, you're getting some magic
formula that lowers this resistance a bit... that's the whole basis for
the "E2", "Duracell", etc. wars. So these do perform a bit better in
high current applications. The other thing is that digital still cameras
today consume much less power, and they're less "surgey" than they once
were, so that's levelled off a bit too.

The other problem with NiMh is that they self-discharge. You can lose as
much as 10% of the charge immediately after charging, and another
0.5%-1.0% per day, a bit more if it's hot. There are some new
low-self-discharge NiMhs (as a gimmik, many of these are sold charged),
but they generally have a lower capacity.

> Rechargeables are fine for portable radios and flashlights, but I have yet
> to find one that will drive a digital camera for any appreciable time.

Depends somewhat on your camera. But you would be hard pressed to find a
modern NiMh that didn't outlast any old Alkaline in a day of serious
photography. The AA Lithiums do better, since they're of a similar
capacity, but also very low impedance vs. the "AA"... in fact, that IS
the advantage. Oh, and they're lighter in weight, and hold their charge
for decades.

> Dispite tons of statements to the contrary on the web, I also find that
> after only a few charges, the staying power of any type of rechargeable is
> appreciably less, to the point that after only a few recharges they won't
> drive a digital camera at all even when freshly charged.

A modern NiMh, properly charged, will give you about 500-1000 charges
before the cell hits 80% of the original peak capacity as a maximum.
You'll reduce this life if you use instant chargers (the R/C folks have
"4C" chargers, which can fully charge a NiMh in 15 minutes), and you'll
extended it virtually forever if you keep in the charge between around
30% and 80% of full capacity (not that there's any easy way to do that,
but that is what Hybrid cars do).

> Look to higher optical zoom over digital zoom as the ability to hold the
> camera steady for digital zoom is more problematic.

Actually, they're identical... it's just simple physics. The problem
with digital zoom is that it's exactly the same as cropping a photo in
photoshop -- just done in-camera. So, with fewer pixels actually doing
any work, you'll see the effect of shaking more, perhaps.

Most of the better digital cameras have either removed digital zoom
altogether, or made it somewhat "well behaved". For example, my
Panasonic TZ-5 pocket camera has a 10:1 optical lens, but also allows a
4:1 digital zoom on top of that. However, if you engage the digital zoom,
the image size is scaled to the zoom level.. so at full zoom, you're
down to like 3Mpixel, from the 9Mpixel normal mode. Older models scale
up the cropped portion of the sensor to full size, which is just wasting
memory.

> SD media seem to be the most common, so selecting a camera that uses that
> media may be adviseable as well.

SD is THE standard.. with 8GB cards going for $25 or so these days, and
both digital SLRs and digital video cameras largely embracing the format,
it's definitely the way to go. Well, that's too strong.. the memory
cards are so cheap and large, you may only ever need one for your camera
if you're buying today. I have an 8GB card in my Panasonic, twice the
size of the Compact Flash card I (which I paid dearly for, a few years
back) in my Canon DSLR. It's at the very least a tie breaker... the
other memory cards on the market are proprietary, the SD card is the
only real standard that's healthy. You do want to be sure to buy an SDHC
compatible camera, which ensures firmware that can deal with the larger
capacity cards.

> I standardized on Xd when I went digital
> and now if I want to use my legacy of media, I'm limited to Fuji and
> Olympus.

Yup... I was an old Olympus OM-1/OM-4 guy in the days of mechanical SLRs,
but Olympus just went in too many wrong directions for my tastes since
those days. They were a big backer of the SmartMedia card, which was a
bad idea on many levels... xD is basically the child of that format,
and will always be proprietary. Even Olympus is supporting other formats
in their more expensive cameras. Sony of course uses Memory Stick, the
other proprietary format.... the currently flavor is Memory Stick Pro,
which is virtually just a proprietary version of SD (at least xD had the
sense to get smaller, though the Mini-SDs used in my pocket Canon
Camcorder are smaller still).

Anyway, don't worry too much about the memory format, unless you have a
bunch of other devices that use it (I have a PDA that takes SD/SDHC
cards, and my PC supports SD, xD, and Memory Stick as built-in... some
things to consider in general, not important for Philmont).

> Stabilization is nice, particularly for zoom shots, but it is quite
> expensive.

Not any longer... Panasonic has very good optical stabilization in most
if not all of their digital cameras. Now, mine wasn't cheap ($300), but
largely due to the 10:1 zoom (in a pocket camera, too!) and high
definition video recording in AVC. I bought a more modest one for my
wife a year+ ago, specifically going to Panasonic for the image
stabilization, and spend about $120.

