Digital Photography – Going on holidays or vacations are some of the best times to use digital photography. Digital photography has gone through a big evolution in the past 20 years as digital cameras have become more popular than ever.
In digital photography a macro lens is what gives you the up close clarity for taking photos at home, at the beach, outings even birthday parties. So if you want to get good, clear up close digital photography images, such as family photos, add some macro lenses so that not only is your subject in focus, but you retain the sharpness and clarity of good digital photography.
Nowadays it is so much easier and more fun to use digital cameras for taking pictures such the autumn leaves capturing the nice colors of fall foliage. With the modern use of digital cameras to make perfect digital shots, photographers no longer have to go through the process of slide scanning of the negatives from the pictures taken. This is one of the many reasons more photographers have switched over to the digital age technology.
Posts Tagged ‘digital’
Digital Photography
Monday, July 13th, 2009Tags: digital, photography
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Digital Photo Restoration Sheds Light on Old Photographs
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009Digital photo restoration is nothing short of the work of true artists with a love for old photographs. When the art of restoration first appeared, it was a marvel. Specialty shops, for a rather hefty price, could sharpen borders, replace missing edges, and brighten the color.
Today, photos can be scanned and emailed to any photography shop in the world that retouches old photos, and the finished product can be emailed back to the customer fairly quickly and for much cheaper than before. Photo restoration today doesnt stop with the edges and borders of a photograph; missing chunks of pictures, even in the middle of the photo, can be replaced. In addition, artists can add people and furniture to a photo that were not in the original one. It is easy for a customer to submit any photos, slide scanning, or negatives to a company for this service. In addition to emailing the picture file, it is very convenient, easy, and safe to upload the picture to the company.
The traditional way is to bring the original photograph in hand to a shop that specializes in this type of work. Of course, photos can be mailed to artists as well. Digital photo restoration is safe, inexpensive, and easy to use for the customer.
Photo Restoration: How It Works
The first thing that restoration artists do when they receive an old or damaged picture is to evaluate the damage. Rips, folds, and color issues are addressed, and an estimate of what it will cost to repair the issues is relayed to the customer. One of the greatest things about digital restoration is that the original photograph is NEVER altered. The only thing that is tinkered with is the scanned copy. This is especially important for those who bring their photos into a shop as opposed to emailing or uploading them. The customer then is given the estimate for the work, and the fun begins. Usually within a day or two, thanks to incredible technology today, the customer is shown an initial test version of the picture, restored.
If needed, the client can express their need for any further changes to the photo. If additional changes are requested, the customer will receive another test version for review. Once the customer is satisfied with the restored, fresh looking photo, orders for prints, reprints, and other special services can be ordered and filled.
Digital Restoration: The Benefits
The most obvious benefit to restoring old photos digitally is that the end result is much more suitable for framing and displaying to family and friends. A more colorful, uninterrupted image is much more aesthetically pleasing than a torn, worn, and shorn one. Another great reason to get an old photo retouched is renewability. People can rest easy knowing that there are 50 copies of Great Aunt Louises picture in existence, as opposed to Uncle Hebert having the only copy on the planet.
Retouched or repaired photographs make excellent additions to family trees, histories, and family Bibles, too. People always say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and digital photo restoration is the perfect way to make sure that no matter how many years those words have been around, they will never go unheard.
Tags: digital, photo, Restoration
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Digital Hardware
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009Digital Cameras, printers and scanners are not absolutely essential hardware for your PC but by and large, you will rarely find a small business nowadays without at least two of the three peripherals.
Various reliable sources have estimated that very soon, the only people who will prefer film cameras will be those who want the cheap, single-use disposable cameras and professional photographers who want to create certain effects that they only feel with film. Can digital technology ever push film out as Joe Soap’s choice for capturing and storing his precious image memories? Well, as we discovered, the answer is most definitely yes.
