On Thu, 23 Aug 2001 14:00:40 -0500, john63401@yahoo.com wrote:

>I actually know that making "still" digital images from a
>camcorder is possible.
>
>But my "real" questions is this..... when buying a new
>digital camcorder.... is it a good idea to get one WITH the
>compact flash or smart media card in it to take stills
>with..... or can I just pull stills off the raw digital
>video and get a cam corder that is cheaper and does NOT have
>the memory card?

At least with Sony, you can't buy a current model Mini-DV
without the still capability. As for still image quality,
the worst will be from the motion-video when things are
in motion since TV is interlaced, and moving things will show
a "comb" edge from alternate scan lines being captured
at two different times. The Sony cameras get around this
by changing the still-shooting mode to fit the requirements
of the stills (at first this was just to avoid the "comb"
edges, but now color saturation and edge sharpening also
appear to change). Some one-chip camcorders have high
pixel-count CCDs to increase the resolution of the stills
(and some of this increased resolution is interpolated
into the motion-video, improving some of its
characteristics, too), but this results in smaller, less
sensitive pixels - and the higher-than-640x480 stills
show noticeable color noise (the stills look better shot
at 640x480, and these are suitable for web use, but little
else...).