Re:Casio QV-3000 3.3Mpix, holds 236 pics list $1k (Score 3)

A couple months ago I picked up the Olympus C2500-L and returned it two weeks later because the CCD noise was rather bad (and for $1200, I wanted *no* CCD noise). Even for an SLR, 2.5Mpixels wasn't very impressive for the money.

Then...

I bought a Casio QV-3000EX Plus about 4 weeks ago and have taken something like 400 pictures with it, most of them in the camera's undocumented and unsupported TIFF format -- each pic is 6MB, compared to up to 1.5MB for the JPEGs it takes at 7:1 compression (ew!). Okay, so you only get 56 shots before the microdrive is full and it takes 20 seconds to process each shot (1-2 seconds for the JPEGs, if that long)... and most graphics programs won't read these TIFFs (IrFanView does; ImageMagick does; I imagine GIMP will too; PhotoShop does NOT), but they look awesome when printed on photo paper with a 6-color printer (Epson Stylus Photo 750, in my case). Certain things, like tiny tree branches, show the printer's deficiency in the 720dpi direction (the long edge of the paper). Mind you, of those 400 pics I've taken, pixelation is visible in less than a dozen of them -- but that's the printer and not the camera. 2048x1536 is more than enough to print an 8.5"x11" photo without artifacts if only the printer were capable. Gimme a 2400x2400 dpi printer and I promise you won't be able to distinguish between this camera's photos and a real 35mm in any of the usual photo situations. (With an f-stop limited to F8, 'usual' is defined as a broad but comparatively small set of situations.)

Also, the camera can store 236 JPEGs at full resolution on the microdrive. It's just a fairly lousy compression ratio so if you print them larger than 4"x6", JPEG artifacts quickly show themselves. 7:1 is as good as it gets with this camera if you use JPEG.

And speaking of unsupported/undocumented features, it's possible to get shutter speeds up to 60 seconds (the documentation says the limit is two seconds); however, I've found that any exposure over 1.3 seconds tends to show a lot of CCD noise. That includes shots of the night sky... this camera captures starlight (and airplane lights) with exposure times less than 1 second.

The only limitation that's repeatedly been bothersome is the f-stop range. It's F2-F8, which is way too small; should be F2-F12, at least, F22, preferably.

My two on-topic cents...