It was inevitable that Polaroid, the pioneer of "instant" photography, would eventually join other camera makers in offering a digital camera. After all, what could be more instant than an image captured electronically, without film or chemicals? Polaroid's PDC-2000 is true to the instant-photo tradition -- even as it breaks new ground in the digital-camera arena.
Historically, digital cameras have fallen into two segments: High-end models, oriented toward professional photographers, provide high-resolution images and come with a price to match -- at least $15,000. Low-end cameras, by contrast, target small-businesses and consumers and trade point-and-shoot ease of use and prices around $1,000 each for images of lower quality and resolution. The PDC-2000 stakes out the middle ground, creating impressive images from a 1,200-x-1,600-pixel CCD but with a price (under $4,000 for the model we tested) far lower than that of any other camera of comparable quality. Unfortunately, it still has a way to go before it becomes a practical replacement for a 35mm field camera.
You'll never mistake the PDC-2000 for Grandpa's Brownie or for any other camera -- traditional or digital -- you've seen before. About the size of a paperback dictionary, it has a curvy, flat-black metal case. When someone's aiming the camera at you, four protrusions glint from the camera's black body: the lens, the viewfinder, a built-in flash, and a sonar range finder. Five buttons and an LCD atop the camera are for adjusting settings and getting camera-status information. Rubber grips make the camera easy to hold either horizontally or vertically.
The PDC-2000 has two resolution levels: high-res (800 x 600 pixels) and super-high-res (1,600 x 1,200 pixels). The images are not only significantly higher-resolution than those captured by most digital cameras but they're generally extremely high-quality as well. At its best, the camera delivered remarkably sharp images, with rich, realistic colors and subtle shading. They ranked among the best we've seen from any digital camera, especially after minor cleanup in Photoshop.
Achieving top-quality images with the PDC-2000 wasn't always effortless, however: The automatic exposure setting worked reasonably well in many situations, but the camera occasionally ignored its center-weighted light meter and underexposed well-lit subjects. We often found ourselves wishing we could override the automatic settings to get the best-possible exposure. The camera's controls include a white-balance adjustment for choosing between fluorescent and incandescent indoor lighting; this adjustment is easy to make, using the well-labeled button. Far less easy to use is a function that lets you label each image with a ten-character designation by "typing" with buttons on the camera.
One control we found ourselves wishing for was an interlock to prevent you from taking a picture with the lens cap on. You get a flashing red light in the viewfinder when the cap is in place, but you can still trip the shutter -- and we did several times. Thankfully, the camera allows you to erase images selectively, but wasted shots cost precious battery life.
Memory Storage
The PDC-2000 stores your images in flash memory. The basic model comes with 40 MB of RAM and stores 40 super-high-resolution images. A 60-MB version of the PDC-2000 is available for about $1,300 more, and there's also a RAM-less model, which downloads all images directly to a computer as you take them, available for about $1,700 less.
Unlike competing cameras such as Kodak's DC50 that use removable PC Card RAM, the PDC-2000's memory is fixed in place. According to Polaroid, eliminating the removable-memory hardware reduces costs and keeps the PDC-2000 case light and compact. That may be true, but we'd welcome a way of increasing the camera's image capacity if our needs demanded it.
Capacity aside, however, pros working in the field will find a few other significant limitations on the PDC-2000's practicality: Its four nickel cadmium AA batteries barely lasted through a 40-image shooting-and-download session, despite the camera's autoshutoff energy-conservation feature.
The PDC-2000 connects to your computer's SCSI port and comes with a standard 25-pin adapter and a 25-pin-to-50 pin converter but no 30-pin PowerBook connector. Supplied software (both a stand-alone application and an Adobe Photoshop-standard plug-in) lets you view images stored in the camera on your Mac and then download only those you wish to keep. You can also use the software to change camera settings or take photos whenever the camera is connected.
Downloading 40 super-high-resolution images took over 15 minutes -- a long time to be away from the action. Even worse for field photography, the PDC-2000's short battery life makes an AC outlet a practical necessity for downloads.
Since the PDC-2000 is not built on a modified 35mm camera body, it doesn't use standard lenses. It ships with a lens Polaroid designates as being equivalent to a standard 38mm camera lens, and the company sells an optional 60mm-equivalent lens for $199 list. Professional photographers may be frustrated that more options aren't available; pros and amateurs alike may long for a zoom option.
The Bottom Line
The PDC-2000 is capable of taking outstanding digital photos equal in quality to those of digital cameras two to three times its cost. But limitations in battery life, lens options, and image-storage options seriously hinder the PDC-2000's usefulness as a professional field camera. Polaroid is definitely off to a good start in its digital-camera debut; we look forward to future refinements.
Polaroid PDC-2000, $3,695 (list).Company: Polaroid, Cambridge, MA; 800-816-2611 or 716-256-4436; http://www.polaroid.com/. Reader Service: Circle #404.
REVIEWS / digital cameras
Black, sleek, and curvy, the Polaroid PDC-2000 looks nothing like any other camera.