Digital Cameras
Digital cameras give you an impressive array of special features and modes that photographers could only dream about a few years ago. You can look at an image in the LCD viewfinder immediately after shooting it and know whether you got the photo you wanted. If not, you can delete it and try again, because there is no film or processing costs. You can quickly upload images to your PC if you want, but a number of cameras don’t even require a computer – they transmit images by a CompactFlash (CF) modem plugged directly into the camera.
Storage isn’t a problem anymore. The addition of a MicroDrive allows you to store hundreds, even thousands, of images without reloading. The applications are endless – especially with the time-lapse and remote-control capabilities available on some cameras – making them suitable for science, medical, nature, and surveillance work. Other digital cameras offer video, and some can record sound annotations with each frame. Many have panorama modes, manual controls, the ability to synchronize with an external flash, or burst modes for shooting up to 2 frames per second at full resolution. And of course, your web pages can be totally transformed quickly and easily by posting images taken with a digital camera directly onto your site.
Bear in mind that while two-million pixel digital cameras are more than adequate for most homes and small offices, enthusiasts and avid photographers will need to invest in at least a three megapixel model.
Scanners
Scanners, once only the domain of design houses and printers, have become almost as common as printers. Over the last couple of years, the scanner has become quite inexpensive and relatively easy to use, making it a worthwhile addition to any home or business PC setup. And you can now easily incorporate exciting images into your presentations, Web pages and brochures.
Essentially, a scanner is an array of photosensitive silicon cells that measure the light reflected off – or transmitted through – an original. Those measurements are then mapped onto levels (for example, 256 levels per primary color for a 24-bit scanner) by an analogue-to-digital converter, and stored as binary digits that you can view and manipulate with your computer.
For most models these days, initiating a scan is as easy as pushing a single button on the scanner itself or on the interface. The use of parallel or USB interfaces in most of the latest models has eliminated the tortuous task of installing a SCSI board. The design and construction of even the least expensive scanners showed that they were able to deliver perfectly good images for the average user.
As a general rule of thumb, the minimum color depth you should consider for scanning photos and documents is 24 bits (8 bits per color or gray shade). But even the best 24-bit scanners suffer from noise, which means they fall short of the dynamic range of a typical photograph. In theory, a higher bit depth should always be better than a lower, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. For instance, some manufacturers use a 24-bit CCD and combine it with a 10-bit rather than a standard 8-bit ADC to stretch the output range of the colors into the shadows and highlights. So, in this case, a very good 24-bit scanner can still give you better images than a mediocre 30-bit one.
On the other hand, if you’re slide scanning, negatives, or transparencies, which have a broader tonal range than printed photographs, 30 bits is the absolute minimum you can get away with.
Printers
It’s a well-known fact that laser printers have major speed and quality advantages over their fellow print partners, the inkjets. But if this is so, why doesn’t everyone have a laser on their desks? Well, up until now, the laser printer has also had to cope with some seriously ‘big’ disadvantages – high price and huge heft. But, the good news is that the latest batch of lasers has definitely slimmed down on weight as well as in price.
If you print loads of text-heavy documents and are hardly impressed with the print quality of your inkjet, then the laser is calling out to you. (Don’t part with your inkjet though, if you need to print color documents or photos.) Not only are lasers zippy and sharp, but their consumables are much cheaper too. A laser’s toner cartridge may cost more than an InkJet’s ink cartridge but it lasts much longer, which all adds up in the long run, especially if you do a lot of printing.
The laser is a robust workhorse and can fit in quite well in any business environment.
Tags: digital, Hardware
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Advantages Of Digital Photography
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009The quality of the images on the new digital cameras, and the time limits that are so vitally important in the newspaper industry, have made digital photography the norm with most professional news photographers. Many amateur photographers have also adopted the digital camera as their camera of choice. They enjoy the convenience of sending photos by email, being able to put them on the web, and displaying them in digital picture frames.
