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Digital Cameras

The digital camera revolution is to be seen everywhere. At any contemporary wedding or party, the venue is continuously alight with twinkling camera flashes from sexy looking, minute devices which record every unguarded moment, apparently for posterity.

The modern digital compact camera is an amazing item of current technology which, despite its relatively low price, produces excellent images just about every time the trigger is pressed. Maybe there are uses for such devices within your business?

What sort of uses?

Amongst our clients, the digital camera has been pressed into many roles, including images for the in-house newsletter, images to record against various records in a database, images to attach to reports and work orders and as a diagnostic tool. Think real estate.

How often would the value of a note of explanation be significantly enhanced with a single image?

What sort of camera?

I have mentioned the compact digital, as this is the model most often seen. It is certainly the most appropriate for an unskilled photographer to use: point and shoot. Such a device may be purchased for under $300.00.

If you want a little more flexibility and capability, you may want to have a more careful look at the specifications.

If you want to compete with the professionals, you may want to consider a digital SLR model, but these are larger and heavier than the compacts and often a bit more challenging to use.

The unimportant specifications.

Much is made of the megapixels. Unless you want to produce prints larger than A4, and some might, any megapixels greater than 3 are wasted and simply create larger files to manage, e-mail and store. Unless you have some special need, 3 megapixel resolution is perfect.

Digital zoom is another easy and cheap to create facility often touted as a benefit with lower cost cameras. Digital zoom is achieved by increasing the size of the pixels as they are recorded on the screen, reducing quality substantially. Nearing full digital zoom, you may well see the image begin to “pixelate” (go blocky) quite noticeably. I suggest that you don’t need it and, if your camera has the facility, you don’t bother to use it except in an emergency.

More important specifications.

Optical zoom is of real value. How often have you taken a shot of somebody and, when printed, you cannot recognise who is in the picture? You were standing too far away and the details are lost. With optical zoom, you can enlarge the image to get the optimum balance between content and detail without needing to invade the subject’s space.

Many cameras specify the zoom in 35mm equivalents, and a reasonable range is between 28mm and 105mm (35 mm) or 18mm and 70mm (digital). To convert from digital to 35mm specification of zoom, multiply the digital factor by 1.5.

Modes are also valuable for the amateur or budding enthusiast photographer. A mode for sport, close up, landscape, night, beach, incandescent light etc, means you can get the camera to create the necessary settings to optimise the results of your shoot. If you use your modes wisely, you will stagger your friends and colleagues with the results you can achieve from a pretty basic camera.

Program overrides, or feature priority settings are for the more ambitious user. Here you can stipulate a shutter speed, or an aperture, and have the camera make the other settings for you.

White balance enables you to change setting to allow for different lighting: incandescent globes (gets rid of the red caste), fluorescent (gets rid of the green/blue caste) etc.

ISO range is another important item if you will be shooting in a range of lighting conditions. ISO is a measure of light sensitivity. Baby cameras may have a range from 100 to 400, and others may have a range from 200 to 3200. If you are happy snapping, 400 is probably all you will need. If you are going to push the boundaries, the more the better. But be aware, using higher numbers, equivalent to using faster film, may result in a reduction in quality of image. Play around and see for yourself.

Flash control might be important. Did you notice during the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games the perpetual twinkling of photo flashes from the stands? The average compact camera flash has a range of around 6 or 8m. When the flash is active, the cameras exposure is set for the light provided by the flash, say F11 at 1/125sec. From the stand, the arena would receive negligible benefit from the little inbuilt flash. The resulting picture will be underexposed. Look for a camera where you can set the flash “always off”, so the camera will set its exposure for much less light, giving you a sporting chance of getting a result.

And the list goes on and on. If you are looking for specific advice for a particular application, please call Tripos and we will assist where we can.

How we manage support calls.

In an attempt to best manage our response to calls for technical assistance, we ask our clients to place support requests via our main telephone number or support e-mail address, rather than via mobile phone to one of the technicians.

When a call is received in the office, it is recorded in our support log which is managed closely until the issue is deemed resolved. If it is not in the log, progress may not be adequately monitored.

Direct contact with the technician may also distract him from the work at hand, possibly leading to mistakes or resolution taking longer that expected.

In future, please place all support calls on 8272 7555 or support@tripos.com.au. Thank you.

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support@tripos.com.au

Of course, you could call us and arrange any change you would like.

Thank you.

Stewart Rankin Pty Ltd – ACN 007 972 901 & DL & LD Greenhough trading as

TRIPOS IT

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Staff

David Estcourt Hughes - Consultant

David Greenhough - Consultant

David Kenyon - Support

Scott Ferris - Technician

Dean Jarman - Novell CNE

Doug Smith - Windows and Linux specialist

Alison Campbell - Microsoft application specialist

STOP PRESS

Please read the final item in this newsletter, which deals with logging support calls.

Some significant items are being allowed to go unattended to because they are not appropriately reported to Tripos and subsequently logged into our support call system.

All will help if they log calls as per our preferred practices.