I was looking around into digital still cameras and finally asked myself, "why not get a miniDV camera that can also take stills?".

well i do understand that miniDV cams dont take very good stills but in the market, which camera offers the best stills from a miniDV camera? I hear about Canon's Elura Pi or something that has progressive scan technology. should i be looking at something like that or other similar product? please help. thanx in advance

-- peter chai (data_commander@yahoo.com), April 23, 2000

Answers

I have a Canon Elura and it takes very good still pictures - in fact excellent web pictures. The reason is that you can shoot what Canon calls pscan where every frame is a progressive CCD with no interlacing. Eventhough the resolution is low 384K pixels, the Elura has special color filters which result in a beautiful picture.

I've been using the Elura since Jan 2000 and I use it for almost all my pictures.

The new Canon Opturi Pi has many of the same features but is not as compact. It looks like a great Camera.

Both are expensive but well worth it -- you get your money's worth.

-- J (melvin@pobox.com), April 23, 2000.

I would not use a mini DV for still photo unless for its high optical zoom capacity (x10) now lacking in most DC.

For still photo, the Sony DV can generate 1028 x 768 images which to me gives acceptable 3R print on a Epson printer.

-- Eric Tse (yung999@ctimail3.com), April 27, 2000.