Many cell phones now have digital cameras included in them, even though the small lens size of these phones reduces the quality of the pictures, making them unsuitable for making prints. Digital cameras can now be hooked up to your television, allowing you to review your photos with an audience. You have a home color darkroom for editing your pictures without the expense of a darkroom and its many chemicals. No more slide scanning of photos to view them on your computer. You do not have to pay the high cost of film processing and store many, many rolls of film and photographs.
The quality of pictures taken on even the best digital cameras is not considered to be anywhere near the quality of regular film. Therefore, many commercial photographers and even some artistic amateurs resist using digital technology for their photography purposes. Film also has a much greater resolution than even the best of digital projectors. Other professionals have embraced with enthusiasm the digital cameras, believing that the lower long term costs in flexibility outweigh the initial high costs.
Unlike film photography, which requires constant expenditures to update and maintain equipment, nearly all expense in digital photography is the initial cost of the equipment. However, film equipment lasts longer and does not become obsolete as quickly as digital cameras. Many professionals have changed to digital photography because of the advantages of editing on a computer. This includes the ability to balance the color and manipulate images in a way that are not possible with conventional film photography.
A further disadvantage to digital photography is the need to have electrical outlets to charge batteries on digital cameras. Digital cameras are also much more sensitive to climate, extreme cold, and moisture than standard cameras, which cause photographers who work in remote areas to prefer the more conventional film camera. Some fear that the changing technology of computers will eventually make the digital photography taken today inaccessible in the future. Digital photography in the courts is also held to be very questionable because of the inability to prove the photographs authenticity.
Tags: Advantages, digital, photography
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The Way To Imagine Digital Photo Frames
Thursday, June 25th, 2009Photo frames are becoming part of our life day by day, as the digital photography has taken over the classical one there was the demand for device that could show the digital photos similar to an old album. It would have been hard to imagine digital photo frames in the past, but not any more. With the digital frame you can save the pictures you want to display in the frames memory and after that, the pictures will be shown one by one, you practically create a Slide Scanning. Another great advantage is that you can connect your frame to the Internet and thus download the latest photos.
I’m not going to ask you to imagine a digital photo frame, just think of the mechanism and the way it works. You are in Europe on a visiting tour and you want to send home the pictures you make, the only problem is that your parents can’t handle a computer so you can upload your pictures on a specialized site. The frame will get the pictures from the site and show them immediately, so practically your parents will just see the pictures on the frame changing, without doing anything. You can also display videos on your frame not only pictures.
Another argument for having a digital frame is that statistically speaking almost 65% of the digital pictures are never printed, so practically having an external support to show your last taken pictures is a very good idea. Digital frames vary greatly in price, in quality and characteristics, if you consider in acquiring a digital frame take in consideration the following models, they are reasonably cheap, and offer a reliable quality. Those who imagined these digital photo frames knew what they were doing.
IMAGIN IM7MA 7″ digital Photo Frame is a decent solution for a family that wants to display their photos but don’t want to throw a bag of money on a digital album. The LCD has a 7 inch diagonal and a resolution of 480 x 234 pixel, it supports various card readers (SD,CF,MS), it can be connected to a PC using an USB 2.0 port and can play MP3 and MPEG4 files.
ASK Imagin DPF7J digital photo frame costs around $110 with all taxes, it has a 7 inch LCD and a resolution of 480 x 234 pixel, 262.144 colors 330cd/m2 brightness and 300:1 contrast ratio, supports many types of cards like SD,CF,MS ; it has a classical USB 2.0 connector and supports MP3 and MPEG4 file formats. It accepts almost any kind of memory sticks, all in all it representing a good solution at a reasonable price.
Tags: digital, Frames, Imagine, photo
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It Is About Time To Switch To A Digital Camera
Thursday, June 18th, 2009Are you still using a film base camera? if you are than this article is for you. You probably know by now that you are becoming a minority as more and more people switch to digital cameras. This article lists some reasons why you should also consider making that switch.
