Photo Navigation

Photo Viewing | Photo Editing | Photo Tips | Panoramas |

Latest news

Aug 29: This is the first live use of the new web template from Andreas Viklund. I still have some tidying up to do but I was very pleased at how easy these templates are to use.

Aug 28: Canon have released the latest EOS 400D digital SLR. I wish I had waited a bit before buying the EOS 300D!!

Links:

• Digital Photography Review

Photography

With the advent of digital cameras there is a whole new world of opportunities for making use of your computer. The following is aimed at providing some ideas for software and services that will help you get the most out of your photography.

On the other hand photography will never quite be the same again because the digital media creates its own headaches. First there is the sheer volume of photos that you can now take with ease, placing demands on backup and safe storage. Instead of waiting to see what was on the film, you can now instantly judge the picture and then decide what you want printed (if any). You now have some responsibility for the quality of the image meaning that when you download the image, you may need to crop, re-size or apply a filter. In effect you can now have control of some of the editing that was done in the darkroom. So film was much simpler for the average user who just had to take the film to Boots to be developed and printed

Choosing a Digital Camera

There is such a dazzling array of digital cameras out there that you are going to need to read some reviews, particularly if you are spending several hundred pounds. Unfortunately, it is still a fact that digital cameras are more expensive then their film equivalents. It is probably also still true that the quality of the end result has not improved when spending pound per pound. There are counterparts in hi-fi where CD still does not measure up to vinyl - however, you have to accept this as progress because soon you will not be able to buy a non-digital camera, just as the Cathode Ray Tube, Video Recorders have all but disappeared. So, if you are new to digital photography or want to replace your camera have a look at Digital Photography Review which I find gives a very comprehensive review including sample photos. It also gives very objective reviews and does not say a particular camera is best, but leaves it up to you to form your own judgement based on the supplied information.

Storing and Viewing Your Photos

Before digital photography you would finish your roll of film, take or send the film to be processed and then receive the prints and the negatives. The prints might eventually find their way into an album and the negatives would probably be kicking around in a cupboard or attic waiting for your heirs to dispose of them. With digital photography the whole accent has changed, so that you can now preview the photos on your camera, download them to a processor or your computer. If you have a computer then you are quite likely to download them to the computer, erase the image on your compact flash card, view them and then leave them lying around on your hard disk. Unfortunately, your hard disk can be prone to corruption and suddenly you find all those treasured photos have disappeared. So you need to start thinking about your photos as data and back them up on to CD or DVD storage so that should the unthinkable happen you can recover them. The backup can be thought of as the equivalent to having the set of negatives available. With a backup you can now rest assured that your heirs will only have to get rid of CD's/DVD's instead of all those tiresome negatives. A good viewer is useful for having a look at your photos and yes, I have used the Microsoft Image and Fax Viewer. I currently use Picasa and Faststone which together give me excellent JPEG viewing, Slide show facilities and a means of classifying my photos into albums.

Editing Your Photos

Digital photography now makes it easy for anyone to doctor their photos. This may just involve tinkering with exposures and colours, to inserting people who should have been there and removing those that you don't want to see. There is also another reason for editing and that is where you have some old photos that you want to restore. Although there are some useful tools that can be found on the net it would appear that all roads lead back to Photoshop. Unfortunately, Photoshop is not cheap and is quite a complex tool to master. The section on editing therefore includes notes on some of the tools available as freeware, but if you are serious about your hobby then you cannot but help look at Photoshop as your main editing tool.

Photo Albums

There are many photo album applications that allow you to recall and view your digital photos in a similar way to having them in a conventional photo album. To be of use the software should allow you to keep multiple albums with an album dedicated to a particular theme, such as a holiday, wedding etc. You should also be able to write a caption for each photograph and also highly desirable would be the ability to write some comments. In addition the album should support thumbnail views so that you can choose particular photos for full screen viewing. Recently, I have started to use Picasa which is now owned by Google. One slightly annoying thing is that it defaults to always searching for an update on startup; the good point is that this can be disabled in the options tab. Further details of my experiences are included on the 'viewer' page.

Sharing Your Photos

A number of services have sprung up on the net that allow you to store your photos on a remote website. You can then share particular albums with your friends, family without the need to post photos or attach them to emails. Most of these companies allow you free storage, but there are a number of points to consider before using these services. Having said that, I have used several of these facilities and consider them to be useful. A further way of sharing your photos is to use a web application to store your photos. I have used Coppermine which has many nice features, such as thumbnail views. As this is a PHP application you will need to make sure that your service provider has compiled PHP with ImageMagick support. This is required for re-sizing images and general image manipulation. Alternatively, you can use the web export facility in Picasa to produce HTML web pages of your photos.

Printing Your Photos

There is currently much debate as to whether it is better to print your own photos or use a professional service. As usual there is no straight answer to this question as much depends on the type of printer, the ink you use, the size of photos you want to print and the qualty and charges of the service. Last year I bought a Canon Pixma IP5200 and my experiences have so far been positive and I hope I can now start to answer some of the previous questions. In general I would say if you want to print more than about 24 photos using a standard size such as 6" x 4", then you can obtain excellent results from a professional service such as Photobox who provide the best service that I have seen. On the other hand if you want enlargements or only a small number of prints then use the Canon Pixma or equivalent. The print quality when used with the correct paper (i.e. Lexmark premium) gives superb results. The downside is that the ink soon runs out and there does not seem to be any suitable substitutes for the Canon ink cartridges.