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Geeks.com is our usual supplier of review units. Without them, we wouldn't be able to write lots of the reviews that you find on osnews or on tuxtops.com. And no, Geeks do not pay us anything for the article, it is not an advertisement of their product, but a review (if you had read the article, that much would have been obvious). They simply send us the hardware, and we review it and that's the end of it.

Also, as we have said MANY times, osnews is a broad technology site.

Please keep the discussion ON TOPIC, and the topic is Kodak digicams and photography. All off topic comments will be flushed down. If you have a problem with it, email the osnews-crew but don't reply off topic here.

Edited 2006-07-31 18:27

A link to a more specific page regarding the camera would have been infinitly more usefull than a generic camera search at geeks.com.

This is the page of the actual camera:
http://geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=P850-R&cat=CAM
We linked to their generic camera page because the specific camera is currently out of stock.

This article has the tone of a review and not of advertising.

Also, this time, it is explicitly mentioned that
Note: OSNews is a broad tech site (and has been for years), such non-software reviews are welcome here even if our focus remains towards "system software".
so no confusion here, even though the topic has little to do indeed with OSNews' vocation as I was seeing it.
As always, one can vote with his feet.

Yes, JBQ reads dpreview all the time. Daily, in fact.

I used dpreview to pick out my Canon S3 IS, I was going to mention dpreview in another comment but you beat me to it.

So I modded you up instead

Good indepth reviews, samples, comparisons, forums. It's a great site.

I too used DPreview to pick out my S1IS. Good camera and I was able to get it for $220 from Amazon new. The S3 certainly looks awesome. My dad has a Kodak, I dont care for them, but my dad loves his.

Yes, dpreview is excellent.

www.steves-digicams.com is another camera review site that I've found to be excellent and on-par with dpreview. I usually cross-check them when buying/recommending a camera.

This is EXPLAINED above. The specific model is out of stock. When we received the product (about 2 weeks ago) it was NOT out of stock.

And yes, when a company is sending you their product to review it, YOU LINK back to them. That's how it works, with ALL reviews. It's standard procedure.

Edited 2006-07-31 20:05

There's actually no one "feature" that determines the speed of the camera. It involves the shutter lag, the buffer speed, the memory card speed (where its high density/low speed, or low density/high speed), and also the processor of the camera. Finally, the format you're shooting in itself can cause issues (RAW is much slower than JPEG) primarly influenced by buffer but also processing.

dpreview.com does often show metrics for this, but in reality if you want ultra fast camera speeds you really don't find it until you get into dslrs.

The Kodak P850 really isn't ment for that kind of photography. Its ment for a more casual entry into the line of prosumer cameras, as can be gathered from its price point (anywhere from $260-330). Half the price of even the cheapest DSLRs and almost $200 less than the Canon IS3

Also, addressing your other points.

1.) While a higher mega-pixel does mean you have more data to use, it doesn't mean that data is GOOD. Many manufactors are drastically increasing the amount of mega-pixels, but keeping or decreasing the size of the sensor. This means you're requring MUCH more light to hit on one tiny, microscopic dot. Generally, all you do is increase the noise so that going over ISO 100 on many p&s cameras is a waste, and can literally ruin any print over 4x6. Dans data has a great post on it http://www.dansdata.com/gz059.htm

2.) Absolutely true. Digital zoom is a complete waste, unless you just want to get a snapshot of something, much like using your camera phone to say take a pic of a celebrity. The quality is hell, but atleast you got it.

I'll address your first two comments first:

1- More data doesn't translate into more information. In fact with pixels that are 2.2 microns and a lens aperture of f/2.8 (wide open at the wide end) it's likely that diffraction alone (not counting lens aberrations) is already a limiting factor. It might sound surprising, but not all pixels are created equal. On the other hand creating pixels that hold a lot of information requires expensive equipment.

2- In a camera that doesn't allow to store raw pictures, digital zoom can be a reasonable alternative to cropping, typically resulting in pictures that compress better and have fewer compression artifacts when you print them. Of course, pictures where a digital zoom was used should be treated according to the actual amount of information that each pixel holds, i.e. I'm not advocating printing 8x10 from a 5MP camera on which a 4x digital zoom was applied.

Now, your question:

The time between when you press the shutter and when the shot is taken is called the shutter lag. There are different relevant scenarios, the fastest one always being when the camera was pre-focused. www.imaging-resource.com is a good source of information about shutter lag. The P850 has a shutter lag of less than 100ms when fully focused, which is good. Canon's 1DmkII sport-oriented DSLR clocked at 54ms. Canon's EOS RT ("Real Time") went as low as 8ms.

Beyond shutter lag, there's shot-to-shot speed, either in single mode (how quickly you can take another shot after the first one), or in continuous mode (how quickly pictures get shot in a burst). Imaging Resource measured a shot-to-shot delay of 1.84s in JPEG (though in my experience it's much slower when shooting raw pictures), and 1.8 fps in bursts (for 5 images). Once again, as a comparison, the 1DmkII gets 0.6s shot-to-shot (about 5 times faster) and 8.1 fps (almost 5 times faster) for 33 images (many more images).

Sports photography is typically done in fast bursts, not by trying to capture exactly the right frame, so the burst speed and duration are in my opinion more important than the shutter lag.

Another good resource on timing is dpreview.com, which others have already pointed to. A link directly to the timing part of the review of the kodak camera:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakp850/page5.asp