hewgill.com Real-World Computing Photography Search

Real-World Computing: Photography

Digital cameras have revolutionized photography, at least from my point of view. While not nearly as sensitive as normal film, their convenience and processing speed are far superior.

I have owned a number of digital cameras:

• Canon PowerShot 350 - 640x480, fixed focus, no zoom

  This was my first digital camera. It was very simple, having no automatic adjustments. Because of this, it was very quick to take pictures - you didn't have to wait for any automatic focusing.

• Canon PowerShot A5 Zoom - 1024x768, 3x optical zoom

  In addition to the increased resolution, the big advantage of this camera was the zoom lens. It was nice to be able to take pictures that weren't just landscapes, without getting right up close to the subject.

• Canon PowerShot S100 - 1600x1200, 2x optical zoom, pocket size

  The appeal of this camera was its small size. Its face is almost exactly the size of a credit card, and it is only one inch thick. Obviously, more resolution is better, but the size comes at the cost of reduced zoom capability.

• Canon PowerShot S110 - 1600x1200, 2x optical zoom, pocket size, records MJPEG video

  This camera is almost identical to the S100, but I just had to have the movie capability.

All these cameras use the "compact flash" storage media. Although the camera has the ability to connect to a computer directly, I prefer to simply remove the CF card and read the files directly. I have an old HP 620LX whose only job is to read the CF card and run an FTP server so I can retrieve the pictures. There are many standalone CF card readers available that would do an equally good job.

My photo gallery contains lots of pictures I've taken.