Computer Times
Put New Life Into Your Old Digital Camera!
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You may have noticed that the Olympus D-40 Zoom digital camera, which we reviewed in August, 2002, is still a featured product on our Editor's Choice page ( http://computertimes.com/edchoice.htm ). The reason is we have yet to review a better camera for all around digital photograpy. You can find the full review of this great little camera at
http://computertimes.com/aug02edchoiceolympusD40ZOOM.htm
We then felt that others may feel the same way about their camera and be interested in ways to put new life into their older digital camera. Thus, came the idea of a three-week trip to Europe for Executive Editor Charlene Jones and myself to road test the Olympus D-40 Zoom digital camera as it might be used by the average traveler. Since the increased security at airports is having many people leave their laptop computers at home we did the same. This created the problem of limited photos on a single flash memory card.
We immediately contacted our friends at SanDisk who graciously sent us an additional 128MB flash memory card for our Olympus D-40 Zoom. They originally provided us our first 128MB flash memory card for this camera when we tested it in August, 2002. This gave us two 128MB cards and one 16MB, which is bundled with the camera. We felt this would be a practical scenario for most travelers since their investment beyond the original camera purchase would only be two additional 128MB memory cards at $49.99 retail each. Of course, you could opt for smaller capacity cards. Current retail prices for the SanDisk SmartMedia cards are shown below.
SanDisk 32MB SmartMedia Card $17.99
SanDisk 64MB SmartMedia Card $29.99
SanDisk 128MB SmartMedia Card $49.99
Now, you may be looking at those prices and say, "Hey, I can get an off-brand memory card a lot cheaper than that." Sure you can, but the results will be unpredictable. Over the past few years, we have helped many readers with digital camera problems. The majority of the time there has been nothing wrong with the camera. Their problems were a result of faulty memory cards. Our advice is always to try your camera with a SanDisk card before you send it off for repairs. In our experience, SanDisk makes the best quality memory cards for digital devices like cameras and music players. As with anything else, quality is always worth the price, especially when your vacation photos are at stake.
Our friends at SanDisk also sent us a really cool device to work with the SmartMedia card, the ImageMate USB 2.0 Reader/Writer. This received our Editor's Choice award for November, 2003. You will find the full review at
http://computertimes.com/03edchoiceimagemate.htm
The ImageMate USB 2.0 Reader/Writer is a single slot, hi-speed reader and writer that connects to your computer's USB port. It provides the ability to write data to and read data from flash memory cards without connecting your digital device (digital camera, handheld computer, digital music player, etc.) directly to a computer. This saves a lot of battery power since you can work with your flash memory cards with your computer rather than your camera. This device made it so convenient when we returned home and we were working with the digital images, especially when another editor wanted to use the camera at the same time. See the full review for more ways that this device can save you time and energy.
One of the first questions that come to mind when traveling with your digital camera and a few flash memory cards is, "How many pictures can I get on each card?". While there is a good average number you can count on it really varies by the type of pictures you take. It also depends on the quality of pictures you decide to take. Virtually all digital camera will give you several resolution settings from which to choose. We selected the HQ setting on the Olympus D-40 Zoom digital camera which takes pictures at 2272 X 1704 pixels, a nice resolution to provide quality prints while saving some memory. At this setting, the amount of memory required for an individual picture ranged between 335 KB and 941 KB (941,000 bytes). That gave us the average capacity of 15-20 pictures on the SanDisk 16MB SmartMedia Card and 140-150 pictures on the two SanDisk 128MB SmartMedia cards. That allowed us about 300 pictures for our 3-week trip, or approximately 15 pictures per day.
Another question that comes to mind is, "Why do some pictures take as little as 335KB and others take up to 941KB at the same resolution?". The answer is quite simple. It all depends upon the amount of information the camera needs to store to reconstruct the picture. If you take a picture that has few colors and lots of smooth surfaces, the amount of memory required will be much less than for a picture with lots of dimension, textures and multiple colors. Two examples are shown below. The 335KB photo is shown on the left. The 941KB photo is shown on the right.
The two photos shown below each required 811KB memory. Even though the one on the left seems to have more depth, texture and colors, the one on the right has two faces (Editor Terrance Kibiloski and Executive Editor Charlene Jones), which require lots of memory to store all of the various textures of skin, hair, eyes, etc. Incidentally, the wide-angle lens of the Olympus D-40 Zoom let me take the photo on the right myself, even though I am pictured in the photo. I simply set the lens to the widest angle (35mm), stretched my right arm, pointed the camera at us and pushed the button. It took a few attempts to get it right but if finally worked just fine. :)
At this point, you might ask, "How do I know how much memory a picture will take when I point the camera and press the shutter button?". The answer is, "It is virtually impossible to know." So, that means all you can do is snap the pictures you wish to take and watch the counter on your camera to tell you approximately how many pictures you can still take. As you have just learned, this can only be an approximation since different pictures will require different amounts of memory.
Knowing this, the best way to manage your photos is to weed out the imperfect ones to make more room on the flash memory cards for the ones you wish to save. For example, let's say you wanted a picture of two people, like the ones shown below.
After you take a series of pictures, choose the one you want and then delete the others. That is the beauty of digital cameras. You can shoot pictures until you get the best shot possible. If you use a camera like the Olympus D-40 Zoom, you will not only be able to preview the images, you will be able to zoom into the details of the image to see a closeup of the key features to help you decide which pictures to delete and which to keep. For example, the photo at left shows the picture preview window on the back of the Olympus D-40 Zoom. While the picture may include sailboats, kids playing in the sand, and all sorts of other activity, the preview zoom feature allows you to zoom into your picture to see the details of the key part of your picture. This feature is so important when previewing your images, expecially in broad daylight when it is difficult to see key details well on a small screen.
Many digital cameras, like the Olympus D-40 Zoom, allow you to shoot short QuickTime movie clips, usually up to a minute or so. I suggest you leave the movie clips to your camcorder as these short movie clips can take up a lot of memory which will require you to sacrifice space for 10-20 pictures.
During our three-week trip, we found that we were able to take all the pictures we desired as long as we managed our three SanDisk flash memory cards by deleting inferior photos at the end of each day. Not only did this procedure save memory space, it gave us the best set of pictures to share as soon as we returned from the trip. The 300 pictures we ended up with provided a very nice documentary of the entire trip which included visits to Paris, Lourdes and Nice in France; Venice, Naples and Sorrento in Italy; Athens and Delphi in Greece; and multiple places on the island of Crete.
So, if you are contemplating a trip in the future and wish to take your digital camera but leave your laptop computer at home, we hope these few tips will help you put new life into your old digital camera. If you do not have a camera with all the cool features of the Olympus D-40 Zoom digital camera, a quick check of the Internet showed that it is still available at various Web sites at prices ranging from $279 to $590.
Bon Voyage!