Digital cameras are not just a hyped buzz word. They have real advantages over film cameras. In the beginning of the digital era many claimed that digital cameras are inferior in quality to film cameras. One of the main arguments was that printing enlargement from digital photos results in poor quality. While this was true back then new digital cameras with modern sensors and a large number of mega pixels provide superior quality even when printing enlargements.
Just having the same or better photo quality is not a good enough reason to switch. Using digital cameras and digital photos and switching to digital media has many advantages, here are just a few:
photo cost: digital cameras take digital photos that are stored on digital media. For all practical purposes the marginal cost of taking digital photos is zero. You can view, manipulate and discard such digital photos without spending a dime. If you were using film you would have to spend money on developing the film roll in order to view your photos. Developing prints would cost more.
Photo capacity: digital cameras store digital photos on digital media. With modern memory chipsets the storage available on such media is practically infinite. You can hold thousands and more photos on each media card and since these cards are so small you can easily carry extra cards with you. With infinite photo capacity you can take many photos without thinking of the problem of running out of space. With old film cameras each roll would typically hold 36 photos. Film rolls were relatively big and you could only carry so many rolls with you. The result was thinking twice before taking a photo and in many cases missing great photo opportunities.
Immediate feedback: a great feature of digital cameras is the ability to immediately view the photos taken. Such immediate feedback allows better photos since you can check the composition and the quality of the photo and immediately take more photos to correct what you found was wrong. With old film cameras you had to wait until the film was developed in order to review the photos. Obviously at that time it was not possible to shoot the photo again to correct any problems in the photo.
Photo manipulation: digital photos are computer files stored on digital media. As such they can be easily manipulated with photo processing software. Such software can reside built-in the digital camera or installed on your personal computer. Photo processing software allows such manipulation as red-eye removal, contrast enhancements and more. Such manipulation is impossible with film cameras. The only way to manipulate film based photos is by converting them to digital photos through the process of photo scanning or Slide Scanning.
Adapt to changing conditions: digital cameras use electronic sensors instead of physical film. The camera can electronically set the sensor to different modes in order to support different photo shooting conditions such as different light conditions, different light sources, speed of the object photographed etc. The sensor settings can be changed instantly for each photo taken. With film cameras each film roll would be designed for a specific condition such as different light sensitivities, granularity and more. Once a film was loaded you had to take shoot the complete roll using the sane setting, or change rolls.
Longevity: digital photos never lose their quality. Digital photos are digitally saved on digital media and as such they will be identical tomorrow and 1000 years from now. They do not turn yellow and do not fade as film prints.
Tags: digital, digital camera, photos, slide scanning
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Digital Photo Frames – Keep Your Memories Alive With Old Pictures Digitized
Thursday, June 11th, 2009Do you have a collection of old pictures or slides tucked away in boxes and stacked in the back corner of your closet? Then your cherished memories are vulnerable not just to fading and scratches, but are at risk of becoming completely forgotten! Today, with digital picture technology, electronic albums and digital photo frames commonly available at affordable prices, there is no reason why anybody should take that risk.
Although digital photography has been with us for over 20 years now, many people still have old pictures or slides sitting in old shoe boxes in hard-to-reach places that make the memorable moments hard to enjoy. They may have rolls of developed film or slides in kitchen drawers waiting for the better days.
Most people already know the benefit of having a digital photo frame display their images. Electronic picture frames can show off a large number of pictures at once as opposed to a wooden photo frame that will only show one, or a bulky photo album, that takes so much space on the shelf.
But how can you transfer your old pictures or slides to digital photo frames without spending a lot of time and money?
Although it’s fairly easy to get old photos from traditional into digital format, it takes a lot of time and some skill to do that properly. Also, a computer, a photo scanner or Slide Scanning and a photo editing software are necessary.
