A look at how digital cameras helped streamline operations at two businesses and the process the CEOs went through to select the best cameras for their specific needs.
Techniques: Shop Talk
How two CEOs found the digital cameras of their dreams
The construction business is rife with photo opportunities, and Sandusky Bay Construction Co. takes advantage of most of them.
If, for example, the company is interested in a highway project located hundreds of miles from its Norwalk, Ohio, headquarters, one or two employees will travel to the site and take pictures there. Estimators and foremen will then use those images to bid intelligently on the job without having to check it out firsthand. When complaints surface before, during, or after a dig, Sandusky can produce visual documentation of its blamelessness (a photo, for example, showing that those power lines were not where the utility said they were).
Sandusky president Mason "Phil" Oglesby III and his partner, Greg Bleile, have been investing in ever-more-sophisticated imaging technology since they founded the business, eight years ago. Having shepherded their 150-employee construction company from 35-millimeter prints to scanned photographs to videotape, Oglesby has had his eye on digital cameras for some time. Until recently, however, their price proved prohibitive: as much as $10,000 for a model with all the capabilities Sandusky would need. But in the past year prices for decent-quality digicams have dropped below $1,000, driving Oglesby and businesspeople like him into the market.
Digital cameras operate in much the same way that ordinary cameras do, except that they don't use film. Instead, they save images digitally. The images can then be downloaded onto a computer hard drive from which they can be printed, E-mailed, manipulated, or uploaded to a Web site. Oglesby was particularly attracted to the technology's promise of speedy retrieval. Although he had mastered the art of transferring video files over phone lines, downloading one 30-second video clip could take as long as an hour. Ultimately, he had to restrict sending the video clips to only the most critical destinations, like temporary job-site offices, where foremen could use the images to plan a project.
Oglesby began his search by consulting several local photography stores. There, he first road tested the Casio QV-300, which retails for $425 to $700. But the images on this 640x480-resolution unit didn't live up to his expectations based on the indoor test shots he took. With the help of store personnel, he was able to enlarge the shots, print the images on a photo-quality printer, and examine them through a magnifying glass. On a low-resolution camera like this one, he realized, a foreman's shot of a bridge connection or a joint would quickly dissolve into a mass of colored dots when it was enlarged to show detail.
That experience taught Oglesby that resolution had to be his top priority. Sandusky relies on detail-heavy close-up and wide-angle shots, so he wanted a digicam that packed as many pixels as possible. Resolution for cameras outside the professional realm runs from about 640x480 (307,200 pixels) on the lowest-quality models worth buying to 1280x960 (1,228,800 pixels) on the higher-but-still-affordable end. Oglesby figured he'd have to budget about $1,000 for a model at the higher end of the spectrum.
He also auditioned the Olympus D-300L, which retails for $600 to $900. Its picture quality at 1024x768 (786,432 pixels) was much better than the Casio's, but the camera lacked an optical zoom feature, which Oglesby needed for close-ups. His next candidate, a Sony Mavica MVC-FD7, intrigued him because unlike other cameras, it saves images directly onto a floppy disk rather than using internal memory. But he ultimately had to nix that one as well. Although the camera had a zoom lens, the image quality--which he felt was superior to the Casio's, even though the two cameras had the same resolution--just wasn't sufficient for the complex images his company requires. Looking at the printouts, "it was pretty obvious which cameras were better," Oglesby says. "You can tell when you blow up a photo and look at the contrast--look at the color saturation." Even the convenience of the rechargeable batteries and battery charger packaged with the Mavica didn't sway him, although the camera would most often be used far from a power outlet.
The last camera Oglesby put through its paces was the Kodak DC120. The Kodak had a zoom, and with 1,228,800 pixels the images it produced were sharp. It also had an optical viewfinder--the lens you look through to set up shots on a regular point-and-shoot camera. Most of the other models Oglesby had tested used an LCD panel that, in sunlight, made images appear washed out no matter how much he adjusted the brightness or the contrast.
As he expected, quality came at a price--in this case $1,100 for the camera itself, plus an additional $200 for two extras: an AC adapter to conserve on batteries during image downloading, and a removable 10MB memory card to store more pictures on. But Sandusky uses the camera so much, Oglesby feels he's getting more than his money's worth.
"Before, at a job site, we used to take a few pictures, maybe a roll of film," Oglesby says. But since Ohio started requiring contractors to provide 5- or 10-year warranties on work they perform, he now tells his foremen to shoot pictures "like crazy." And they do. Oglesby is so happy with the Kodak's results that he just bought a second unit for his company, and he says he'll go for a third once the new models are unveiled.
For Love of a Floppy
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but for Rob West it was worth a lot more than that in cold, hard cash.
Last year, West's $1-million specialty machining company, West Manufacturing Technologies Inc., was hired by the aerospace division of AlliedSignal Inc. to make a ceramic prototype of a jet-engine turbine blade. The project involved precisely machining a ceramic "slab" into an engine part using blueprints provided by the manufacturer. Close collaboration between West Manufacturing Technologies and its customer was essential but not easy, since West is based in Ithaca, N.Y., and the AlliedSignal division is in Torrance, Calif.
