Personal Technology

Ready for Digital Photography?

During a recent visit to the camera shop, the salesman asked me if I’d like to trade my 35 mm compact for a Digital Camera (digicam). Of course I’d have to pay the difference in price. I passed frequent glances between my six-month-old zoom compact and the shiny new digital camera on the shelf. The price wasn’t steep, and I wouldn’t need to pay for rolls, developing and printing ever again. But I decided to stick with my 35mm camera. I’m sure other Indian ‘proconsumers’ are faced with the same decision and shy away from digicams.

The truth is there are some issues that manufacturers needed to address to make digicams commodity items (like cell phones). I’ll analyse these issues here and then discuss how digicams are evolving to address these issues.

I think there are four or five factors that need to be addressed if digital cameras and digital photography are to take off—pricing/features, ease of use, a simple way to share and view pictures, and prints.

The SanDisk digital photo viewer

Pricing/features
Digicams must be affordable, and this is especially important in a price sensitive market like ours. Sub Rs 10,000 cameras should offer decent resolutions of 2 megapixels and above. Presently, entry-level cameras costing around Rs 5,000 (or less) offer low resolutions. These cameras do not come with optical zoom (which enthusiasts and professionals consider important). However some models make up for that by doubling as Webcams, and some can even shoot short video clips.

I think a digicam in the range of Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 would be a popular choice especially if it offers a resolution closer to 3 megapixels and had at least digital zoom.

Ease of use
There are people who shy away from electronics gadgets because they perceive these to be too complicated to operate. Of course, if you can’t figure out how to sync your newly acquired handheld with the PC, get your 12-year-old cousin or son to do it! But look at what’s happened with mobile phones. It seems everyone knows how to operate one. Cell phone manufacturers (like Nokia) wanted their phones to be easy to use, and so they designed simple and intuitive interfaces. The basic menu system on Nokia phones for instance, remains consistent across all models. So even if you change your phone each year, but stick with the same manufacturer, you’d never have to spend too much time learning how to use the new phone. Nokia calls that ‘Human Technology.’

Well, I’d like to see digicam manufacturers emulating Nokia. In fact they should agree on standards and have a common basic interface for all digicams.

Sharing and viewing pictures
After you’ve taken all those great vacation pictures, you’d want to show these to your friends and family at home. Here are some ways of doing this.

Pictures can be viewed on the tiny LCD screen behind the camera, or you can take print-outs. You can also transfer those digital pictures to a PC, edit these using some software, and then view them on the PC screen. If the PC has a CD writer, you could burn photo CDs and mail these to your friends. Another option is to publish these photos to a website (and exchange its URL)—or you could use photo exchange services on the Web (like Yahoo Photos).

But wouldn’t it be simpler if you could just connect the digicam to the TV so that the family could gather round in the living room and see your vacation pictures? Some digital camera models do offer this feature.

Also, some high-end television sets now incorporate a memory card or memory stick slot. So you can pop the memory card out of the camera, insert it into the TV’s slot and view those pictures instantly.

For the vast majority of us who do not own such TVs, an option is to use a memory card device that can be connected to the TV.

SanDisk, a well known manufacturer of memory for portable devices, offers a digital photo viewer that functions like a memory card reader. This device can be directly connected to a TV. It has slots for various types of memory card formats like Compact Flash (Type I and Type II), SmartMedia, Memory Stick, SD, and MMC.

Prints
In order for digital photography to become more acceptable (especially among professionals), it’s important that printouts match the quality of conventional prints (from film). Printer manufacturers are well aware of this and have taken steps to ensure this.

One way to ensure this, is technology that improves the way photos are printed. HP for instance has PhotoREt technology—a process of layering multiple drops of ink in each dot to produce photo realistic printed output. This technology has been incorporated into HP’s Colorsmart driver software.

Camera manufactures also sell special photographic paper for glossy prints. Some vendors claim that the inks used in their photo printers are fade-resistant up to 70 years.

Conclusion
Digital cameras and printers are still evolving and the technology continues to improve. Manufacturers realise that there are other factors (other than just resolution) that go towards making a great digital camera. In a year or two digital cameras will become more affordable and easier to use. Then you can go ahead and show off your digital photography skills!