The Ultimate Disposable Camera Test

[grant_.]

jeeze, that sounds so exciting...

[staticlag]

James:<br>

<i>"Canon EOS Rules,

I admire your enthusiasm. Keep it up. I hope you had some really cute girls lined up for the bathing suit shots. I'm sure they would have been falling all over themselves (and you) to get included in the school newspaper."</i>

<p>

Did I miss something? Girls, bikinis?<p>

I hope you post some pictures this time.

<p>

[maxasst]

If you want to compare cameras then let them perform under similar conditions. A suggestion, if you haven't finalized your protocol or study design, would be to mount all the cameras on a 1x2 piece of wood, maybe 3 on one side and 3 on the other, drill a hole and place a 1/4 inch t-nut so you can mount this on your tripod. List the different conditions under which you will take the pictures. Take a picture with each camera under each condition. The setup should allow you to get very similar views with each camera and hopefully in quick succession before conditions change and that could easily happen outdoors. When you are done exposing all the film, label the drop off envelope in code "A", "B", etc. through "F" or "G" (if you decide to add your Elan7 to the mix which would be great), and have a trusted someone else load the envelopes, drop off and pick up the pictures. If you have good rapport with the lab technician, do this on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon and ask that they be processed and printed sequentially so as to minimize the impact of variability of chemicals or batches of paper used. Only that person will know what camera/film combination was in the envelope. Upon receiving the envelopes with developed negatives and pictures, don't look at the negatives, just remove the negatives and simply label them by the letter on the envelope. Better yet, have that someone you can trust label the negatives. Write the corresponding letter on the back of the pictures. WHY? Because this is the Ultimate Test! and your technique must be bulletproof! And to achieve this, you must be blinded to the source of the pictures. So now, you have 6 (or 7) sets of 24 pictures in front of you that are labeled "A-1", "A-2", etc. Disregard the labellings part for the timebeing. The labels should be on the backs of the pictures. Turn them all picture side up and match them up to their hexuplets (or heptuplets), mount them all to posterboard and let people vote which they like best, qualifying their vote by assessments of color, sharpness, distortion, or whatever criteria you want. Tabulate the results, create your own editorial about the findings then look at the labels to see the brands of the film and how they performed. Write your presentation. Geeky, timeconsuming and monotonous yes, but that's the nature of testing. If you want a strong conclusion, you must control all variables as best as possible. Have patience and ignore the lemmings who swim along with the other lemmings. Do your own thing and have the satisfaction of just doing it. Good luck!

[John Crowe]

Mr. Moreno, you must be a scientist!

[ngythanh]

Steve QL:

 

I am submitting nothing new but just my agreement to your contribution. "It's the photographer not the camera that makes the picture. I don't remember who I'm quoting".

 

In fact, this quote already became a biblical rule. It does not belong to anybody alone:

 

Most of the quality comes from the eye of the photographer, not the hardware.

 

Jim Gries, http://blogs.msdn.com/jimgries/archive/2004/04/22/118006.aspx

 

 

 

It's not the camera gear that creates good images, it's the photographer.

 

 

David Rosen, http://www.kovr13.com/03mar01/032701d.htm

 

 

 

we should all remember that it is the photographer, not the camera, who makes the photo.

 

STEMPRA, http://www.stempra.org.uk/Compendium/TheBasicToolkit4c.htm

 

and in his LANDSCAPE FIELD GUIDE published by National Geographic, Robert Caputo repeats in page 48:

 

And always remember that it's not the camera that makes the photograph, it's you.

 

+++

 

Whatever result the test comes out with, the tester will surely learn a lesson. And the best lesson would be from failure or loss.

[kieran_hamill]

I think the ultimate disposable camera would be an M series Leica. I can't imagine any other group of owners going through such a gamut of emotions if they had to throw it away after one film.