Recently in Photography Category

Each year I get several questions about photographing fireworks around the 4th of July and again around New Year's. I always intend to post an article on shooting fireworks photos, but the holiday seems to conspire against me and I never get it done. This year, I've managed to pull it off. While I can't promise you'll be the Ansel Adams of fireworks after reading these tips, I'm confident you'll take better photos than you did last year.

"I almost never need to scan documents, so I don't own a scanner. Today I need to scan in something I signed, can I just use my digital camera as a document scanner since a scan is a picture?"

There have been many occasions where someone needed me to sign a document and fax it back when I was no where near a fax machine or a scanner. In those cases, my solution has always been to take a picture, clean it up with photo editing software and upload it using an online fax service like MyFax. So the answer to your question is yes, but I'd also like to share something I found that makes it easier.

"I accidentally deleted photos from my digital camera memory card. Is there any way to get my deleted pictures back?"

I will warn you up front that there is no guaranteed method of recovering deleted files. When you delete anything, there's always a chance you won't get it back. There are solutions for recovering files and in many cases you can recover deleted pictures from your camera's memory card. You can pick from several choices in software for recovering deleted photos, but I happen to like Zero Assumption Image Recovery.

The first thing to do before attempting any photo recovery is to stop taking pictures on your memory card (until you've recovered the deleted photos). Every new photo you take increases the chance you will overwrite the portion of your memory card where that deleted picture was stored, making recovery almost impossible.

There have been several occasions where I wanted to upload some photos and images to post online, but I didn't have immediate access to my computer with Photoshop Elements installed on it. I've used Adobe's Photoshop Express a few times, but it feels far to cumbersome for minor edits and it doesn't support common image types like GIF. More recently, I'm finding Picnik to be a great alternative for editing images from any computer. There's nothing to install, so you don't need to worry about having administrator permissions. Picnik supports JPEG, GIF, and PNG, which are the primary formats I'd work with in a pinch. Features include resize, crop, sharpen, minor color correction, exposure and contrast, and the ability to save out more than one file format when you're done. If you upload images to Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, PhotoBucket, Picasa, Webshots, or FreeWebs, you can edit those images using Picnik. I also have a plug-in for editing images uploaded to Movable Type, which further extends the usefulness of Picnik. There is a $25 version, which is useful if you need to upload many files at a time, but for quick edits on the go, the free version of Picnik will likely be all you ever need. In addition to bailing me out in a pinch, I'm looking at Picnik as a handy way to edit files on a netbook without needing to use precious disk space for a bulky application.

Windows Pro Photo Tools makes an interesting companion to Windows Live Photo Gallery. If you travel, this is a handy way to add location data to images without necessarily needing a GPS. Browsing images with Pro Photo Tools, you can add a location, automatically look up GPS coordinates for the image, store them in the file, but have the image display a human readable location entry. If you already have GPS data, the app will help you look up the location name fairly quickly. Additional EXIF and metadata include description, details about the photographer, usage rights, and a bunch of additional information. Location data of images can be used to plot your photos on a map to either create a route map, or to simply get a birds eye view of where you took photos during a trip or event. If you work with RAW images, an additional photo codec may be required for your digital camera. [Windows XP/Vista $0.00]

Windows Pro Photo Tools

Back in April I recommended Windows Live Photo Gallery as an essential upgrade to the built-in photo browsing of Windows XP. It also enhances Vista, but the difference isn't nearly as dramatic. Since my initial recommendation, the Windows Live team made additional enhancements and exposed some features to allow other people to make Windows Live Photo Gallery even better. In addition to better tagging of images, basic photo cropping and red-eye removal, there are vastly improved online sharing features. At the time I first wrote about the app, Windows Live Spaces was the only place you could upload photos. Now Windows Live Photo Gallery supports uploading to Flickr, Picasa Web, SmugMug, and any Drupal installation via a set of handy plugins. In theory someone could write a plugin to upload almost anywhere. The nice thing about the way its done is you only install the upload tools you need. [Windows XP/Vista $0.00]

Download Windows Live Photo Gallery

I tend to only use a fisheye lens when I want to distort an image, but there are times when you might use a fisheye lens for other purposes. For instance, say you want to capture everyone in a room in the same photo, but your lens doesn't have a wide enough angle or you simply can't move far enough away from your subject. The fisheye effectively shoots to the corners in those scenarios, with the downside being you get a warped image. Fisheye-Hemi plug-in to the rescue! Shoot with your fisheye lens to get everything in the shot, then use the software to 'fix' the image and make everyone look normal. In most cases you can get the image to appear as if you started with the correct camera lens in the first place. This is made by the same people who do ShineOff and PearlyWhites. [Windows XP/Vista $29.95]

Download Fisheye-Hemi Plug-in

Before Fisheye-Hemi

After Fisheye-Hemi

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.

The CamLeash I wrote about earlier this year is a good starting point. It fastens to your wrist and keeps your camera from dropping when it slips from your hand.

Snug-It cases from Delkin are one of the better choices I've found, if you can find one for your digital camera model. The are specifically designed to work without needing to remove the Snug-It from your camera, down to including a protective plastic screen over the LCD display on the back of the camera. Casing is made of a smooth silicone and if you happen to have a touch-screen camera, there's a hinge to make the screen accessible. Prices on Amazon range from about $10-15, while ebay pricing ranges from about $10-30 depending on the model of camera protected.

A second option with fewer model-specific options is Foarm cases. The cases are made of custom-molded impact dispersing foam, which seems like it might absorb impact slightly better than the Snug-It, while not feeling as great to hold in your hand. Foarm cases also expose camera features for the models they support, although there is no protective shield for the LCD. Buttons are recessed nicely in the design to prevent accidental pushing. Foarm cases are in the middle of the Snug-It price range at about $17 on Amazon.

The wrist strap is my favorite solution of the three, because it's the only one that keeps the camera from slipping from your hand, but if you prefer a case, one of the two choices here should help protect your camera if it drops.

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.

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.

Download FastStone 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.

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.

Sanyo Xacti VPC-E1

This is the first handheld camcorder designed to be waterproof. 1.5 meters (roughly 5 feet) is the suggested depth, although you can likely go a bit deeper as long as you don't stay under for too long - it's pressure that ultimately breaks the seal on these things. Buttons are big enough for easy use underwater, as long as you aren't wearing gloves. Video records to either SD or SDHC cards. The Xacti E1 shoots MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 at 640x480, with an approximate record time of just over 5 hours with a 4GB card. While I have only tested this camcorder with great lighting, it's supposed to do well down to 2 lux, which is the equivalent of candlelight. One key feature that sets this appart is the flip out view screen - this is a plus for shooting video of yourself and a greater risk of bumping it underwater while swimming around. Still images are recorded with a 6MP CCD at up to ISO1600, with a 5x optical zoom, which should make this a solid choice for underwater use. There's a manual mode for still images, although I can't imagine trying to use it underwater.

Pentax Optio W30

Pentax was one of the first camera makers to get in on the waterproof camera market. The current Optio W30 is rated to 10 feet for up to 2 hours. Image recording is 7MP with ISO1600 and 3x optical zoom. Videos are 640x480 in MOV QuickTime MJPEG format. Both SD and SDHC are supported. In many the Optio W30 has an edge on the competition. While other digital camera makers on this list work out the kinks for their early generation products, Pentax is making updates to a proven product. In talking with one of their reps, it seems that the Pentax marketing team is much more conservative than competitors like Olympus, making the W30 look like it might not be able to go as deeply as it actually can.

Olympus SW Series

Olympus currently offers 4 different underwater cameras. Two are rated to 10 feet and two are rated to 33 feet. All four of them are designed to survive 14 degree temperatures and falls up to 6.6 feet. Top of the line Stylus 1030 SW is what I'll focus on here. Rated to 33 feet, this is the deepest water digicam on the list. At 10 Megapixels, ISO1600, and a 3.6x optical zoom, this may also be the most well rounded camera. Olympus gets low marks in my book for using the xD card format, which is primarily used only in Olympus cameras.

