Flashes before your eyes!

Since the roll-film camera was first invented by George Eastman in 1888, it has gone through some very fundamental changes over the years. From the Kodak browning to the first 35mm camera, the technology has become more compact and has gone completely digital.

 

Camera Crazy

The death of the 35mm camera a few years ago was inevitable as it could no longer keep up with the speed and convenience of taking digital photos. Another nail in the coffin for the 35mm camera was the fact that digital photos that aren’t required can be easily discarded. There are no additional costs in doing this as all the digital pictures are stored on a memory card, rather than 35mm film.

Today, everywhere you turn there is some form of camera assisting you or monitoring your surroundings. One of the biggest areas where cameras play a part in your daily lives is on the roads. There are cameras to monitor your speed, watch the flow of traffic, to ensure that you don’t jump any red lights and also cameras in your car to allow you to park safely. At the moment there are even mobile cameras on the streets taking pictures for Google Street View, which is due to go live in the UK at the end of this year.

If you take a look in your pocket the chances are that there’s even a camera in there right now, which is attached to your mobile phone and probably takes a better picture than your dedicated portable camera does! Anyway, so what can digital cameras offer you?

 

Digital camera features

Digital cameras are packed full of features and the more you spend on one, the more features you’re going to get. But, the question is, what are you actually going to be doing with the camera? Below are a few things to look out for when making your decision on the camera that is right for you.

 

Storage

One of the most important considerations when buying a digital camera is how much storage space you’re going to need and what type of cards you can use to increase this storage space. All digital cameras come with some internal storage but this will only hold a few pictures using the camera’s maximum image settings. If you’re planning on taking a considerable amount of pictures or recording video clips from your camera, then you’re going to need at least a 2MB storage card to hold all this content.

If your old camera, PDA or other gadgets uses an SD storage card, and you have a couple of them already, then it might make sense to buy a camera that takes an SD card. This will save you the added expense of buying a new type of storage card and allows you to reuse the ones that are lying around.

 

Power

Once you start getting a bit trigger happy with your camera, you may find that the battery is a limiting factor. Have you ever been in an important situation and your camera just died? Not nice is it. Well, prevention here is the key and there are a few simple measures that you can take to reduce your frustration.

The easiest thing you can do is carry around a spare set of a batteries but this is not always an option as not all cameras take the usual AAA or AA batteries. Some cameras have specially designed batteries to be able to fit into the slim designs, so you may have to visit the manufacturer’s website in order to obtain a correct spare.

If your camera does take the standard AA or AAA batteries then the other option is to invest in some good 2700mAh NiMH rechargeable ones. They may cost a little extra than your disposable ones but you’ll get a lot more power out of them and you won’t have to buy any replacement batteries for quite some time.

 

Quality

Digital cameras possess many features that all make the quality of the photos standout from the crowd. Apart the usual megapixel considerations, many people seem to glance over a camera’s ISO rating without giving it a second thought. The higher the ISO rating of a digital camera, the clearer the photo will be in low light conditions. If this is something that is important to you then you will want a camera with an ISO up to 1600.

To aid in taking the perfect picture, some cameras will also offer you image stabilisation, producing blur free images in even some of the bumpiest conditions. Add that together will face recognition and you’re going to get an image where everything is clear and everyone’s face is in focus. Some cameras tend to focus on one subject leaving other parts slightly washed out.

 

Summary

Personally we’re still waiting for the WiFi enabled camera so that we can send our pictures straight to a photo frame without having to mess around with, what has to be the biggest bane of our lives, wires!!

 

So, from what we’ve seen since the invention of the camera over 100 years ago, we should be in for something very special in the next 100! Possibly, pictures that can capture your thoughts? Hum, that might be asking too much! Time to keep on dreaming…

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Polaroid Pogo™

Do you remember the Polaroid Model 95 camera that was released in 1948? No? It was the camera that could take pictures and develop them on the spot.

If the thought of instant pictures appeals to you then the Polaroid PoGo™ could be your new travel companion. The Polaroid Pogo™ is basically a portable pocket sized printer for your digital camera (as well as your mobile phone). As long as your digital camera has PictBridge support, you can plug it straight into the Polaroid Pogo™ and print to your heart’s content.

How does the printing work I hear you ask? Well, it’s a lot different to what you’re used to as the printer uses an inkless printing process called Zink™ (Zero Ink™). This process produces a 2” x 3” water resistant, smudge proof and borderless photo within 60 seconds. The specially designed Zink Paper™ is where the magic lies as it contains billions of tiny coloured crystals embedded into the paper. These crystals are activated by heat to produce the full colour image. I think the word you’re looking for at the moment is “wow”! And don’t worry if you’ve never heard of this technology before as this type of printer is the first of its kind.

