OT why make a camera with an old fault?

[Brian Gaff]

Many moons ago, when I was young I had two cameras, both were Kodak, one a true box brownie with that crackle imitation leather finish and the other a plastic oval thing, both took roll film.

They both shared an annoying problem that resulted in blurred pictures at times. The problem was that at some indeterminate time during pushing the shutter lever or button, the shutter would click, but it would normally be pretty random. So on TV last night I hear that the Nikkon 1 digital camera has a system that takes pictures before the shutter is completely depressed and although now, a camera is about as much use to me as a rubber sledge hammer, I cannot help but wonder how come that this annoying 'feature' has become a desirable asset?

Brian

[michael adams]

The millions of relatively sharp family snaps taken by complete amateurs using box brownies to be found in old photo albums everywhere would seem to contradict your assertion that there was a fault with these cameras. Had things been otherwise and there was a large failure rate, given the relatively small number of exposures per film coupled with the price of film there would have been an outcry. Losing more than one or two shots per roll would have been regarded as unacceptable as multiple attempts at capturing any particular subject were regarded as an uncalled-for luxury in those days . You got the one chance and that was it

Unlike film cameras possibly the Nikon 1 can be programed to take multiple shots within microseconds during each shutter release. (Which might later be digitally recombined for particular effects) All digital cameras can do this to some extent but maybe its the short interval between shots that's the exceptional feature in this instance.

michael adams

...

[Paul D Smith]

In digital cameras, the idea of the "shutter" can be somewhat vague. I believe the idea is that you point and shoot but it's too late because your finger is too slow! But this camera can take a lot of photos from the moment you start to move the "shutter" button so you might get the picture that happened faster than you could waggle your finger.

Umm, given your poor eyesight, there's a challenge for scientists, an audio-description camera. I wonder if something like iPhone's Siri (which does off-line voice recognition) could do this if the server farm contained picture recognition software instead of voice recognition.

Paul DS.

[Martin Brown]

You should already be holding the camera steady when pressing the shutter release. The shutter lag on most consumer digital cameras combined with human reaction time lag means that unless you are an expert at anticipating the action you will miss it by a country mile.

Many of the high speed nature films are done this way with a circular buffer containing the past few seconds and when the cameraman sees something decent he presses the button and the preceding N seconds plus however long he chooses is saved for posterity.

My Pentax D-5 is plenty fast enough and on hair trigger can capture a burst of frames for action shots, but almost every P&S I have handled was way too slow off the mark to be remotely useful. And they are even slower off the mark if the light is dim and they decide to flash.

[NT]

You've failed to understand the situation again. All digital cameras with screens capture the scene before the shutter is pressed, the shutter only determines what is then transferred to the storage medium.

NT

[Steve Firth]

"Brian Gaff" wrote: [snip]

I think you may be misunderstanding the advert slightly. The point with the Nikon and similar cameras is that they capture the image early and often taking multiple shots as the shutter button is pressed. The camera then selects the "best" of these as the photo. The Nikon 1 also stores some of the alternative shots, up to four of them I think.

[Brian Gaff]

Hmm, well I don't think these cameras were that good. I cannot argue with your logic except that maybe people understood the limitations better and had very stable grips in those days, except me... Brian

[Brian Gaff]

There are already things as you describe but for me the whole point of taking a picture is to be able to see it.

If you recall a while back Nokia were promoting a phone as used by a blind photographer. I never really got that.

Brian

[John Rumm]

I recall seeing a program about developments in this kind of technology, where they were using a phone to translate what it saw into a sound stage. Apparently it sounded rather like hash or noise to start with, but after a short while the brain began to "see" what it was hearing.

[John Rumm]

"All" is overstating it. Remember that many digital SLRs still have a conventional shutter.

[Theo Markettos]

They may capture a low resolution version of the scene, but not the full sensor resolution because that's too much work for the image processor to cope with in real time (and may take too long to load off the sensor).

My phone camera makes the 'click' sound and /then/ takes the picture... with the result that if you move it after the click you're guaranteed a blurry picture. You have to stand still another few seconds while it gets around to taking it. Quality it ain't.

Theo

[ARWadsworth]

It does surprise me that you did not get it. They were suggesting (IMHO) that their camera could be used by a blind person.

[SteveW]

Is this the system, where you press the button part way and the camera starts taking and discarding pictures and when you see the moment you want and press the button the rest of the way, the camera keeps the photo from that moment *AND* the three before and the three after - so it doesn't matter if your timing of shutter lag mean you missed the moment? You just choose the best photo from the 7 later.

SteveW

[Graham.]

It's a useful feature (IIUC). It takes a rapid sequence of pictures before the time you fully press the release, so if someone wasn't watching the birdie at the time you pressed it perhaps one of the earlier ones would be better.

I suppose an analogy would be a PVR like Sky Plus where pressing the record button just instructs it to keep the current programme that it had already started to record from the beginning without being told.