Panasonic SDR-SW20

Panasonic makes the one pure video camrea on this list. A 10x optical zoom is best in this class of cameras. Unfortunately the still imaging options are basically non-existent, with a 0.3MP 640x480 still imaging capability. On the plus side, the SDR-SW20 is waterproof to 5 feet, similar to the Xacti VPC-E1. The SDR-SW20 is a slight improvement over the SDR-S10, which was the previous Panasonic camera in this style. The body and design seem better designed for shooting underwater than some of the options on this list, although I'd still lean toward Olympus or Pentax for flexibility. Video is recorded in MPEG-2 format at up to 10 Mbps, making it easy to edit in virutally anything but Windows Movie Maker.

VuPoint DC-WPC-ST531T

At the budget end of the underwater camera class sits the VuPoint WPC-ST531T. This digital camera is available for under $100 and looks and feels like it should. I didn't get a chance to actually take pictures, so I don't have personal experience with image quality. Specs are rough, with 5MP and a max of ISO200, which means fast motion and low light are likely going to be rough on picture quality. There's no optical zoom. If there's one bright spot for this camera, it's that the company says it can go 50 feet under water, which crushes the competition. Video is limited to 640x480 at 20fps in an AVI format. SD is your card option up to 2GB. This might be a good option for your kids, but expect to get what you pay for with this camera.

DiCAPak Waterproof Camera Housing

If buying a new camera doesn't seem appealing, there is an afforable alternative for your existing camera - an underwater camera housing. As shown in the video, you can wrap your entire camera in a waterproof housing that's flexible enough to access camera controls, while providing you solid protection for damaging water. I'm of the opinion that a naked lens will take better pictures than one trapped behind hard plastic, but with some practice you can still get good results from one of these housings.

Camera Model	Water Depth	Megapixels	Max ISO	Optical Zoom	Video Resolution	Video Format	Storage Cards
	5 Feet	6MP	ISO1600	5x	640x480	MPEG-4 AVC/H.264	SD, SDHC
	10 Feet	7MP	ISO1600	3x	640x480	MOV	SD, SDHC
	33 Feet	10MP	ISO1600	3.6x	640x480 30fps	AVI MJPEG	xD
	5 Feet	0.3MP	N/A	10x	720x480	MPEG-2	SD, SDHC
	50 Feet	5MP	ISO200	N/A	640x480	AVI	SD

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 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.

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.

Make your own Digital Camera light

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.

Photo Quality	128MB	256MB	512MB	1GB	2GB	4GB
2 Megapixel	134	268	552	1119	2245	4494
3 Megapixel	120	240	490	996	2000	4000
4 Megapixel	60	119	245	497	999	1998
5 Megapixel	48	95	195	395	800	1595
6 Megapixel	44	88	180	366	735	1471
7 Megapixel	39	78	161	327	657	1314
8 Megapixel	35	69	143	290	582	1164
10 Megapixel	26	53	109	221	444	887
12 Megapixel	20	40	83	169	339	678
	Number of photos per card

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.

In Part 1 of Fixing Underwater Photos, I covered how to repair scratches on the photo introduced by the underwater housing, which are essentially defects in your photo caused when the lens takes a picture of the plastic that keeps your camera from getting wet. In Part 2, I showed you how to correct soft focus in an underwater image. Here I'll go over some ways to enhance the color of your underwater photos to make the details pop. As I said at the beginning of this tutorial, some of color correction is a matter of personal taste, so consider the color corrections here a guideline, not hard and fast rules for fixing your images.

In looking at my original image, the color is a bit green and it looks a bit washed out:

For each part of this color correction, I'm using the Color Variations feature of Photoshop Elements. This is an easy way to enhance the color of your images without having to get too geeky. You can find the tool on the menu by choosing Enhance > Adjust Color > Color Variations.

For each component of the Color Variations, Photoshop Elements lets you move the Amount slider and then select an option. For most cases the default amount is sufficient although you may want to play with different amounts and compare results. If you ever dislike a change, you can either click the Undo button or Restore all changes to default.

Color Variations - Increase Saturation

For the first stage of enhancing color in this photo, I start by selecting Saturation from the options on the left and choosing Increase Saturation.

Color Variations - Highlights

For the highlights of the photo, I choose to increase blue and increase red, which brings out just a bit more detail.

Color Variations - Shadows

Next I adjust the shadows in the image, again with increased blue and increased red to override the green in the image.

Color Variations - Midtones

The last color variation change I make is to the Midtones. This setting typically has the biggest impact on the overall color of the image, which means a lighter touch is generally advisable. The first step is to move the Amount slider over a couple of notches so that the changes are more subtle. For this particular image, rather than increasing anything in the midtones, I opted to reduce the greens, which balanced the overall red, blue and green hues across the midtones in the image.

The final image is just a touch on the blue side of the spectrum, with skin tones in the image a little on the pink side (which accurately reflect my sunburn). Here you can see the image comparison side-by-side:

Read Part 1 of Fixing Underwater Photos

Read Part 2 of Fixing Underwater Photos

Find more digital photography tips

After repairing the scratches in the underwater photo in part 1 of this tutorial, it's time to sharpen up the photo a bit. All the photos I took underwater came out on the soft side. While you can't get completely crisp images using software, Photoshop Elements does an excellent job of tightening up lines where it can.

As you can see here, the image is definitely soft:

For this stage in editing the underwater photos, I'm using the Unsharp Mask tool in Photoshop Elements. You can locate this tool on the menu at Enhance > Unsharp Mask.

There are three settings here to work with:

Amount determines how much to increase the contrast of pixels.

Radius is used to identify how many pixels around edges to sharpen.

Threshold determines how far pixels must be from surrounding area in order to be considered an edge.

After experimenting with a number of settings, I went with an Amount of 75%, Radius of 10 pixels, and Threshold of 3 levels. Consider this a baseline and experiment to find settings that are perfect for you.

After applying the Unsharp Mask, the edges are much more crisp (although a better underwater camera rig may have helped in this situation as well).

Continue reading Part 3 of Fixing Underwater Photos

I just got back from a trip to Hawaii, where I shot some underwater photos at Hanauma Bay using a point and shoot camera safely tucked inside a watertight case. While I think I have a long way to go in becoming any kind of underwater photography expert, a little Photoshop help came in handy in making the most of the photos. One thing I noticed about the shots immediately was scratches from the front face of the underwater housing. The colors in all the images were a bit washed out as well, which could have been due to both the lighting conditions underwater and the quality of the camera. While color correction is certainly a subjective process, if you need enhance your underwater images, the following steps should get you some better looking images with a little bit of trial and error.

This tutorial steps through fixing images using Photoshop Elements, which is available for both Windows and Mac OS X. Other tools have similar features, so the guidelines for image repair should be reasonably similar no matter which tool you choose.

Removing Scratches from Images

As you can see below, there are a number of blemishes on this photo that didn't originate with the camera lens:

If you have scratches that show up in your photos, you can fix them with the Photoshop Elements noise reduction filter Dust & Scratches, which is found on the menu at Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches. There are two settings to adjust here:

Radius: determines how many pixels in a group to consider to be dust or a scratch. Setting this higher looks for bigger scratches.
Threshold: Determines what is considered dust or a scratch in the image. Setting this too high will blur large portions of your image.

After some testing, I opted to go with a Radius of 5 and Threshold of 10 for fixing the photo here. You may need slightly different settings depending on how big the imperfections on your image are.