Fortunately, there are many services today available that will scan your pictures and slides and transfer them to DVD or other digital media. With your images in a digital format the are much easier to view and share. And most importantly, they will be protected from physical damage – just be sure to make a backup copy and keep it in a safe place.
Using scanning services to digitize your old pictures is usually affordable and can save you a lot of time. And it’s certainly worth the effort and expense to see your old memories prominently displayed in digital photo frames come to life again!
Tags: digital, photo, scanning, slide
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Now That I’ve Got My Photos On My Computer
Thursday, June 11th, 2009We created folders in “our pictures” directory on our computer, one for each month of the year, and simply off-loaded the camera’s media into the appropriate month folder as it became full.
This process provided a historical time reference for any photos stored on the computer. In a year or two we could still correlate a specific photo to the month and year in which it was taken. A helpful process for those of us who’s memory is starting to get a little wonky!
Now, what to do with all these photos?
Make digital slideshows with them and slide scanning , that’s what.
Our “DVD” case is full of home made slideshows created from paper and digital photographs.
Some slideshows contain all the pictures from a complete calendar year, with the months of that year as the chapters for that show.
Others are slideshows of specific events; family gatherings, a trip to Upper Canada Village in Ontario, Canada; you get the idea.
Not only does having slideshows provide hours of entertainment for gatherings at our home, having the slideshows on Cd’s provides a back up should any of the original digital or paper pictures be lost.
So, how do you make slideshows?
For those folks that haven’t the time, or the inclination to learn some software the easiest route is to contact a provider of digital slideshow services. Their professional experience will ensure an excellent outcome for your shows.
If you are more adventurous, and would like to tackle making slideshows yourself, here are a some tips.
If it’s paper photos you want converted into digital, or it’s existing digital photos you want converted to slideshow, first select all of the photos in question.
On the back of paper photos, number them from one and up, in the order you want them to appear on your slideshow. Decide if you want on-screen captions for some or all the photos. If so, write the text for that caption on the back of those you wish.
If you are converting paper photographs into digital format, which is necessary for making a slideshow, you will need access to a scanner. If that becomes a bit daunting, reconsider using a service provider. They will be able to handle the scanning of your photographs for you. They can then provide you with an electronic album of your photos, or create the slideshow for you, or both.
For digital pics, select all of the digital photos you want for a particular show, and copy them into a folder you have created for the purpose. Once you have the copies in there, rename them from one and up, in the order you want them presented on your show.
Create a word .doc with the text for each caption beside the corresponding number of your photo should you wish captions visible as the slides are shown.
Do you wish any chapter headings, a cover shot for the slideshow? Make a note of these.
What about music? Select the music you would like as background for your slideshow. Try to get music long enough (or a number of pieces of music that are long enough) to last the length of your show.
Each slide in your show should play for about 6-8 seconds. That’s ample time to see the shot and to read the caption without the picture becoming boring. Therefore, if your slideshow has 30 pictures in it, your music selection should be around 3 1/2 minutes.
Please note that if your slideshow is for other than personal use, you cannot use copyrighted music, which is pretty much all the popular music of the day. If your slideshow is for business use, consider finding public domain, copyright free music for your show. It’s available if you Google those search terms.
Before you begin building your slideshow, decide if you want voice-over narration instead of word text. Or maybe you want both? Your call.
Limit each of your slideshows to about 3-5 minutes so that viewers don’t get trapped into watching for huge lengths of time. Unless they have a vested interest in the show (for example, they were with you on the trip to that luxury resort) most folks won’t hold the same interest in your photos as you do.
So how do we convert paper photos or digital photographs into a marvelous screen slideshow that you’ll be proud to display for guests or at the next company function?
