October Meeting Report
Marshall Ahern
We got to see digital photography at the Club Meeting on October 8, and very impressive it was. Greg Allen from Sony Australia brought along seven Sony digital cameras which use Sony's proprietary Memory Stick storage.
It is interesting to contemplate which is the natural maker of digital photography hardware-is it an electronics company or a camera manufacturer? Sony have the electronic credentials, par excellence, and they have made a huge stride into the topmost strata of the the photographic world by fitting Zeiss lenses to their cameras. This will surely quell the concerns of the most demanding camera buff. By the end of the evening, there was no doubt in the minds of of the ClubMac members that Sony were very serious about the photography business. In 1999 we saw Sony digital cameras which used 3.5" floppy discs as the storage medium and as the technology for transferring the image to the computer. The Memory Stick is a huge step forward-up to a gigabyte of capacity. Sony are promoting Memory Stick as a multi-media "data storage medium", calling it "digital film". Readers will be built into TV sets, disc-players and recorders as well as computers and cameras. The mid-range Memory Stick, 256Mb , $199 will store up to 20 hi-res A4 size photos or up to 200 photos at computer screen resolution.
Greg passed the cameras around the room and had everyone photographing everything. He showed us the common 5-way navigation control and the two-stage shutter button-press gently for focusing, press down to shoot. The top-of-the-line camera has a range-finding laser and all models have anti red-eye flash control. Trust Sony to provide an optional electronic "click" so the photographee knows when the shot has been taken. The rechargeable Lithium-iron batteries are good for about 160 photos.
Members yet again expressed their concern about the durability and longevity of the storage or archiving medium. With well over one hundred years of satisfactory experience of preserving photographic film, people ask how long will CD-Roms and DVD last. Until experience provides long term reliable data the recommendation is to refresh the files from time to time by transcribing them. Since they are digital there is no degradation in the copying process.
To bring home the extent of the practical advances provided by digital photography, Greg showed us truly impressive A4 photos printed on a five hundred dollar printer with a consumable cost of one dollar per print.
The evening was very well received, our thanks to Greg and Sony. In November, ClubMac is off to Epson to see the printer end of digital photography.
Here are some photos of the meeting taken by Andrew Pavey.