Here's what the same section of the image looks like after applying the scratch filter:

Continue reading Part 2 of Fixing Underwater Photos

Skip to Part 3 of Fixing Underwater Photos

Download FlickrSync

Flickr is the one Web service I wouldn't want to live without. I store most of my photos there and I'm always finding cool photos taken by other people. Flickr provides a photo uploading tool, but it's not automated. FlickrSync provides an automatic way to sync photos between your computer and your account on Flickr. Set up rules to sync photos based on title, date taken, description, or tags. Synchronize all the information about your images between FlickrSync and Flickr. Browse local photos on your computer or your sets of images on Flickr. FlickrSync takes Flickr to a whole new level. [Windows XP/Vista $0.00]

"I recently imported some photos/videos from my Kodak Easyshare camera on to my new Inspiron computer complete with Windows Vista Premium - I can view the photos but not the videos - can you help?"

Kodak digital cameras record movies in the QuickTime MOV format. The easiest way to play back these files is with Apple's QuickTime software, which is available as a free download from Apple either as a standalone application or as part of the iTunes download.

Download QuickTime

If you want to edit these movie files in Windows Movie Maker or most of the other consumer editing applications available for Windows, you'll need to convert the MOV files to AVI or some other format compatible.

Download JPGVideo

Time lapse video is something I've always found fascinating. Take a series of images from the same place over the course of a day, week, month, etc., and then build them into a video to express the time change in a matter of minutes or seconds. JPGVideo is a simple app designed to make a time lapse video from a series of stills. JPGVideo is billed as a tool for Webcam images, but JPG files from any camera source will work. The only restriction is that the images must all be the same size (all must be 640x480, or 1280x960, etc.) The software will inject the JPG file name into the video as data relating to the frame, making it easy to keep the sequence organized. You define how many images per second of video, which determines the rate of your time lapse sequence. [Windows 2k/XP/Vista $0.00]

Ashirwad writes, "I just bought a Canon S3 IS and am pretty much satisfied with it except for one big issue. Its AVI files eat up the memory too fast and I can get a max. of 4-5 minutes of video on my 512MB SD card. I heard that an MPEG format video could have saved me. Now, as I had taken this camera on a trial basis, I can always, within a few days, get it exchanged. Are there any suggestions about another camera with similar specs and prices but one which can record more at the same quality?"

While there are other Digital Cameras with similar feature sets to the Canon S3 IS, I wouldn't recommend switching cameras simply because you're running out of room for recording video. The S3 IS records AVI files with M-JPEG compression, which does offer a substantially smaller file size than many other compression options used in the AVI container, without sacrificing image quality. Getting a still camera that records in MPEG-4 may save you a little space, but it's quite possible your video will look worse as a result too. What you really need is higher capacity SD cards. A very quick search of memory prices turns up 2GB SD cards in the $20 price range and 4GB cards in the $40 price range (as of this writing).

Another thing to consider in your video recording process is where you will use the video once you're done with it. If you're putting your video on the Web at someplace like YouTube, you can reduce the required space by shooting 320x240 video, especially if what you are shooting will never appear anywhere other than online.

If what you really want is a video camera, that's another story. I'd suggest opting for something like a hard drive based JVC Everio line camera or the Panasonic PV-GS320 for both affordability and overall quality.

George asks me to "recommend the best free program to get digital pictures from my camera into my computer files."

There are numerous solutions for importing digital pictures from your camera to your hard drive. I typically just connect my digital camera to my PC and copy the files over using Windows Explorer. By doing this, I maintain complete control over where my digital images are stored on the computer. If you prefer to use an external application, Google's Picasa remains the best solution available. In addition to being a convenient way to manage your images, Picasa also includes common photo editing functions, supports some of the best photo organization I've ever seen, works with low level photo data from your camera, and assists in uploading images to the Web or creating slideshows on your local system. One of my favorite features of Picasa is a timeline that shows when images were taken in relation to all your other images (which only works if your digital camera is set to the correct date). Picasa is free for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Linux.

Sean writes, "Why can't I get more than 99 photos on DVD from the Windows Media Center slide show? I'm using DVD-RW 4.7GB."

The DVD format is limited to a maximum of 99 chapters by design. This was originally meant to subdivide a 2 hour movie into no more than 99 parts, which would mean something approaching 120 second intervals if used to the full extent. Software developers later figured out you could also use this same approach to put up to 99 still images on a DVD, one for each of the 99 chapters. Most software remains limited by the 99 chapters per movie limit. I'm currently aware of only one alternative for getting past the 99 images limit in making photo slideshows.

Sonic figured out a way to extend this to 999 photos per slideshow and (to my knowledge) remains the only company offering DVD authoring software with support for more than 99 images per slideshow. The caveat to this is the Windows Vista version of Windows Media Center now supports 999 photos as well, which I believe was licensed from Sonic. This is one of the many reasons I love the Sonic MyDVD software, which includes support for the 999 images as well as pan and zoom effects and the other motion tricks popular in making DVD slideshows. You can find MyDVD either as a stand alone application or as part of the Roxio Easy Media Creator Studio 9 package. Both versions of MyDVD create standard 4:3 slideshows as well as 16:9 slideshows optimized for HDTVs.

How can I batch crop my digital photos without buying Photoshop? Photoshop Elements only lets me crop one photo at a time. I want something that lets me keep the same aspect ratio as the original and crop out everything I don't want in the photo.

JPEGCrops remains my favorite solution for batch cropping digital images, because it provides the flexibility to either apply the same crop settings to a large block of photos in a batch, or I can quickly go through a batch of photos and customize the crop for each image before applying all the changes. The software has a ton of preset crop sizes for both European and U.S. print sizes, with additional support for defining custom crop sizes.

Be sure to download JPEGCrops before you start.

The first time you use JPEGCrops it's a good idea to configure the preferences, which are avaialble from File > Preferences (Ctrl+P). I personally never print photos at anything other than 4x6, so that's my default. In the basic mode, JPEGCrops automatically puts the cropped photo in a new folder while keeping the file name the same.

It also provides a visual indication of image quality with anything over 300 dpi being high quality, 150-299 dpi being medium quality and under 150 being low quality. This is presented both with a numeric indicator for the dpi of the cropped area as well as a visual green (high), yellow (medium) and red (low). In advanced mode, you can configure the maximum values for medium and low to define the quality threshold.

Additional advanced options let you: automatically add something to the file name (like _crop) to make it easier to distinguish between the original and the cropped file; overlay a rule of thirds grid; keep or remove the embedded thumbnail; run a script after cropping an image.

If you need a specific size (like a standard pixel width for the Web), create a custom setting using the Add new aspect feature in preferences. For instance, if you need all your images to be cropped to 320x240, you could create a custom setting like this:

Your new option is then available as part of the Aspects list in the Settings. There are also a number of advanced configuration options if you need more control.

After opening the group of images you want to edit, the interface displays a thumbnail of each image. From here you can position the crop area, rotate the crop for landscape or portrait, flip the aspect ratio of the image, the crop, or both.

When all your changes are configured, use the Crop all Images to apply changes. The orginal files are left untouched, so you can always go back and re-crop the same image several different times to compare results.

After recently grumbling about the smoggy haze in some of my photos from Beijing, Gary B. sent me a tip from Luminous Landscape about how to tweak contrast to make subtle details pop. The original article was geared to making subtle highlights like shadows standout for printed photos, but it seems to work for improving the look of images taken on a couple hazy mornings in China. The trick involves using some kind of Unsharp Mask filter, which as defined by the Photoshop Elements help file is a technique for giving the illusion of greater detail in an image (sharpness) by increasing the contrast between the light and dark areas of the image. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro all have an Unsharp Mask built in. I haven't found a good freeware plugin solution for this particular technique if you happen to use some other tool.

I'm stepping through the process here in Photoshop Elements, but the process is very similar using virtually any other sharpen filter with an Unsharp Mask. After opening your image in the editor, locate this tool from the menu by choosing Enhance > Unsharp Mask (or from the Sharpen Filters and choosing Unsharp Mask in older versions of PSE).

There are three settings here to work with:

Amount determines how much to increase the contrast of pixels. We're working with subtle highlights here, so for most cases you won't want to boost this by more than 20-30%.

