Searching for optimal image quality
or How I discovered the FireWire card
My first digital still camera was an Olympus 350. It looked cute and felt like a `normal' camera, but after using it for one week it had already eaten two sets of batteries. I realized that this investment would cost me a fortune on batteries if I continued using it, because there was no way to use it via an AC outlet. Furthermore the internal memory could only store 12 pics or so, which was a handicap for the coming holidays when there was no PC at hand to dump the pics in the camera's memory. And as there was also no extra storage memory available for this camera, I decided to go back to the shop and trade it for another one.
That's how the Canon Powershot 600 came into my possession, complete with a docking station, the possibility to use an AC wall socket and a tiny hard disk that could store over 2.000 pics in best quality (or over 5.000 in `economy' mode). It was a very good camera, producing much better pics than the Olympus. Unfortunately I never could check out how many pictures the hard disk could exactly store, because after a month or so it was stolen during a burglary in our house. The thieves seemed to be experts, because they even took the trouble to dismount the cable which connected the docking station to the PC. But as they forgot to take also the diskettes with software, necessary to transfer the contents of the Canon hard disk to the PC, the camera was completely useless to them. That's why I expected a second burglary one day, which however never took place (so far).
From the insurance money I purchased a Sony Mavica FD7, which had just arrived on the market over here. A very cute system indeed, because it stores the pics on an ordinary floppy disc. Unfortunately only in heavily compressed JPG format, so image quality is not as perfect as it probably could be if uncompressed or less compressed storage was possible. On the other hand one diskette can hold 20 to 25 pics, which makes it ideal for a holiday - just a box of 10 diskettes in your hand luggage and you're on your way. (Recently, Sony launched a model FD71 which is able to store images in uncompressed format, but that probably means that one floppy disc can only hold one pic). With this camera I made business trip to Thailand (we have a Thai restaurant) and when I did see some beautiful hand-made Thai dolls, I made a pic of them, took the floppy to an Internet cafe in Bangkok and e-mailed the pic to my wife, with the question: Should I buy these? About 30 minutes later I received her reply: Yes, they look good. Buy a dozen or so.
Although I was rather happy with the Sony floppy camera, I wasn't quite content with the image quality it produced. Then a friend showed me some unbelievable good pics he had made with the still function of his (very large and lumpy) Sony digital video camera. He obtained these excellent results with some sort of Sony-dedicated video capture board, type DVBK-2000. He also showed me captured single frames from video movies he had made and even those were better then I could produce with my Sony Mavica still camera. As I realized that one 60 minute DV tape could store tens of thousands of high quality digital images, my decision was made - I would purchase a digital video camera. I decided to invest in a JVC GR-DVL9000, which has a Pro Snapshot function, that produces jitter-free still images with superior quality in the so-called Progressive Scan mode. This camera comes with JLIP software for transferring still images to the PC and editing video movies on the fly. Unfortunately this method of transferring still images was not digital at all, as I discovered later. Besides it took almost three minutes to capture and transfer ONE pic (which means that the transfer of, let's say 36 pics (the capacity of one `normal' film roll), would last at least one hour and a half.... As I still had a Snappy device (which I used so far to capture images from video movies) I connected that device to my JVC camera. It worked excellent, many times faster than with JLIP and produced at least the same quality as with JLIP. But it still had the loss of quality that occurs when transferring (and converting) digital material with analog methods.
Then one day I added a pic of a fake Cartier watch (made with the JVC and Snappy) to my website. One of the people who did see that pic, was a guy in Hawaii, who also owns a JVC DVL9000. He wanted to know how I had that pic produced and after I had explained that to him, he drew my attention to the capabilities of the so-called FireWire capture boards, based on the IEEE 1394 specifications. He wrote among others: "The card you friend has is probably a IEEE 1394 "Fire Wire" Video Capture Board. Our camcorder does have a 1394 digital output and it is designed for transferring digital images directly to the hard disk (no analog conversion). When you use either the JVC JLIP software or the Snappy to transfer photos, you are losing a "generation" of quality because of the analog conversion. Each time this conversion occurs, you lose more detail. One reason I waited for the GR-DVL9000, was because it does have the 1394 output and this means NO loss in quality when moving images from the camera to the computer."
With our 1394 output my friend's capture board might work with our JVC too. I put this to the test and indeed it worked, producing stunning results. But that Sony FireWire card had cost my friend a fortune (about US$ 700) and I didn't want to spend that amount of money. So I started a search for a more affordable FireWire card. First I discovered that there was a Canon DV package (but that one was the same price as the Sony board) and then I found on various websites descriptions of other models (Radius, Miro, Matrox and Adaptec). Most of them however were even more expensive than the Sony and Canon packages, but Adaptec's AHA-8920 1394 PCI Host Adapter (also known as 8920 Hot Connect) was very affordable (about US$ 300 in The Netherlands, but probably cheaper in The States).
Contrary to Radius, Miro and a few other ones (whose resellers complained about delivery problems from the USA) the Adaptec FireWire card was in stock and it arrived exactly one day after I ordered it. But as the board was not specifically made for this particular JVC digital video camera, the Big Question was: would it actually work? Well, it does. It is a Plug & Play card that is recognized perfectly by Windows 95. No hassle with dipswitch settings. The software detects the camera automatically and all functions (play, pause, fast forward et cetera ) are available with a mouse click. The camera is connected to the FireWire board with only one cable, while the Sony card needs two cables -- one for the camera functions and another one for the actual camera-to-board digital connection. The contents of the DV tape is shown on screen, so you don't have to open or use the LCD display of the camera. And the captured images itself are exactly as the camera recorded them - digital to digital and no `loss of a generation' in quality. Besides this system works zillions of times faster than the time-consuming JLIP technology (which uses a slow serial port for the transfer) and also faster than with the Snappy device. Images are stored in uncompressed BMP format and can be enhanced (if necessary) with any editing program. Images can be saved in 640x480, 320x240 and 160x120 format and resolution can be set with a slider.
Best quality is (of course) obtained from still pics made in the JVC Progressive Scan modus, from subjects that are not too far away (especially close-ups and macro shots produce really stunning image quality). The Adaptec FireWire card is compatible with all other DV camera's that have a digital outlet conforming to the IEEE 1394 standard.