I plan to purchase a Nikon CP990 (thanks to this forum) and was wondering how many CP990 users have a telephoto lens? I am buying the CP990 to photo journal our house as we build it. I wish I had a digital camera for all the outings to home shows we made. Conventional 35mm Pentax was my weapon and good lord did all the ammo cost me! After that expense ( well over 50 rolls in the last year) I have firmly decided that digital is the way to go. (no more poor images and wasted film processing expense)But I digress. My Pentax was limited to ??75mm?? zoom. The CP990 zooms to x3 optically + x2 digital....I tried the CP990 in a Ritz camera store this weekend and the only time the image got larger was on the LCD(Via digital zoom)never through the view-finder. I asked the clerk to show me a telephoto lens - he placed a x2 after marker lens and still no notable difference at the view-finder or on the LCD. What am I missing here? I plan to buy the Nikon telephoto TC-E2 or other by your recommendation for close ups of ceiling details. Home shows won't let tourist bring 12-16ft ladders unfortunately so I need to shoot from the ground.

Squeezing in a second question - It seems that everyone suggest using the highest resolution with the lowest compression if one plans to archive photo files. I will buy a RW-CD and a Lexar x8(???MB) card. My question: if a 16MB card can only take 1 image at TIFF 1:1 that even with the super-duper Lexar x8 160MB that gives me 10 images. Any better approach to this? I plan to print out 8x10's.

Thanks, Clint

-- Clint Darby (clint.darby@nucorsteelsc.com), June 19, 2000

Answers

The first thing I did when I got my 990 is taking same scene with different image quality settings and print them out on the Epson glossy photo paper on my Epson 3000 with auto setting and no software manipulations. I printed 2 images on one 8.5 x 11 paper at the largest possible setting. The results (to me) show that the FINE setting and NORMAL are the best in terms of sharpness and contrast as well as over all exposure. The HI setting with TIFF format looks darker but not as details (surprise), perhaps the software touchup may help here.

I got the Lexar 8X 128 MB w/ JumpSHOT and it is super convenient and fast. You simply connect the cable to USB port, install software driver, insert the card and the system will see the card as another hard drive. By the way, with this 128 Mb: you will get 13 Hi, 81 Fine, 320 Basic, 162 Normal at Full size but it works fine for me at XGA setting which bumps the capacity to 320 Fine, 623 Normal and 1183 Basic !!!

-- Tanasit Siriluck (tanasit@flashcom.net), June 19, 2000.

Unlike a conventional camera, the viewfinder on a CP990 cannot show you what is going on inside the lens. It is only useful for framing a photo in a quick point and shoot situation. When using a digital zoom feature or lens attachment, you must use the LCD instead of the viewfinder. I admit that when you are used to a non-digital environment it can be a little annoying.

-- Liath Appleton (liath@liath.com), June 20, 2000.

I may be missing something but I fail to see why you would want to buy anything extra if you have a USB port. I have the USB cable plugged into my computer all the time and just plug it into my 990 for super quick downloads. My 64 MB card has not been out of the camera since the day I bought the camera.

If you want to see what images look like with and without the telephoto adapter go to http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~gc3/mycp990/steubenville061800/ These images were shot by George Cifrancis III. (I hope he doesn't mind me directing traffic to his site.)

-- bill (this_old_house@pobox.com), June 20, 2000.

Bill raises an interesting point so I have to carry out some testing to compare between camera with cable connected to USB and CF card out of camera into the Lexar JumpSHOT connected to USB. I loaded 77 images totaling 60 Mb: the camera setup took 2:42 minutes and the JumpShot took 1:07 minutes. Next I used Nikon View software to display all images as thumbnails, camera setup took 31 seconds and the JumpSHOT took 11 seconds. My conclusion is that the JumpSHOT which comes free with the CF card takes 1/3 of the time required by the camera and you can save the camera battery and operation cycle of the camera. Again, you will have to remove the CF from the camera to use with the JumpSHOT.

-- Tanasit Siriluck (tanasit@flashcom.net), June 24, 2000.