Radius is used to identify how many pixels around edges to sharpen. For sharpening contrast in the localized fashion were working with here, a number between 40-70 seems to work well depending on the image, because you can really make edges stand out.

Threshold determines how far pixels must be from surrounding area in order to be considered an edge. By leaving the threshold at 0 the entire image is sharpened. Increasing this number to anything greater than 0 seems to make the effect useless for what we're doing here.

In my two examples, the original image is on the left. The Unsharp Filter is applied in the image on the right.

In this example I used the following settings:
Amount = 30
Radius = 50
Threshold = 0

A number of things grab me about the changes here. The pillars stand out more. The roof has the appearance of more detail. Even the wall in front of the building seems to have a little more character. I'm sure the settings could be tweaked further for a better result, but I was impressed by how little effort was required to make a few more details stand out.

In this example I used the following settings:
Amount = 25
Radius = 50
Threshold = 0

The big thing I notice here is that the trees have more edges to them and the doorways on the tower jump out a little more. The original image was flat.

The ideal scenario remains having great lighting in the first place. There's no replacement for having a clear sky or an overcast sky with no haze.

For more on this technique, you can also check out the Luminous Landscape tutorial

Here's several other Digital Photography related articles you might find useful:

Panoramic Photography Tutorial

Using your camera's Continuous Mode or Burst Mode

How to Take Glamor Photos

HP Slimming Effect Demo

The headline reads like spam, but it's really a reference to a new feature on HP's line of digital cameras. The company is claiming that a new "Slimming Effect" filter built into cameras will take off that 10 pounds the lens supposedly adds to images. I don't have one of the HP cameras to try it out, but presumably this works just like using the Photoshop Liquify filter to trim pixels from bodies in post processing (for the stunning before and after effect found in diet ads). HP simply put the feature in the camera to save you time after the fact. No word on when they will come out with a version to simulate anorexia, but in the meantime, I know I'll be asking my friends to only photograph me with HP. ;)

Cameras currently shipping with this feature include:

HP Photosmart M527 digital camera

HP Photosmart R927 digital camera

HP Photosmart R827 digital camera

HP Photosmart R727 digital camera

HP Photosmart R725 digital camera

HP Photosmart M627 digital camera

HP Photosmart R967 digital camera

While I currently upload most of my photos to Flickr, BubbleShare is one of the best looking alternatives. The site offers a ton of fun features for categorizing and labeling photos that none of its competitors are currently implementing. You can add audio captions to photos on-the-fly, include cartoon word balloons on images and share photo albums without ever creating an account. By creating an account BubbleShare includes a number of additional options for organization and managing images, as well as the ability to keep your albums private.

BubbleShare offers a few neat tricks other photo sharing sites should be drooling over. You can send out puzzle games of your photos for friends to try and reassemble. BubbleZoom is a clever favorite among the bunch - providing a 3x enhanced view of a section of any photo.

Album display options for BubbleShare are outstanding. For example, there's the slider display and photo story mode with the slideshow fading between images. All of this is done automatically. You can share albums with other users of BubbleShare or pass them along to friends who have never even heard of the service. A BubbleBar option displays images on the desktop for both Mac and Windows users.

Bubble Slider

Fader

Admittedly, the service isn't without flaws. It's optimized for creating these albums, whether you want to upload one picture or one thousand pictures. There are many cases where I upload a one-off image and the "album" concept doesn't make much sense. The only way to add multiword tags is to either add each word separately (like 'summer' 'palace') or run the words into one long run in (like 'summerpalace'). These are minor shortcomings for a site that makes sharing photos both easy and fun.

Someday they plan to announce a live sharing service with collaboration between multiple users. Similar to something like a shared desktop service from GoToMeeting or WebEx, you'll be able to browse and edit slides with other BubbleShare users. You can see a demo online, but they haven't made the service completely live just yet.

At the moment, all these services are both free and advertising free, so I'm not entirely sure how they will sustain the service over time, although they indicate there will be a premium version someday. In the meantime, BubbleShare is a fun way to compile and share images with friends, family and complete strangers (if you choose to share).

Download Photobie

With an interface vaguely reminiscent of older versions of Paint Shop Pro and a sold set of tools, Photobie is an all-around image editing and graphic design app with a ton of potential. The interface, while similar in some ways to the old Paint Shop Pro, lacks some of the polish of many years of refinement in that application. A lack of interface polish is made up for with an overwhelming number of tools not commonly found in free image editors. Irfanview has many great features and some overlap with Photobie, but the sheer ability to easily lock out and manipulate multilayer images makes Photobie a contender in my book. PhotoFiltre gets a leg up in the usability department, although Photobie has a few features not found in that wonderful freeware find as well. While all the basics like cropping, image color correction, resizing, batch processing, and basic filters are there, Photobie really shines in including multilayer editing with layer locking and full support for Photoshop compatible plugins better than any other freeware tool I've seen. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

Download Roxio MediaTicker

Roxio MediaTicker offers Windows XP users the chance to add a Vista-like feature to Windows now. The app puts images in a scrolling stock-ticker style sidebar, with three size options. The sidebar appears on top, bottom, left or right side of your screen depending on your preference. You're currently limited to choosing only one folder (including any subfolders) with My Pictures being the default. Selecting any picture from the ticker will give you a larger preview of the image with an option to email the photo to a friend, set the image as your desktop background, or print the image. The beta of the next version includes support for RSS feeds in the ticker. You can bypass registering the app by hitting cancel when you launch the application for the first time. The one potential downside is Roxio is reserving the right to occasional feed announcements into the ticker at some point in the future, which is their tradeoff for making the app free. [Windows XP $0.00]

There are little quirks I've never liked about iPhoto. It seems slow to respond, it makes extra copies of files. At one point you could put iPhoto on a diet, but you shouldn't need to download software to unbloat other software. Fortunately there are alternatives should you seek them out.

My favorite iPhoto alternative is Lightbox, which is the digital version of a pro photographer's physical lightbox. It organizes photos, similar to the iPhoto album structure, with support for most of the common RAW images flavors, as well as traditional compressed formats like JPG, PNG and TIF. One powerful feature of Lightbox is the ability to search by EXIF data. You can add custom meta data to files to further improve on search functionality. Backup support for tar.gz means nice neat compression for storing on DVD. iPhoto emulation mode allows you to use Lightbox in conjunction with iDVD and iMovie, instead of funneling photos through iPhoto. And to get you started, Lightbox imports photos from iPhoto so you can grow-up from the Apple-provided training wheels. Common tasks like DVD burning, HTML album creation, slideshows and format conversion also supported. [Mac OS X $25.00]

Another interesting option to replace both iPhoto and iTunes in Stimulus. Stimulus acts as an image browser with file sorting, while also providing a less bloated option than iTunes for playing back audio and video. Both slideshow and scale-to-fit display options make browsing images easy, image rotation and file details give you feedback on images. While Stimulus doesn't edit images, it does play well with others, supporting the ability to launch an external editor from within the Stimulus interface. There's also a Windows XP version. [Stimulus Windows XP / Mac OS X $19.95]

Download Redfield Water Ripples Plugin

Creating realistic water ripples in photos can be a trick when trying to simply manipulate the features of your photo editing app. It's much easier to find a plugin to do all the heavy lifting. Redfield created the aptly named Water Ripples plugin to help with this exact problem, providing plenty of customizable effects to tweak the perfect water ripple in your outdoor photography. If you don't want spend the time customizing, a randomization feature gets you most of the way there without fine-tuning. Also check out their Craquelure plugin and Sketch Master manipulation tool for further image editing ease. All plugins use the Photoshop compatible architecture, which works with most image editors. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

Download WildBit Viewer

Image viewing apps have been around for ages. Picasa remains my favorite image viewer for it's sheer elegance, but it has a few faults, like slowing down when you have thousands of images. WildBit Viewer seems to shine in this respect, handling fairly large loads of image files with great speed. EXIF, IPTC data from Photoshop, and image details imbedded in TIFF and JPEG are all supported. The software includes several different viewing options with multiple thumbnail sizes and fast zoom through slider functionality. A slide show mode offers 171 different transitions to build complex image slide shows. Editing functionality handles all the basics of resizing and image tweaking, but certainly isn't a full featured image editor. Multiple monitor support provides for fast-switching between two montiors. Over 60 image formats are supported in the viewer. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

Andy writes, I've heard about some digital cameras that can take several shots at the same time. How does this work and can I do it?

