Digital Photography

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Digital Photography

• a little understanding goes a long way

By Stuart Hasic
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Introduction

• Are Film Cameras Dead?
• Positives and Negatives of Digital Still Cameras
• The minimum stuff you need in a digital camera
• The Megapixel Mystery
• Photo capture memory
• Optical Zoom vs Digital Zoom
• Why are you taking these photos?
• Printing your digital photos
• Editing your digital photos
• Permanent storage of digital photo files

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Are Film Cameras Dead?

• You can still buy film cameras
• The biggest film camera market by far is the
  disposable type, but even that is declining
• Kodak is closing its only Australian film, photo
  paper and chemicals manufacturing plant in
  Melbourne on 26/11/04 a loss of 600 jobs
• Worldwide, Kodak is shedding 20 of its staff
  some 15,000 people
• You can still buy LP turntables today. Film
  cameras are heading the same way

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The Positives and Negatives of Digital Cameras
(pun intended)

• POSITIVES
• Instant viewing of photo
• Simple reviewing / deletion
• Not restricted to 24 or 36 shots
• Various memory capacities
• Various picture quality settings
• Some can take 1,000s of shots
• Can also capture short movies
• Can apply photo effects - BW
• Easy transfer to computer
• If you dont print your photos, there is almost
  zero on-cost

• NEGATIVES
• More expensive to purchase
• Shutter lag bad for action shots
• Speed shot cameras are costly
• Personal printing costs are high
• Cant do long exposure shots
• Film cameras last longer
• Digital cameras are fragile
• Obsolescence is rapid
• Battery-life is an issue
• Memory cards can fail

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The Minimum Stuff you need with a Digital Camera

• Dont buy any camera that uses disposable
  batteries or has in-built, non-removable memory
• Your camera should have a built-in flash and
  battery charger
• It should take various memory card capacities
• It should offer an absolute minimum of 2MP
• Buy at least one extra rechargeable battery
• Buy at least one extra memory card of 128MB
• Buy an external USB memory card reader
• Buy a collapsible tripod

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The Megapixel Mystery
Megapixels Image Size Print Size Capacity
VGA 640x480 Tiny 160Kb
1 1280x960 2 x 3 600Kb
2 1600x1200 4 x 6 980Kb
3 2048x1536 5 x 7 1.3Mb
4 2272x1712 8 x 10 2.0Mb
5 2592x1944 11 x 14 2.66Mb
JPEG Compression at fine quality
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Photo Capture Memory

• Several different and incompatible types
• Compact Flash (CF)
• Secure Digital (SD)
• XD Developed by Olympus/Minolta
• Memory Stick Developed by Sony
• Type of memory is dependent on camera
• No real difference in speed
• You can get clone cards at cheaper prices
• You should have minimum of 128MB cards
• Most cameras only come with 16 or 32MB cards

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Optical Zoom vs Digital Zoom

• Optical Zoom means the lens physically moves in
  order to producing zooming effect
• Digital Zoom means the camera uses a processor to
  increase the size of pixels and smooth the image
  to produce the zoom
• Digital zoom can be applied to any photo using a
  computer, making it useless on a camera

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Why are you taking these photos?

• When taking photos, think first about what you
  want to use the photos for
• If you (ever will) want to print your photos in
  high quality (rivaling film quality), they should
  be taken with the camera set to at least 2MP
  quality
• If you only want to use the photos on a computer
  (Powerpoint, webpage, Word etc) or on a TV, then
  anything more than 1MP is wasting space
• REMEMBER You can decrease an existing photos
  quality, but not increase it
• Schools should aim at keeping photos in digital
  form

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Printing Digital Photos

• You can print photos yourself, but be aware of
  the costs associated
• Inkjets using photo paper produce the best
  results, but may cost well over 1 per print
• Paper jams and faulty ink cartridges add to the
  cost through wastage
• Take your memory card to Big W or Harvey Norman
  and get 4x6 prints for 38c each
• Photo printing is a very competitive market and
  prices will continue to drop but not
  necessarily in the DIY space

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Editing your digital photos

• Free software for editing/manipulating digital
  photos
• Most cameras and scanners come with OEM photo
  editing software
• GIMP - http//www.gimp.org (Mac OSX Win)
• iPhoto (bundled with Mac OSX)
• IrfanView http//www.irfanview.com (Windows)
• PhotoPlus 5.5 - http//www.freeserifsoftware.com
  (W)
• Commercial software
• Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Elements
• Macromedia Fireworks

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Permanent storage of photo files

• Many people save their photos on a hard disk
• If the hard disk fails, photos are lost forever
• CDs and DVDs are the best media for long-term
  storage of photos
• They can then be catalogued for future use
• MemoriesOnTV is excellent because as well as
  making a movie of your photos, the original
  JPEG files are also stored on the CD or DVD
  http//www.picturetotv.com

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A Great Camera for Schools
5.1 Megapixel 32MB Mem Stick Video mode 2.5
LCD 3x Optical Zoom Built-in Flash Exposure
setting Shutter setting Long battery life RRP
699 (11/04) SONY Direct offers
education pricing Ph. 8873 9230 for
government sales inquiries
SONY DSC-W1