Tags: digital, photo, scanning, slide
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Converting Slides Scanning To Digital New York Quality Media
Thursday, June 11th, 2009It used to be the standard way to have one’s portfolio was to have pictures of every piece in slide form. One would then send those slides to art schools, jobs or what have you. Slides unfortunately have many drawbacks. For one thing, a person must have a projector in order to watch these slides. They are also bulky and take up a lot of space. Not only that, they are difficult to store and ship. Through modern day technology though, a person can convert their slides scanning to digital New York quality media. It is much easier to store, share and even manipulate a digital copy.
Slides have many problems when it comes to storage. Converting your slides scanning to digital New York quality media however can help a person greatly when it comes to storage. Slides are very sensitive to temperature and also moisture. If you do not have a safe place like that for your slides, then they will eventually be ruined and all of the hard work put into them lost. A digital copy however is not prone to the elements, and can be easily backed up in many different ways. Another reason to convert your slides scanning to digital New York quality media is in case of some kind of accident or catastrophe. No one expects a flood or a fire to happen to him or her. Slides in this case would be ruined. A digital copy that has been uploaded or doubled to somewhere else however remains just fine.
When you convert your slides scanning to digital New York quality media you are also making your slides much easier to see. Once your slides are a digital copy you can do so many things with them. For one thing you can make prints just about anywhere. What is even greater than that though is putting the images online. Once your slides are digital, you can host your images on any number of web sites and share your images with everyone in the world. Also when you convert your slides to digital New York quality media, you can make your own web site to feature your images. Having an online portfolio is a great way to gain future positions.
Maybe the best thing about converting Slide Scanning to digital New York quality media is that a digital copy of something is so much easier to work with than an image that is stuck in physical form. One can do some pretty impressive things with negatives and printing, but nothing compared with what Photoshop can do. Programs like Photoshop even have features that can emulate anything a person could do with film and printing alone. Also when one converts slides scanning to digital New York quality media, he or she then has more artistic options available. A person that had a painting in slide form can convert it to an amazing Flash animation.
Tags: digital, New York, quality, slide
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Ten Reasons to Scan Your Photos Before it is Too Late
Thursday, June 11th, 2009With the digital age fully upon us, most everyone still has boxes and boxes full of photos of our family and childhood memories stored away in a closet somewhere; typically, the entire 20th century! These photos deserve to see the light of day again and be appreciated, but many of us wait until it is too late to take care of these priceless prints. You say you already have a scanner? And how’s that going? Here are ten reasons why you need to scan your photos today.
10. You can restore your photo once it is digital. Restoration can make your old faded and scratched pictures look brand new again.
9. You can resize your images. Do you have a big family picture that you wish was a lot smaller so you can carry it in your wallet? Once your photo is scanned, you can shrink down the photo with ease.
8. Scan photos for the ones you love as a gift. How many times were you stumped during a gift giving holiday to try and figure out what to get that special someone? Scanning their photos is a unique and caring gift to provide your loved ones. Every time they look at a scanned picture, they’ll remember how thoughtful you were.
7. Organizing photos is easy once you have your photos scanned. You can organize them chronologically, by person, place or event.
6. Once your photo is scanned, you can shrink down or enlarge the photo with ease.
5. Its fun to revisit your photos. You need to gather them together to get scanned anyway.
4. Consolidate all your photos. All your scanned photos reside on your computer.
3. Share your photos with your friends and family. A hard copy photo can only be shared with people that come into physical contact with it. Once you make your photos digital, you can email them, post them on blogs or use them for whatever social networking site you are into. If a special occasion is coming up, you can quickly and easily make a custom slide scanning show for your guests.
2. Save your photos from the effects of time. Since photos are all chemical based, they will fade in color and deteriorate. Plus, they’re always at risk of physical loss due to fire, water damage, bugs and such.
1. You can be at peace knowing your photo legacy is forever stored away safely. You no longer have to worry about losing photos or some natural disaster. Once they are digitized, you keep them on a hard drive where you have instant access to them for when you need them. Keep multiple DVDs stored in more than one location, insuring your family collection’s safety.
Tags: digital, photo, scanning, slide
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