Since I don't know what type of camera you have, I'll provide an overview of possibilities. For all but the barebones entry level cameras, the answer to your question is likely, yes. The camera mode you are referring to is commonly known as either continuous shooting mode or burst mode, depending on who makes the camera. For higher end SLR cameras, this often means you can simply hold down the image capture button and take pictures until you either stop or run out of card space. For the point-and-shoot style cameras, a burst mode is typically limited to a specific number of photos. Turning on a continuous capture option varies somewhat by camera. There are a few things you can do to help ensure your burst mode shots come out looking great.

• If you're trying to capture any moving target, whether it's a sports action shot, people dancing or even a small child on the run, switching to a burst mode helps guarantee you'll get at least one good shot.
• One tricky aspect of continuous shooting is focus. Most SLR cameras auto focus throughout the burst image capture. Cheaper cameras sometimes start to lose focus if you get beyond 5 images.
• If you always shoot in continuous mode, you'll need to adapt a technique for shooting single shots. Some cameras are limited to capturing three or four shots anytime the image capture button is depressed. Others do recognize single image capture without needing to switch camera modes.
• When you capture in a continuous mode, the camera often buffers the images in an onboard memory and then writes the individual images to your card after capture. Depending on how many shots you captured, this may create a significant delay between the time you stop shooting one burst of images and the time you can start shooting again. Of course this varies greatly by camera, as well. More expensive SLR models deal with this quite nicely, reducing lag.
• Burst modes use batteries more quickly than single image capture. If you plan on doing significant burst mode capture, invest in a backup battery. It's generally a good idea to have a spare regardless, but this becomes vital if you plan to capture lots of action shots or if you're in paparazzi mode capturing dozens of images of a moving target.
• If continuous mode photography is important to you, make sure you know the limitations of the camera you are buying. For instance, avoid cameras limited to only 3 or 5 shots and spend the extra money on an SLR with nearly unlimited capture. Just because the camera is an SLR doesn't mean there's no limit. Some of the entry level Nikon units max out around 140 shots.

Compare prices on SLR cameras with continuous mode capabilities.

Download Free Raw Viewer

If your digital camera takes photos in RAW format, you need a way to view them on your PC. One option is the Difiapro.com Free RAW Viewer app, which looks like a Windows Explorer window with support for view most image types, including CR2 and CR RAW file formats). Simply browse to the folder containing RAW image files you want to view and the app pulls in thumbnail previews of the image. Click on any image for a larger preview. In my testing of the app, it seemed to have issues displaying images on the desktop, but all other locations worked as expected. Several applications offer a more full-featured viewing experience for CR2 and CR images, but for a lightweight image viewer, this app gets the job done nicely. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

Download StudioLine Photo Basic

StudioLine Photo Basic imports photos directly from your digital camera or storage card, storing them in a database similar to competitors like Picasa or Adobe Album. Supports both IPTC and Exif to provide detailed access to all aspects of image tagging. You can define keywords and descriptions for each photo, build categories and generally micromanage your images to your heart's content. A built-in suite of tools for auto-correcting images, including red-eye remove and basic color correction are included as part of the package. Email images, print from within Photo Basic or upload Web galleries of specific images. One key advantage over using something like Picasa is a very open interface for uploading images from within the application. You're not locked into the Blogger/HELO world supported by Picasa. CD and DVD burning is also included as a standard feature. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

DIY Video Bluescreen or Greenscreen

When I needed a greenscreen to try some chromakeying, I went with the lazy and more expensive approach of buying something for around $150 through a theatrical supply store. Not the same as doing it yourself, but the timesaving tradeoff looked better under the circumstances. If you're on a seriously low budget, consider the DIY solution detailed at Jeff's Computer Support Online. Jeff provides step-by-step instructions on constructing a greenscreen from muslin fabric and PVC piping. The upside is a lower cost of materials for your project. The downside to this approach, as Jeff points out, is that the PVC frame isn't very mobile when put together. Apart, the frame is lightweight and could easily be transported anywhere. Thanks to Make for the tip.

Mount a Camera to Your Bike

I remain amazed at the amount of response I get from my DIY Bottle Cap Tripod. The latest inspiration is a DIY camera mount for your bicycle from 7mc. He uses a 3/4 machine screw, a 1 foot length of bicycle inner tubing, and a metal hose clamp secured onto bicycle handlebars from a front recording view with a digital still camera. While I'm sure the video looks a little bumpy unless you're riding a bike with an insane suspension on a ultrasmooth surface, if you want to record your ride, this is an easy way to get the job done. There's also the alternative Bicycle Camera Mount I wrote about several months ago. You can geek it up a notch and record your video coupled with ShotMapper Deluxe to track GPS coordinates on your video tape.

Lifehacker Flickr Tips
Jake on Flickr

While I like some of the online photo sharing alternatives, Flickr remains my default for uploading photos (when I remember to upload them, that is). There are a ton of ways to make Flickr more useful, including assigning yourself a human-readable URL, uploading photos via email (which makes it easy to upload via cell phone) with varying degrees of privacy, email tagging, posting to multiple blogs and a whole host of options for sharing photos with other people. Lifehacker recently put together a reasonably comprehensive list of features designed to maximize Flickr functionality. The advanced email tips are probably the best of the bunch, offering some useful tips that make uploading via cell phone a workable alternative for camera phone snaps.

Download Unique Filer

Apropos of the recent discussion on culling photos, reader Rob J recommended Unique Filer as a solution to helping eliminate duplicates. The software scans files for both exact match duplicates, as well as images of different sizes and composition, even if they aren't truly identical. This last option, referred to as Fuzz Compare, examines the makeup of images looking for similarities. A tree listing of results includes thumbnails of images for a visual set of results. There's a power user feature to auto delete duplicate files, but it's off by default. I haven't spent tons of time with the app as of yet, but I have tons of similar images and Unique Filer impresses me with the results I've seen so far. There is a beta version of v2.0 still in progress for the past 5 years, but the 1.4 version seems quite effective. The trial version is fully functional but nags to register on startup and after every 10 deleted files. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

I'm always on the lookout for new innovations in tripod mounting. Bogen may offer top-of-the-line gear, but packing a heavy tripod for a weekend trip or a cross town jaunt doesn't make sense. In some cases my bottle cap solution is perfect. Other times, you need more flexibility, which is where the Gorillapod comes in. I ran across this flexible camera mount thanks to simplehiker and it looks perfect for many awkward camera situations. Three flexible legs provide virtually unlimited configuration options, including wrapping around branches, poles or the railing on the Bremerton Ferry. A mere 1.6 ounces makes this a no-brainer for backpacking and the $25 price tag is easy to grapple with too.

I admit it. I'm a digital packrat. I have more duplicate photos than anyone needs. Not just duplicates of the exact same file, but those other doubles, the kind where I took several shots that are almost identical. With virtually unlimited drive space, deleting the blurry shots isn't even a necessity. Just because you can keep everything doesn't mean you should keep everything.

Occasionally I go through and purge a bunch of the worst shots in an effort to reduce the digital chaos, but that doesn't eliminate the four almost identical shots I took of a waterfall trying to get decent lighting or the right spray. Jason Dunn over at Digital Media Thoughts thinks it's high time to take a hard look at digital photos and throw out all but the best images.

