Digital Camera Drop Protection

Scott writes, "I've dropped my digicam (Casio EX-V7) one too many times, and so I'm looking for some kind of "armor" to wrap the camera in to give it some protection. Cameraarmor.com sells a kit for SLRs. I wonder if anyone sells something for the more common fixed-lens digicam like mine?"

In a world with what seems like thousands of different cases for the iPod, you'd think there would be more choices for protecting your digital camera from drops. As you point out, the digital SLR market has some great solutions to protect both camera bodies and SLR lenses from drops. I have yet to find anything that guarantees your camera won't get broken if you drop it, but there are a few solutions that should improve the chances if your point-and-shoot digital camera takes a fall.

Photoshop Express - Online Photo Editing

Adobe officially joined the world of online photo editing with Adobe Photoshop Express. This online service allows you to upload photos, edit them, store photos in online albums, and selectively share some or all your photos online. This means you now have access to many of the basic Photoshop editing features without needing to own Photoshop and without needing to have your computer with you. In addition to having a photo repository with Adobe's Photoshop.com site, you can also pull in photos from Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa, which might get me to try uploading some photos to one of those services, instead of my personal preference Flickr.

I wasn't entirely sure I'd like editing Photos in a browser, but even testing the service from my AT&T BroadbandConnect account worked easily enough to convince me this could be a great way to edit photos going forward. Most of the editing features offer you multiple choices, so you can test several variations live, which makes editing just as fast as using desktop software. Editing is non-destructive, so you can always go back to the original version of the file, with a version history that allows you to look back through many undo iterations. Of course if you need automated actions, you'll still want to have Photoshop CS and many of the advanced features of Photoshop Elements aren't found here. For free Adobe has done a great job of exposing popular features, making editing easy, and paid attention to the need to store photos outside of the Adobe universe. Give Photoshop Express a try and you may think twice about tying up system resources with additional photo sorting and editing apps on your desktop.

While I'd like to see support for more online services (especially Flickr), in the meantime Photoshop Express will be one of my keyword bookmarks, so I have it when I need it.

Digital Photography Success - Training Guide

Taking pictures with a digital camera is a piece of cake. Just point the camera in the direction of your intended subject and push the button. Taking great pictures is a little more complicated. You need to know the basics of image composition, lighting, and how to develop an eye for detail. Digital Photography Success shows you how to do all that in with detailed examples over 174 pages, with tips, tricks and information that won't require a degree in photo journalism or expensive gear to comprehend. Instructions are straight forward and the examples will dramatically improve your pictures along with some photography practice. The details page for this guide is a little over-the-top with marketing hype, but in general it's a great resource for learning to take outstanding photos. Get your copy of Digital Photography Success today.

FastStone Photo Resizer

FastStone Photo Resizer is a handy tool if you take lots of photos. As the name implies this is a photo editing tool specializing in image resizing, but it does so much more. Crop, watermark, rotate, rename, and otherwise tweak your photos so that they are more meaningful than the raw IMG_00112.jpg label offered up by your computer either one-at-a-time or in batches. Create saved settings you can reuse on future batches of photos. Add text and borders to images to dress them up for publishing. This is a generally slick tool for making sure you breeze through those hundreds of images you've stacked up on your digital cameras flash memory card. There's a handy self-contained version that runs off of thumb drives if you frequently use public computers. The company also makes a screen capture app that I reviewed previously. [Windows 9x/2k/XP/Vista $0.00]

You may also want to try Visualizer Photo Resize.

Buying an Underwater Digital Camera

One common thread at CES 2008 was a number of new underwater cameras. A few are upgrades to existing product lines, but others are new entries in the market. Most specialize in being still cameras first, but a few like the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA65 shine as camcorders. One perk of the waterproofing is that these cameras will all do well in beach environments and anywhere else small dirt particles might get in your camera and gum things up, because the same stuff that seals out water also seals out dirt. You can watch the video to see several of the options and read through specs for the underwater digital cameras below.

