Digital Bash

Pop open the champagne and prime your guests for some serious mugging. This holiday season, digital cameras and camcorders are the life of the party. You won't wait hours--or worse, days--to see how the fun unfolded on film: Digital shooters cut the developing time to zero. Video footage and still images can be viewed on the spot on a television or on the camera's own LCD viewscreen. And unlike Polaroids, which aren't easily duplicated, digital photos can be cloned endlessly, allowing you to make keepsake copies for your pals via a PC or TV video printer. You can even add digital snapshots and video to e-mail or your Web site. For budding auteurs who prefer live footage, Sony takes the concept seriously. Its DCR-TRV7 Handycam Vision ($2700, pictured above) incorporates infrared technology that enables you to beam full-motion video to the TV as it's being shot. The only restrictions: You have to be within 16 feet from the tube and have a clear line of sight. (In other words, the guy wearing the lampshade can't block the beam.) The digital Handycam's IR connection can also be made with a computer, and it features a Fire Wire interface, a fairly new industry standard that ensures PC peripherals will hook up to any new-model computer, hassle free. Panasonic's slick-looking PV-DV710 Palmcorder ($2500) also has a Fire Wire interface, and, like the Sony, it includes an image-stabilization system that compensates for the shaky effect that may result from downing too many cocktails. Because digital camcorders are still in their infancy, these and other models by RCA, JVC and Sharp are priced considerably higher than their analog versions. (You can get a standard 8mm Handycam or a VHS-C Palmcorder for under $1000, while the digital variations cost upwards of $2000.) But digital technology brings surprising new (continued on page 193) Digital Bash(continued from page 133) talents to these machines. Beyond the high-resolution picture, a digital camcorder allows you to shoot a still image for about seven seconds while the audio continues recording in real time. This allows you to add creative freeze-frame techniques to your opus. Or, on a more pragmatic side, you can shoot something that's not moving (say, the blonde asleep on the sofa) and add a few well-chosen words of explanation.

For all the options digital video offers, its most welcome claim should be the infinite duplicability of the signal. Because the physical life span of most videotape is 15 years or less, the problem of replacement copies becomes serious all too soon. If your VHS, 8mm or Hi-8mm tapes are getting up in years, you should make digital copies (through a commercial service or with a full-motion video capture board for your PC) so their scenes won't be lost. These dupes should be a little better than second-generation quality--not bad at all--and using a digital camcorder hereafter will provide first-generation quality for life.

Another frontier is in digital still cameras. There are already more manufacturers of digital cameras than there are of 35mm models, and many digitals exhibit great features. You can preview the still pictures on a television, for example, or on the camera's own liquid-crystal display screen before committing to making prints.

Hitachi's hybrid digital video/still MPEG1A camera is among the most innovative, as it stores both full-motion video and still images on a PCMCIA-style memory card. Minolta's Dimâge V camera does something no other consumer camera can do: It can take pictures with the lens removed from the body. A meter-long cable connects the two parts, making it possible to take shots at bizarre angles--peering around corners, over heads, or up from the floor at who knows what--while you stand where you would with a regular camera.

Lenses or viewfinders that pivot or swivel are more common, and they can be found in digital cameras by Agfa, Sony and Ricoh. As you look into the LCD viewfinder on any of these models, you can point the lens backward to frame up a self-portrait or a candid shot of the person behind you.

Equally radical is the Nikon Cool Pix 300. Deservedly labeled a "multimedia" camera, it takes digital photos, records audio and has a touch screen you can use to write notes. The notes are added to a photograph, along with your verbal comments (or live sound from the scene).

Images taken with both the Minolta Dimâge V and the Nikon Cool Pix 300 have a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels (that's short for picture elements, and the more of them there are, the more detail the photograph can pick up). What's more, the pixel count affects the physical size of the image. A 640 x 480 image just about fills a regular 14-inch computer screen (and makes a good-looking print at sizes up to 4 x 6 inches).

But what if you're using a bigger monitor, such as the 31-inch TV that comes with Gateway 2000's Destination (pictured on our opening spread)? A recent feature of digicams is the ability to create megapixel images, which have I million pixels or more. The Olympus D-600L, for example, produces a 1280 x 1024 image (over 1.4 megapixels). Its built-in 3X zoom lens covers a range equivalent to 36mm to 110mm on a 35mm camera. It also sports an optical, through-the-lens viewfinder like the 35mm SLRs and high-end digital cameras priced upwards of $5000. But Olympus keeps the loan broker away by pricing the D-600L around $1300.

Most digital cameras store images on either chips or PCMCIA-type memory cards, which can be read by any computer with a card reader. If your PC doesn't have one, Olympus offers an adapter that enables your floppy drive to read the cards. If you have neither a card reader nor an adapter, all still digicams can download to the computer via cable (and a couple, including models from Kodak and Sony, use an IR beam). It takes a little longer, but you'll get plenty of photos in the time a Polaroid requires to produce one shot.

Sony's Mavica MVC-FD7 provides yet another option. This digital still shooter is the only one to date that stores images on a standard 3.5-inch disc. Talk about versatile. Just take your shots, then stick the disc in any Mac or PC floppy drive and open your photo files. All of the cameras mentioned come with a graphics program (many allow you to manipulate and color-correct your photos). There is also great software that offers extra photofinishing features. Our favorites include Kai's Photo Soap, Microsoft's Picture It and Arcsoft Photo Studio.

That old Polaroid gave you a print to carry away, and so do the digicams--but you need a color printer. Canon, Epson, Hewlett Packard and Lexmark make some of the best. Epson even provides a direct connection between its new Photo PC600 digital camera and its Stylus photo printer. Ink-jet printers are great for producing large prints (up to 8 x 10 inches in size). The reproductions, however, tend to fade with time. For more-permanent prints, try a thermal printer such as Olympus' P-300. In addition to accepting a direct hookup to any Olympus digital camera, the P-300 can make a single high-resolution picture of about 3.5 x 4.5 inches, 16 miniature versions of the image with a sticky backing (for labels) or as many as 30 images to serve as a contact sheet, all in about 95 seconds per page.

If you would prefer to print from your television, a video printer such as Panasonic's PV-MP10 offers zoom-in or cropping features that allow you to single out the best part of a photo or video frame. Images can be reproduced four, nine or 16 times on each 3.25 x 4.25-inch page. Note: To use these television printers, digital mediums must have a standard broadcast (NTSC) output. To bypass that requirement, consider a PC/TV from Gateway 2000, Compaq or RCA. Gateway's Destination was the first full-scale PC/TV. The model we've pictured comes with a top-speed (300-megahertz) Pentium II computer that has Net-surfing, word-processing, number-crunching and video game-playing capabilities. Anything that you can do with a desktop computer you can do with this machine--but from the sofa, using a wireless mouse and keyboard. And, of course, when you're done computing, you can enjoy a movie in full surround sound on the system's 31-inch television with Harman Kardon audio system. The top-of-the-line Destination even features a DVD drive. All that, plus direct connections for digital camcorders, cameras and printers--ideal for party purposes.