I agree with this idea in principal, although I'm among the worst offenders when it comes to dumping dupes. Jason's reasoning is sound; by making hard choices about picking the best shot, you grow as a photographer because you are forced to pass judgment on your work and identify imperfections. I already tend to do this in situations where I'm using photos for a project, but not for the candid shots.

During a presentation to friends and family those four or five identical shots look even more redundant. Pick your favorite and spare your audience the "...and here's the south side of Mount Rainer after moving the camera yet another millimeter to the right." Where do you sit on the digital photo fence? Do you purge to find the best shot or are you hording the duplicates? Join the discussion over at Digital Media Thoughts.

I'm trying out the new Vizrea Snap media sharing service. Vizrea Snap debuted at this year's DEMO conference and hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves. If you own a Nokia camera phone, stop reading and go download the app now. It's free and you'll see what I mean almost immediately. If you don't own a Nokia phone, you should still try out Vizrea, but some of the cool features aren't as immediately apparent (yet).

So far there are a ton of things I really like about Vizrea and a few things I'd like to see improved. It's hard to specifically peg the service as doing one specific task, because it does a number of tasks well. Like any app I try, there are a few things I'd like to see improved which I will detail below as well. Below I break down the features I like in Vizrea and mention some of the areas where I'd like to see some improvement.

What I like about Vizrea Snap

Camera Phone Image Management: One thing Vizrea does better than other services is move photos from a camera phone to your desktop or the Web. You can either setup the phone service to auto-upload every photo and video to a default category on your Vizrea desktop or manage uploading on a per image basis. The camera phone app lets you title a photo and pick a collection for automatic image sorting. While other photo services like Flickr support emailing images to your account, the killer feature here is the sort. You can create a photo collection on the fly to keep images around a specific location or event grouped appropriately.

Contact/Friend Management: Vizrea provides an important level of granularity in contact management. I can specify individuals and groups with viewing privileges on a per photo or per collection basis. This is far superior to the traditional Friend or Not Friend approach. Even the Flickr Friend, Family or Public options are too basic if you only want to share images with a relevant group of people. Vizrea takes the approach that sharing photos can be on a per individual or per group basis, with unlimited group definitions.

Collection Management: Collection management remains one of the most complicated aspects of sharing photos with friends and family (and in some cases managing your own photos). Vizrea shines here as well. I can define a group of photos as a collection, share that collection with the people I want to see it through the Vizrea service, put the photo collection online and browse collections from any desktop or through the cell phone interface. One photo may be associated with many collections without needing multiple copies of each photo on your hard drive or a confusing assortment of folders. I can also browse any photos shared by my contacts on the phone, on my desktop or on the Web.

Media Management: Vizrea isn't limited to photos. In addition to JPEG images, Vizrea supports 3GP and MPEG4 video formats and the ARM audio codec common to many cell phones. The desktop app bundles required codecs, so you don't need to worry about playback once files are on your desktop.

Photo Browsing: Vizrea provides a phone interface for browsing photos stored on your home machine or in your contacts shared images. The desktop app sorts collections, provides image browsing for collections from contacts and offers limited photo editing.

Remote Updates: Everything in your Vizrea Snap universe, from the blog, to photo collections, to audio and video is updateable remotely. Depending on the features in your phone, you could maintain all Vizrea Snap features while going days or weeks without physically interfacing with your desktop.

Note: It's worth pointing out that Vizrea Snap isn't only meant for camera phones. Photos taken with any camera are shareable through the collection tree in Vizrea Snap. The cell phone stuff makes everything more portable.

What I don't like about Vizrea

Walled Garden Approach: While the combination of Vizrea desktop and cell phone apps is necessary for managing photos behind the scenes, I don't like being stuck publishing my photos to the Web in the Vizrea playground. I want to easily publish my photos to any blog service, the same way I can with Flickr. If you don't already have a blog or Web site, this might not matter, but I don't want to maintain a separate Web presence for every online service.

More Phone Support: Nokia makes some great phones, but I don't own one (disclosure: Vizrea loaned me one to test their service). I want to publish from any phone. I'm sure this one is only a matter of time and in fairness to Vizrea, Nokia was a smart starting point.

Can't Subscribe to Contacts: Current Vizrea Snap fuctionality limitsThere are some people who take really great photos. I subscribe to Flickr feeds because some people take really great photos. I want something similar in the Vizrea universe. Give me an "always download Paul's collections" option to reduce the wait time in browsing a friend's collections.

Smarter Phone Caching: While I love the concept of getting any photo from my home machine on a cell phone, I hate waiting. Vizrea Snap currently caches all downloaded images on the same schedule. I want the option to cache a specific collection longer than all others, but still maintain it as a collection, a digital wallet album so to speak.

No Mac Support: Mac users can view Web collections but there's no Mac version of Vizrea Snap at this point. While the Mac market is far smaller than the Windows market, this is the type of app Mac users might be likely to latch on to quickly if available.

Wrap-up

At the end of the day, I love where Vizrea Snap is headed. Managing media is still an imperfect world. We're slowly converging on a world where a cell phone provides camera functions, mp3 player functions and phone functions in one device. Vizrea Snap augments this convergence by providing a much needed media management component. Assuming they add more phones to the mix over the coming months and open up the walled garden just a little, Vizrea Snap will be an app everyone wants to download.

Download Posteriza

With digital cameras heading toward a standard of 8-10 megapixels in most of the mid-range line, printing photos at large sizes is no longer a luxury limited to the elite group purchasing top-of-the-line SLR digicams. Posteriza takes advantage of photo printing capabilities by turning your digital shots into larger-than-life posters and banners. The software will print several 4x6 or 8x10 sheets as tiles which you can combine to form a full-sized poster. It isn't quite as smooth as using Digital Camera Poster Creator, but Posteriza is free, which makes up for most potential shortcomings. Posteriza automatically creates margins for overlapping sheets to paste them together in larger sizes. A frame option prints a border around the outside edge of the image. If you don't have the budget for a photo printer capable of massive prints, Posteriza is an affordable solution. The software works with virtually any standard paper size. Another option is to create a set of JPG files which may be printed at any print facility to reduce your printing costs. Be sure to consider something like Ink Saver to avoid using more print resources than are absolutely necessary. Make sure you use the highest resolution setting on your digital camera for optimal results when enlarging any image for print. [Windows 2k/XP $0.00]

I see a ton of digital photography books every year. Most of them all cover the same information with slightly different wording. How Digital Photography Works offers something very different from the standard collection. Part instruction manual on using digital cameras and part detailed breakdown of how each part of a digital camera actually does what it does, How Digital Photography Works will leave you wiser for having spent the time reading it. All explanations are in plain English with some of the best diagrams I've ever seen on the topic of digital photography. Included in the book are detailed explanations of how a camera lens works, how digital cameras covert light into data, how digital cameras manipulate photos, how your software corrects photo mistakes, how digital prints are made, and how digital camera exposure works. There's some clever morphing explained and the process of restoring old prints with digital tools is detailed in a way that makes the solution seem reasonable. Unless you already studied photography intensively, I consider How Digital Photography Works to be a must have reference for those of us who want to enjoy taking pictures and also want to learn to make our pictures better.

ISBN: 0789733099
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Que (September 1, 2005)
Author: Ron White
Illustrator: Tim Downs

">Order How Digital Photography Works on Amazon.com

Bicycle Camera Mount

Car mounting a digital video camera is proving to be a tricky task from the perspective of getting flexibility in mounting and something sturdy enough to not lose the camera as the car accelerates. Mounting a digital camera or DV cam on your bicycle looks like an easier proposition. Camera Hacker offers a tutorial on converting the mounting bracket from a bicycle light into a handle bar mounted tripod for use in filming cycling excursions. No word on how well it absorbs the shock of road vibrations, but the mount looks sturdy enough for most biking activities. If you want to grab stills on your weekend ride or attempt to film trail riding footage, this tutorial is a good place to start in building your own bicycle camera mount.

