Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Tutorial Two: Digital Camera use and applications

"A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature"

I feel this statement applies to many different devices including digital cameras. As technology is improved, products are improved (or so they say)! For example products are made smaller so they can be easily transported, light and offer more things. These days you can get an 'iphone' which is a cellphone, is an ipod, can surf the internet like a computer, address book, gps..etc all in one little handheld device!!

The good thing about traditional film based cameras is that they provided a hard copy for you of your photos, which you can then go on to put into albums. Also you often don't remember what you took photos of so it is a exciting surprise at the end.
Digital cameras allow you to edit, delete and take plenty more photos, however they require other equipment in order to do these things such as computers, memory cards, USBs. All this equipment can become expensive. Another good thing about digital cameras is that you can instantly view your photos and they are relatively cheap to print!

Digital cameras have internal memory as well as memory cards. Memory cards come in different sizes for example 1gb or 2gb. Once you have taken photos you can transfer them onto a computer using the memory card, a USB stick or computer cord (this usually comes with the camera). Once on the computer you can manipulate the photos, editing out the bad things such as red-eye. You can print your photos through your own printer or at a photolab through a kiosk eg Kodak or fujifilm. You take your USB or memory stick to put in the kiosk and print the photos of your choice.

Ethical issues that may arise using digital cameras are who is going to see the photos, are they for personal or public use? Do you have informed consent to take photos of someone/something and post them on the internet.
Due to the lack of internet security anyone can have easy access to images making privacy and confidentiality major considerations. With sites such as facebook, bebo, myspace and flickre often people don't lock their photos so anyone from anywhere can look through you photos, which aren't always just of you!

Digital images are used everyday in Occupational Therapy practice. They can be used to show equipment to clients or staff (from new catalogues) so they get a better understanding of what the equipment does.
Digital images are also often used when applying for equipment or housing modifications. For example an image of someone to illustrate their condition or someones front steps so the funder understands what needs to be done!

"Flickr was launched in February of 2004 and is the world's most popular repository of images and photographs. Acquired by Yahoo in 2005, Flickr allows users to store up to 100MB of images per month for free and allows paid subscribers unlimited storage."
(Retrieved June 23, 2010, from: http://webtrends.about.com/od/profile1/fr/what-is-Flickr.htm)
Flickr allows you to upload all your photos and share them with others from all over the world.This is great for friends and families who live far away from each other, it is a way of sharing their lives.

Other services that are similar to Flickr and allow you to upload photos include:
-Facebook
-Twitter
-Myspace
-Youtube

Optical zoom vs Digital zoom
"Optical zoom uses the optics (lens) of the camera to bring the subject closer. Digital zoom is an invention of digital video cameras. It is not uncommon to see digital videocams with 300x digital zoom."
(Retrieved June 23, 2010, from: http://www.photoxels.com/digital-photography-tutorials/optical-digital-zoom/)
Optical zoom is the better one to have as it gives the same quality as the original photo.

Pixels are the little photosensitive dots that make up a photo. "Megapixel is 1 million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but also to express the number of image sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays."
(Retrieved June 23, 2010, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel)

No comments:

Post a Comment