Digital Camera - Ken Gilbert

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The days when any
camera body would do
and lens quality was
the all-important
factor died out with
film. It’s different with
digital. Instead of just acting as an
interface between lens and film,
modern SLRs are practically digital
darkrooms, not only capturing the
image but adjusting all sorts of picture
parameters in the process, altering
sharpness and contrast and tweaking
colour rendition and saturation forany
subject, from vivid scenics to silky
smooth portraits.
Most new SLRs go further still, with
auto-dynamic range corrections for
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boosting detail in shadowy areas while
also avoiding blown highlights, where
very bright areas wash out to white.
Sure, there’s a case for saying that the
RAWorevenJPEGfiles produced by
the camera are best regarded as
‘digital negatives’, but the latest SLRs
go a whole lot further.
Picking out the ideal SLR is trickier
than ever because, nowadays, the
feature sets vary enormously from
one model to the next.Agood place to
start is to decide whether or not you
want to shoot video as well as stills. If
you do, you can cross the Canon EOS
50D, Olympus E-30 and Sony A500
cameras offyour list,asthese have no
video capture shooting modes
Big
Hitters
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6
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GROUP
TEST
Don’t get caught out when it comes to choosing
your next camera! MatthewRichards reveals which
D-SLR under £ knocks the competition for six
DigitalCamera July2010
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