Time lapse photography is one of those tricky things made simpler by digital camera technology. You still need a system for triggering image capture in meaningful increments. GBTimeLapse handles all the image capture for Canon PowerShot users, by controlling the camera over USB and grabbing shots with your computer in an unattended setup. Use the software to capture blooming flowers in your home or the changes of a particular section of your backyard overtime. Once the camera is setup, you don't need to worry about getting the location right to track changes over time; simply connect camera to computer and let the hardware do all the work.

InkSaver may be the salvation of print happy people, but the real savings in photo printing is outsourcing. Not the send-your-business-overseas outsourcing of the business world; I mean the send-your-printing-online business of printing photos somewhere other than your own desktop. There's nothing the home printing business can do to drop the price of a 4x6 to Kodak's $0.15 per print. As an individual, you simply can't buy enough paper and ink at one time to compete. And who has the binding services available to create a professional photo book in their home office? Like anything else online, do your homework and find the best online photo printing service for your needs.

As cool as posting photos to flickr is, the service was seriously lacking a solution for ordering prints directly from the online collection. Too late for my article on photo printing, but just in time for the photo fanatic holiday seasons, flickr now supports printing. It's about time.

Photoshop Tutorials and Freebies

Several collections of free Photoshop compatible borders can be found here, along with great tutorials on using Photoshop to incorporate them in to projects. Learn to make your pictures look like they are part of a film strip with the Film Strip Action! gallery. Learn to make your own edge effects with included do-it-yourself edges. Use borders to add some flashy effects to your photos and learn to make text effects with Photoshop. You don't need Photoshop to use the borders. Photoshop is required to take advantage of the actions.

Download Morpheus

Turn your neighbor's cat into a rutabaga. Put your sister's face on the family goldfish. Become a Seattle Mariners slugger with some photo trickery. Morphing can be clever or cruel, either way, it's irresistible. Morphing takes some practice to master the basics, but Morpheus offers solid tutorials to get you started. With a few trial runs under your belt, make use of features like AVI support, key framing and dot delay, for use in movie morphs (available in the pro version). A preview feature lets you check out individual morph frames, before they happen, making it easier to create a seamless morph. Also to new to this version, a built in method for sharing your morph creations via e-mail and zooming for easier manipulation of larger images. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $29.95/49.95]

Download FotoCrop II

Designed to make cropping photos in Paint Shop Pro easier, this tool performs calculations to make sure you get accurate crops for standard photo sized prints. Both North American (4x6, 5x7, 8x10) and European( A4, A5, A6) sizes are supported, in addition to any custom sizes you set in the program's options pane. FotoCrop's selection constraints work with both the PSP selection and cropping tools, although setting the print area only works in conjunction with the selection tool. Tested for both Win2k and Windows XP, FotoCrop should work with most Windows operating systems. [Windows 2k/XP $0.00]

Download XFile

Reduce pixilation when you magnify images or portions of images. The Bicubic and Bilinear Interpolations built into Photoshop and other similar imaging editors start blurring and pixilating images when they are magnified much beyond 150-200%. This plugin uses a proprietary Interpolation method that allows you to enlarge images by as much as 400% with marginal pixilation. Preview your magnification before you commit, making it easy to optimize your images to their maximum size before committing to the resize. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $49.95]

Download AmphiSoft Plugins

A solid collection of freeware and shareware plug-ins, offering a wide variety of Photoshop compatible effects. Convolution shaman and Sorting shaman get you the basics like edge detection, blur, sharpen, despecle, and a "highpass" photo correction feature. Metalwork II makes anything look like it was made of metal. Raster master gets you woodcut and TV graining effects. Many more filters add noise, painting-like qualities, halftones, and many other artistic effects. The free apps are included in the base version with additional features are available by registering [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00/$18.85]

Norman Koren Tips and Photos

Lovers of great outdoor and slice-of-life photography will undoubtedly enjoy browsing the collection of photos available here, although that's not what initially grabbed my attention. Norman Koren has a great collection of tutorials, offering an outstanding collection of tips to help budding shutterbugs through the process of getting great digital shots. Concepts are explained in a comfortable way, taking some of the mystery out of everything that happens once you are ready to move beyond default camera settings. What to do with your photos after you've taken them, including scanning of 35mm stuff, printing, and some editing tricks, is also covered. Koren offers an express route for novice photographers looking to come up to speed on image processing.

ADG Panorama Tools

At one time, this was the coolest free app for building 360-degree panoramic views. It's still cool, it just happens to cost $39.99 these days. The tool automatically aligns images, waroing them into true cylindrical view. You can correct for slight movements up or down from the origin of your shot perspective with a vertical perspective correction feature. Once you've completed your panorama, a java applet allows users to move the image up, down, left, or right on the Web. Test drive it for as long as you want, just realize the output will have a watermark. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $39.99]

Download PRINT Image Matching

Do your printer and digital camera speak the same language? They certainly can with this software solution, designed to keep print specific information collected when your camera takes a photo and pass it through the editing process, all the way to when the image ultimately arrives at your printer. If you're a Photoshop 7 user, this plugin is already at your disposal on the disk, but if you happen to be a Photoshop 6 or Photoshop Elements user, you'll want to download drivers specific to your software. You also need PIM enabled digital cameras (almost everyone but Canon) and printers (Epson) to achieve any real benefit. This recent update extends the color space of blues and greens and makes your brights even brighter.

Download EasyShare

EasyShare isn't the elegant photo manager Picasa is, but it certain is easy to use. The interface makes every feature in the software quite obvious, and if you happen to need assistance with one of the features, the help file is one of the more detailed I've ever seen. Organize your photos, make notes, an address book of people you frequently e-mail photos to, and a whole lot more. Basic editing tasks like red eye removal and image cropping can be performed by even the most novice user. A to do list feature lets you set up reminders to print or e-mail photos, if you don't have time to perform the tasks when you import your photos. Printing is handled either through your local printer, which Kodak includes some great features to maximize quality, or by ordering online. Of course, Kodak hopes you'll be ordering online frequently, because that's how they turn this free app into a profit center; they've managed to make the ordering process insanely easy too. If you want to do serious photo editing, you'll need another app, but if you want to get your photos ready for printing in a flash, there's nothing in the market that comes close to simplifying the process like EasyShare. Registration is required for the free download. [W9x/W2k/XP/OS X $0.00]

Download GIF Optimizer

Depending on the built-in optimization features of your image editor, this useful tool may be exactly what you need to put GIF images on a diet. By eliminating unused colors from the palette, less information is required to display the image, making its overall size smaller. For animated GIF files, duplicate frames are removed, which helps keep file size in check. Best of all, this is a free tool. While I haven't tested GIF Optimizer on WinXP, I have used it on a Windows 2000 machine, so it will probably work in both places. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

Download FilterMeister

Have you come up with a perfect configuration for making a particular effect? Share it with the world using FilterMeister, a tool for creating Photoshop compatible filters. Include things like mouseovers, gamma correction, sound effects, and tons of other features that will let you distribute your filters royalty free, without the challenge of programming your own effects completely from scratch. A selection of tips and tutorials is available on the Web to get you up and running quickly, as well as a user discussion list for getting assistance from other FilterMeister users. [W9x/2k/XP $24.95]

Download Photo Rescue

Not only will this application find files you accidentally overwrote during a reformat, or the ones you deleted "by accident," you'll also uncover photos you really did intentionally delete sometime in the past. I was amazed to discover some of the photos I took several months back, still completely intact. Another thing I like about this product is availability for both Windows and Mac OS X users - especially since I qualify as both. Essentially, this app allows you to recover files you thought were destroyed, from SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Memory Sticks, and Microdrives. In many cases, you'll also be able to recover files from other types of physical drives as well. A preview window allows you to decide which found images you want to keep, before you actually rescue them from your media. Geared more specifically toward JPEG and TIFF images, PhotoRescue will recover most common image file types. [9x/NT/W2k/XP $29]

Download Image Doctor

Image Doctor, a set of image-retouching filters, removes blemishes and defects, repairs over-compressed JPEGs, and replaces unwanted details and objects. Professional and amateur photographers, photo editors, service bureaus, graphic designers, and Web designers can restore, retouch, repair and reclaim their images more quickly using Image Doctor. The interface is quite easy to navigate, and although this is quite a departure from the usual special effects stuff the Alien Skin crew puts out, the quality is outstanding as always. If you need professional quality retouching, this plugin will do the trick without wiping out your wallet. [Windows 9x/2k/XP Mac OS X 10.2.x $129]

Peak beach season is drawing to a close with kids headed back to school in just a few weeks but there are still plenty of great opportunities for coastal panoramic shots. One of the key tools in capturing the perfect panorama is a tripod optimized for the task. In their newly launched collection of free tutorials, Bogen manufacturer, Manfrotto, demonstrates how to capture the perfect coastline panorama. Learn how to choose a lens, level the tripod, setup the camera, and build your panorama from a collection of stills in Photoshop Elements.