The Polaroid Pogo™ can be powered by the mains when at home but when you’re out roaming the country, you will have to make use of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The battery is good for 15 prints until you have to change the battery, but this is a small price to pay for instant photos.

 

Click here to buy it from PC World.

 

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Smartdisk Photobank

If you’re a keen digital photographer then you probably have memory cards coming out of your ears. And, if you’re using a digital SLR camera, then your average image size can be anywhere from 10MB upwards. So, faced with this dilemma, you either need to have a few spare memory cards available or something like a Photobank to store them on.

 

The Photobank acts like a compact mass storage device which you can use to upload photos from your camera’s memory card. Simply slide the card into the Photobank and with a touch of a button, you can transfer the contents easily and quickly with the aid of status information on the LCD screen. And, with the Photobank’s 40GB of storage space, you will be able to store around 4,000 photos at 10MB in size. If you’re taking lower quality pictures on a normal digital camera then you can easily double that figure.

When you do decide to upload the photos to your computer, you simply attach the Photobank via a USB cable and your computer will see it as a mass storage device. Now copy the files that you need and leave a copy on the Photobank as a backup, in case you lose or make a mistake whilst editing the image. When you’ve finished transferring your files to your PC, you can then blank the memory card and use it again as all your photos are securely stored inside the Photobank.

 

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Kodak Easyshare photo frame

If you're anything like us, you’ll have a load of photos stored on your computer and backed up on CDs or DVDs but hardly ever show them off. It may be because the computer is in the bedroom or it’s too much effort to bring three extra chairs to the computer table. Well there is an answer. You may have seen one before and thought “That’s a good idea” and you’d be right. The digital photo frame is setting up to replace the pictures of your family portraits and holiday snaps.

The Kodak EX811 wireless digital photo frame has all the bells and whistles like any other digital photo frame around, but it’s the extensive list of extras that has us thoroughly impressed. Most of the high-end frames will have built-in speakers and support for MP3s and videos, and this one is no exception. Wireless transfer from PCs to frames isn’t new but it's a great feature which is also included. Packaged with the frame is also a handy remote control, so you can wall mount the frame, if you so desire, and use your remote to change the images at your leisure.

Now for the good stuff. The best way to describe it is with an example. Firstly, anyone can set up a Kodak Gallery online via Kodak’s website. This enables users to upload images for their friends and family to view. If your parents have a Kodak EX811 wireless digital photo frame, they can automatically download pictures from your gallery. This means while you are on holiday in Kathmandu, you could upload the photos to your gallery and your parents would be able to see them almost instantly on their digital photo frame! If they like the look of them, they could print them using the Pictbridge feature with a compatible printer.

 

If you're not familiar with Pictbridge then it just means you can print without a PC. Alternatively, you can easily get them printed online and let someone else do the hard work for you.

 

Click here to buy it from PC World.

 

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Kodak M863 Digital Camera

Kodak released their first consumer digital camera way back in the early nineties, which they aptly named the Kodak DC20. To give you some idea of how digital camera image quality used to be, a high resolution picture taken by the camera was only 493 x 373 pixels in size! That’s about a third the size of an average computer’s desktop wallpaper today. But now, times have changed, technology has gotten smaller and the quality has improved tenfold.

 

One of Kodak’s latest offerings is the Kodak M863. It gives an image resolution of 8.2 million pixels, which creates an image in the region of 3456 x 2304 pixels. Now that’s big! Pictures of this size can be decreased if necessary for photo albums or printed as they are onto A1 posters (59.4cms x 84.1cms). The camera also allows you to take pictures in HD mode; this mean they are taken in the aspect ratio of 16:9, which is the perfect size for viewing them on your high definition TV.

As well as the great quality images, the camera also sports other features that make every single picture as perfect as possible. Face detection is built in to the camera so that all the subjects in your picture are visible, ensuring that there are no blurry faces towards the edges of the picture. And, with an ISO of up to 1600 you’re going to get much clearer low light pictures, which is ideal for shooting inside. If you’re feeling a bit creative then you have the option to create a panoramic picture. This basically allows you to take 3 different pictures of a scene and then stitch them seamlessly together. Impressed? Well, if you want to show off your final masterpieces then you can use the camera’s multimedia slideshow feature and do it in style!

And finally, if you ever have arguments when you get off holiday about where certain pictures were ‘actually’ taken and who took them, then argue no more. You can tag each picture with a sound tag so you can add all this kind of information to it, with your own voice. Now that’ll be all the proof you’ll ever need!

 

Click here to buy it from PC World.