Watch the video:

Remove People From Photos Automatically

There's nothing like trying to get a scenic shot, only to have people walk through the scene as you're taking a picture. Removing people from your photos is one of the key features of online photo site Snapmania. To make it work, you just need to remember to take at least 3 photos of of the same spot (meaning you probably need a tripod for precision). You then upload those three photos to Snapmania and some software processing will do a reasonably good job of taking everyone out of the shot. I didn't have any photos lined up for a test like this, so I used the sample photos they include when you create your free account.

I think if I'd chosen the right three images, rather than the left three, I would have ended up with a much cleaner result. Still this is a handy solution for making travel photos come out looking the way you want them if you have the patience to take the shots you need.

As an alternative, you may also want to review this tutorial on removing people from photos with Photoshop.

CamLeash Digital Camera Strap

CamLeash was one of the most practical things I saw a CES 2008. Every point-and-shoot digital camera ships with a wrist strap, but I find the factory straps useless because they don't hold your camera in place. CamLeash addresses this by fastening securely to your wrist and including a snap-away plastic latch to allow you to disconnect your camera from the neoprene strap around your wrist. This comes in handy for taking a camera hiking, to the beach, or to places where you might be more likely to drop your camera. CamLeash would also be a great accessory for taking a camera underwater (with proper housing, of course), where you'd want to be sure your camera didn't slip off and disappear into the surf. I'd like to see the company include several of the little strings for the camera side of the leash in every pack, so I could easily swap between one of several cameras, but you'll likely see me toting a camera on the end of a CamLeash on a regular basis. The company also suggests the same solution (branded as GameLeash) makes an excellent strap for Nintendo DS and Sony PSP portable gaming consoles. At $12.99, the LeashTec straps are far cheaper than replacing a dropped camera.

DIY LED Digital Camera Light

If you're inclined to do some soldering, ProdMod has a tutorial on how to make your own LED Light that connects to the tripod mount on the bottom of your digital camera. The DIY camera light is based on the CameraBright light I featured sometime back. Building your own requires 3 AAA batteries, a plastic battery housing, a single 20-thread screw, and 3 LED lights. While slightly bigger than the CameraBright, this DIY unit has the advantage of widely available batteries, which are cheaper to replace whether you're using rechargeable batteries or disposables. Another key advantage is a 16-hour runtime (the CameraBright units run for 4 hours). Neither of these lights is a replacement for a larger lighting rig, but as a portable solution to get more light in dimly lit environments, 2 dollars in parts looks like an excellent solution.

How may pictures will my memory card hold?

Mary writes, "I'm going on a two week vacation to Hawaii. My digital camera currently has a 512MB memory card. I'm planning to take lots of photos, but I have no idea if my card will be big enough."

Whether your camera's flash memory card will be big enough to hold all of your pictures depends on many factors, starting with how many pictures you define as "lots of photos". This is further complicated by not knowing which quality setting you've chosen in the camera settings. And it's also important to know how many megapixels images taken by your camera can be.

My recommendation will always be to have a spare card on hand, because you never know when you might want to take more photos. 1GB memory cards are often available for well under $20, making it a modest addition to your vacation budget. It is possible to make a good guess as to how many photos you can fit on a single memory card using the following chart as a guideline. All you need to know is the Megapixels number for your digital camera.

When Automated Photo Editing Attacks

I'm always wary of using the various Photoshop Elements auto-fix tools. Sometimes they work well, but when they don't photos tend to have strange results. I'll take the manual assisted color correction, red-eye reduction, sharpen filters, and lighting adjustment over anything the so-called Auto Smart Fix features can deliver. So far software isn't always smart enough to know when something is already good enough. Jason Dunn proves my point with his test of the new Photoshop Elements 6 Auto Red-Eye Reduction. He tested against several album art images, which are typically already optimized and ended up putting eye shadow on Adam Sandler instead of skipping to the next unfixed image. You can see a better example of Jason's lousy experience with Photoshop Elements 6 automated features in the Digital Media Thoughts article Photoshop Elements Auto Red-Eye Reduction Headaches.