I would claim you want it in general, but it's not specifically that
important for Philmont. As long as you're using a fast enough shutter
speed and really stopping to take a shot, you'll get a clear zoom shot
without it on a bright sunny day.

Canon and Sony are also leaders in optical stabilization... pretty much
all of the camera companies in the high-end camcorder business (Sony,
Canon, Panasonic) had this technology down pat some years ago, and it's
now propagating to cheaper cameras.

> Shutter speed is the most important. Digital cameras have a lag based on
> the time it takes to write to media. This is affected both by the camera
> and the media. Xd cards come in high speed that is appreciably faster. I
> don't know about sd, but that may be the case.

Actually, that particular lag is largely gone in modern cameras. There's
still a lag, but it's not based on the speed of your memory, at least
not until you start to shoot a few shots in a row. Most if not all
digitals, even P&S cameras, have a DRAM buffer that handles at least a
shot or two... this is why many cameras these days can shoot a fast
sequence of shots, 2-5fps, for at least a few shots (until the buffer
fills up).

There are two lags that digitals still have, however. One is processing..
how fast is the internal processor at doing the work it has to do? This
influences start up (the time between "on" and the camera actually being
functional), and the delay after the shot, before the camera can take
another photo (recycle time). There's also a lag between your pressing
the "shutter" button and the photo actually being taken. This is due to
the fact that, other than for DSLRs, the sensor you're going to take the
photo with is also the sensor used as your viewfinder. So when you press
"shoot", the camera has to close its shutter, clear the sensor, expose
the photo, then process that exposure. There's a minimal time, based on
the nature of the sensor, to do all this, and thus, you get a lag. But
these days, it's probably fairly small... in older models, you could
expect to wait the better part of a second before the exposure took, and
maybe 5-10s afterward for processing and storage.

> Bottom line: look for a small camera that fits the pocket well, has fairly
> high optical zoom (say 5x or better), takes at least 5megapixel photos and
> uses the SD memory card.

A few other things that are good for Philmont:

        - Fairly rugged camera (you don't want it dying if you drop it...
        we had a guy on my crew last summer who did just that, about 1/2
        way though the trek).

        - Optical viewfinder is a plus.. some cameras, in particular
        Canons, offer an optical viewfinder, like a film camera. If you
        use this, and shut off the LCD, the camera will use much less
        power in normal use, and often give you less shutter lag.

        - Look for a camera with a wide-angle lens, or one that'll take
        an adaptor. The camcorder I took along was only very slightly
        wide angle, so I got a 0.65x accessory lens for it. Some shots
        demand a zoom in, others want you to pull back as much as
        possible and take it all in. Some of the longer-zoom cameras
        offer at least a decent wide-angle at the lower extreme of the
        zoom.

        - Buy from a reputable company. There are quite a few on-line
        vendors advertising insane prices. Most of these folks are
        crooks. Either buy in person, or on-line from a trusted company.
        
        - Particularly for Philmont, you should get your hands on the
        camera before you buy. Try it, get comfortable. Then, after you
        buy it, take in around with you and use it. Learn it soup to
        nuts, take it on shakedowns if you have one left, etc. You don't
        want to be on top of Mt. Philips and think "dang, where's that
        manual". Learn the exposure modes, how to use macro, etc.

> THe camera drives the choice of battery, some take AAA. I would give
> consideration to having the same size batteries in all electronics that go
> on the trail. If your hubby carries a GPS a headlamp and a hand held flash
> light, look at what size batteries THEY use and try to get a camera that
> used the same.

There's some argument for AAs, since you can buy these anywhere, and as
you say, you can borrow from your headlamp or whatever. But as well, the
dedicated batteries today are all Lithium Ion, which gives you much
better power density than Alkalines or NiMh. The only downside is that
you need several for a trip (I had six camcorder batteries with me last
summer... I ran out of juice the day I got back from Philmont, about 15
minutes into my son's birthday party... he turned 16 at Philmont). I
took two Canon cells and four cheap Chinese aftermarket cells. They
might not last for years like the Canons, but I was really concerned
about going for those 12 days, and couldn't really justify all those
batteries for what was my "B camera" in regular life.

-- 
Dave Haynie                                Philmont 2007 Crew 712K1 Trek 8
Troop Advancement Coordinator <advancement@daretowntroop60.com>
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