Photos and Slideshows

Do you have boxes of old family photographs on slides cluttering up your closet? If you do, you're not alone. They were great at the time. Now they seem to be an unnecessary source of clutter and an impractical media format. The good news is that they can be easily converted to convenient digital photographs.

There are numerous services on the Internet that will convert your slides for you. It's also likely that there is a service near your home. This may be the best choice if you don't have too many. Otherwise, at twenty to thirty cents or more per slide, you might prefer to do it yourself.

There are numerous slide copiers and scanners on the market. If you have thousands of slides, this might be the best option. It's even possible that you could make some money copying slides for others. Here's an inexpensive slide copying instructions document and here are a few links for slide copiers from Amazon.com.

If you enjoy digital photography, like I do, you probably have already come across several different file formats used by digital cameras.

Regardless of whether you are an amateur or a professional, you will have to deal with image formats when you are taking pictures and transferring them to your computer and editing them.

Which image format is best for you? Much of it depends on the results that you want and how much control you need to have over editing your images. Below are some of the most common image formats used in use today.

JPEG

This is perhaps the most popular image format. It is used in both digital photography and in web design. This is an advantage because you can be sure that you can open your file using any computer and without the need for special
software.

There is a downside, however. JPEG is considered a lossy format, which means that a lot of details are lost due to compression.

TIFF

The answer to JPEG’s lossy quality is the TIFF format. This means that more details are saved for a better image quality.

The main disadvantage is that TIFF files ar much larger and therefore require more storage space.

RAW

Among the three, RAW could be considered as the file that shows images in their most raw form. RAW images are unprocessed which gives photographers more control in
editing them later on.

The choice you make depends largely on your specific needs. The good news is that there are many different alternatives to choose from.

I really like the cave in the second picture. Look for the footprint a little later on.

Sometimes I wonder if we have it too easy, with all our modern technological gadgets. I don't think so. I like easy. Still, it is best to not entirely forget our past and the simple pleasures it provided. Cameras are a good example. I like modern digital cameras and their ease of use. I especially like the way digital photographs can be stored, processed and shared electronically. I'm a bit spoiled and don't really know much about the cameras and photographers that preceded me. I decided to remedy this situation by doing an online search about old cameras and camera collecting. Here are some links I found useful.

Collecting and Using Old Cameras: This site features photo galleries of collectible cameras. Detailed descriptions and usage tips are provided.

Camera Collecting and Restoration: Here you will find detailed information about many old cameras and how they can be repaired so you can actually use them. He makes the point that many older cameras can be purchased inexpensively, yet take better pictures than many of the far more expensive cameras on the market today.

Antique and Nineteenth Century Cameras: It's kind of fun to browse through all these photographs of antique cameras. This site also features information and links for the camera collector.

Here's a beautiful, relaxing video. A very large, finely tuned set of windchimes is being played by hand. It's great music to listen to while browsing through photos.

I enjoy making wind chimes and tuning wind chimes that have been purchased elsewhere. Here is an ebook on making and tuning wind chimes that can be useful for those who would like to learn about that hobby. You might also enjoy this blog about microtonal music for general and free information about tuning.

I especially enjoy the pictures of the mountain tops among the clouds.

Putting a slideshow together isn't very difficult. I use Open Office software. It's free and relatively easy to use. It's also useful for much more than slideshows. It can also be used for text documents, spreadsheets and databases. It's good to know that you can insert clickable links into your slideshow. This is useful for promoting websites that have similar content.

Finished slideshows can be uploaded to SlideShare. This is a great way to share it with the world. It's an active community, so you will likely get comments on your production and meet people who post their own slideshows for you and others to enjoy.

This is kind of cool, an entire photography magazine in an embedded Scribd document.

American PHOTO 2009-06