Need Camera Advice for Industry Purposes

[sao123]

I work in the IT dept for the PA Dept of Transportation (PENNDOT for short) which is responsible for most of the roads and bridges in the state of pennsylvania.

Routing work of many of our employees involves taking pictures of roads, bridges, tunnels, other structures (outdoors), and accidents. Becuase most of this work is for legal purposes, such as environmental concerns, accident lawsuits, construction and repair contracts, and inspections: I need to find a good camera (price isnt much of an issue) which has the following features:

Date Imprint... Absolute Importance. Because most photo's are imported into legal documents every Photo must have the date appear in the photo itself, (not in the EXIF data).

Decent Telescopic & Wide Angle Zooms (P&S or SLR are both acceptable) with built in flash

A good name brand quality, (canon, nikon, olympus, sony, kodak, etc)

Must take some type of 1-2Mb memory stick (CF, XD, SD, etc) for photo storage

Will interface with a windows XP machine through USB cable.



I've already looked at the Canon PowershotS80, and the Olympus SP-500UZ, both of which are good camera's but neither of which have the date imprint feature.


if no-one has an answer here, perhaps there is a photographers forums i could ask at... any suggestions?



Also, can someone explain to me how to interpret lense numbers? Last tiem i bought a camera, it was just 15x zoom....

now its... 28-100mm * 3.6x or whatever... how do i know what lense(s) is best for our purposes.

 

[tfinch2]

I've never come across a "date kit" digital camera. That's what EXIF is for.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: tfinch2
I've never come across a "date kit" digital camera. That's what EXIF is for.

all cameras prior to EXIF actually had the date appear in the lower right corner of the photo, just like 35MM 's do.

Example, the Olympus C740UZ from 2002 did this.
So did all our sony Mavica's.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: sao123
now its... 28-100mm * 3.6x or whatever... how do i know what lense(s) is best for our purposes.

the numbers are the range of focal lengths the camera can have. the first number is how wide a camera lens is, in 35 mm equivalent (35 mm being the normal film size, digital camera lenses tend to be much shorter, so that lens might be 5 to 20 mm in range). generally, digital p&s cameras tend to be lacking in the wide angle, many of the starting at 35 mm long or longer. if you're taking pictures of bridges and accidents you'll probably want as wide an angle as you can get.

the second number is the longest telephoto length the lens has. again it is in 35mm equivalents.

the '3.6x' number is merely the telephoto number divided by the wide angle number, and is relatively pointless without a starting point. two cameras could provide 4x zoom lenses, but if one goes from 25 to 100 and one goes from 33 to 133 they're going to have different ranges. the first will probably be more suitable for your needs.

the human eye would be 50 mm in film equivalent. so a 25 mm lens would be like doubling the distance, and a 100 mm lens would be like halving the distance.


edit: iirc, in the camera options of many cameras you can select a 'date imprint' option.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

http://www.google.com/search?q=digital+...refox&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial

Looks like the Canon A75 is one.

 

[sdifox]

For legal work you have to go to DSLR, say a Cannon 5D level camera. Check your goverment purchasing agreements, chances are there is a standard DSLR camera for government. Check with the Correctional side of things.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: sdifox
For legal work you have to go to DSLR, say a Cannon 5D level camera. Check your goverment purchasing agreements, chances are there is a standard DSLR camera for government. Check with the Correctional side of things.

unfortunately, canons DSLR cameras do not support the Date Imprint Feature

 

[homercles337]

Explain the importance of "date impriting" for your work. The date in the camera is set by the user so you could set any date you want. It doesnt sound like this "feature" prevents any nefarious activities. In my first pdoc i characterized a Kodak DCS Pro 720x and the header contained more info than you can imagine.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: homercles337
Explain the importance of "date impriting" for your work. The date in the camera is set by the user so you could set any date you want. It doesnt sound like this "feature" prevents any nefarious activities. In my first pdoc i characterized a Kodak DCS Pro 720x and the header contained more info than you can imagine.

I'm just the IT guy, I didnt write the law. This is how it was under 35mm film, and they just applied the law to all new digital photographic equipment.
Here is a good example:
the bridge inspection crew has to inspect every bridge in the state on a 3 year cycle. Each bridge may have a few hundred photos over the course of several days. Due to the rotation of the seasons, they may take pictures every day from May 1st to Oct 31, then spend the other 6 months, incorporating these photos into inspections documents (word templates). Since this data must be archived for up to 25 years (the approximate life of a bridge structure) each photo must be dated.

it isnt meant to prevent "falsifying of data" its meant to improve accuracy and organization.

the main problem is "Word" either does not have the features to display EXIF data within a document, or else when a photo is inserted, the EXIF data is gone. Either way, a paper copy is not going to contain that information.

 

[sao123]

bump for the work crew... who most likely went home yesterday before i asked this.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: sao123

Originally posted by: sdifox
For legal work you have to go to DSLR, say a Cannon 5D level camera. Check your goverment purchasing agreements, chances are there is a standard DSLR camera for government. Check with the Correctional side of things.

unfortunately, canons DSLR cameras do not support the Date Imprint Feature

Depends on who is doing the exporting Most up to date image handling software will do it if you want it.

http://www.snaptouch.com/help/en/en_how_date.htm

that is an example I found, I do not endorse the software since I never used it.


Good thing with the EXIF is you can get a GPS unit and record that too into the EXIF when you take the photo. Very useful in civil engineering.


Seriously, talk to natural resources, they should have all this figured out already. I am particular to Canon, but you may prefer other.