From the tutorial, "Shooting scenic photos can be fun and one of the most rewarding experiences you can have using your camera. Often, the view in front of your camera is too broad to fit into one single photo frame, and capturing that stunning sunset or expansive vista in its entirety seems challenging, yet it's actually quite achievable when you know what you're doing. With a good tripod and head, a little bit of know-how and some readily available software, you can capture the scene to later print and hang on your wall. This lesson will show you how to shoot multiple shots of a horizon from one point avoiding common overlap errors, then "stitch" them together into a panorama ( using Photoshop Elements).

Shooting Coastal Panoramas

Knowing the basics of using a tripod is the difference between shooting the occasional keeper shot and improving to expert status with practice. Manfratto, the maker of all the Bogen photography gear, offers an outstanding overview of tripod basics as part of a new tutorial series. Walk through why you need a tripod, choosing the right tripod, what tripods are made of, tripod mounting and basic tripod movement. This of course skews toward the pro gear made by this pro manufacturer, but the advice is sound no matter what your level of expertise.

From the tutorial, "A 'good' tripod is a fundamental part of any photographer's kit, and is well worth its weight in gold - especially since tripods are getting lighter all the time. A quality tripod can provide you with the sharpest possible pictures from your expensive camera and lenses, and allow you get those shots you've only dreamed of - giving you time to think more carefully about composition. In fact it will probably improve your hit rate more than any other piece of equipment you use."

How To Use a Tripod: The Basics

If you've dreamed of the glamorous life working in high fashion photography, better read this crash course in making shots look good. It's from the company who makes all the stuff distributed under the Bogen name, so the gear recommendations skew toward the high end, but don't let that deter you from reading what is otherwise great material on snapping studio glamour shots. This tutorial won't teach the right inflection when saying cheeseball phrases like, "work the camera" and "own it" but you'll be closer to expert status in getting your images to look good.

From the tutorial, "Shooting glamour photography can be like shooting traditional portraits with traditional lighting setups. However, modifying the standard approach to portraits can add more life, more interest to your shot when you know what you're doing."

Shooting Glamour in the Studio

Use the Color Blender

Unless you are some kind of color-blending genius, this tool will save you hours of tweaking, giving your Web graphics work a visual appeal that might otherwise be missing. All you do is enter two colors, specify how many midtones you need, and let the app spit out the results. Eric Meyers released this JavaScript color blender under a Creative Commons license, making it okay to download the app and use it on your own system.

Download Easy JPGE Printer

A quick and easy solution to printing photos you already edited in another application. This app offers convenient layout options for getting four 3x5, two 4x6 or 1 8x10 photo printed on the same sheet of paper, without consuming the overhead of more complex photo applications. Captions and dating may be added, should you desire those features at print time. This is possibly the easiest photo printing app I've ever used. [Windows 9X/W2K/XP $0.00]

As much as I like the image quality of large body SLR cameras with pro lenses, I want a pocket sized camera when I travel. The SD400 is likely my next digital camera purchase. I'm not the only one who thinks the SD400 is almost the perfect pocket portable. DPReview gives it high marks in their hands-on review.

From DPReview: "Announced in February 2005, the SD400 (which goes by the names of Digital IXUS 50 in Europe and IXY DIGITAL 55 in Japan) is the latest in a long line of ultra-compact 'ELPH' or 'IXUS' cameras stretching back to early 2000 (and a lot farther back than that in the film camera world). Like the SD300 before it, the SD400 incorporates two UA (Ultra-high Refractive Index Glass Molded (GMo) Aspherical lens) elements which has allowed Canon to produced its smallest cameras yet to feature a 3x zoom. It may be smaller than a credit card, but Canon has still managed to cram a fairly comprehensive range of features into the SD400;"

Read the SD400 review

Download virtualPhotographer

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements pack so many filters and presets into the core application it seems like there's no need for plugins anymore. Despite all the presets, I continue to find plugins with features extending far beyond the basics. virtualPhotographer extends the core configurations of mundane things like B/W conversion, making it simple to flip to grayscale or any single color variation. The plugin also offers around 50 presets tweaking soft focus and contrast settings, as well as some slick artistic effects. The image tweaks provided in virtualPhotographer are possible using built-in components in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, but using the plugin makes it easier. Compatible with any app supporting Photoshop-compatible plugins. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

One of the hardest things about buying a new digital camera is comparing two side-by-side to determine which camera is your winner. For a larger form factor consumer digicam, the S2 IS is one I have my eye on. Sony's DSC H1 is an interesting contender. Much as I continue to despise Sony's memory card practices, they make great cameras. DCViews does a solid side by side comparison of these two digicams, detailing what works out to almost a point-for-point match between the two offerings. At the end of the day, DCViews finds a clear winner. I'll save the spoiler ending and let you check out the comparison.

I continue to loath Sony's constant switching of Memory Stick formats and refusal to switch to the widely available (and cheaper) SD format, but it's hard to ignore when they make a solid point and shoot offering. The DSC-T33 may be interesting to PSP owners because they both use the Memory Stick DUO format. Imaging Resource recently gave the camera positive marks.

From the Imaging Resource review: "The Sony DSC-T33 is one of Sony's latest subcompact Cyber-shot models, quite similar to the original T1, and the new ultra-thin T7. A little lighter and slightly bigger, than the T7, the Sony T33 is still a full-featured digital camera, with a 5 megapixel CCD, a 3x optical zoom lens, a huge 2.5-inch LCD screen, and a full complement of options such as variable ISO settings, color saturation, contrast, and sharpness adjustments. Automatic exposure control offers point-and-shoot ease, with a handful of scene modes for more difficult shooting situations. Packaged with a camera dock for quick USB connection to a computer, the Sony T33 offers exceptional portability and a great selection of features. Read the review below for the details, but if you're looking for a compact and very functional five-megapixel digicam for a little less, the Sony DSC-T33 should be on your list."

Read the Sony DSC-T33 review

Looking to step up to SLR without investing massive dollars in a camera body? The Nikon D50 may be your best bet. At 6.1 megapixels, it's more than good enough for digital images, with reasonably solid printing options. With slightly fewer features than the D70, it's still a winner in the entry level SLR category according to DPReview.

From the review: "Digital SLR's are quickly becoming the fastest moving segment of the digital camera market, this means more new digital SLR's, more competition and lower prices. The Nikon D50 is introduced as a more affordable and easier to use version of the D70 which was released just under fifteen months ago. Anyone who has seen or handled the D70 will immediately see a strong resemblance in the D50, it's only when you start to examine the camera in a little more detail that you notice the differences (we've detailed them below). Clearly the D50 is designed to compete with other affordable digital SLR's such as the Canon EOS 350D (Digital Rebel XT), Pentax *ist DS and Olympus E-300."

Read the review

Download PhotoFreebies

Many of the photo editor plugin developers offer smaller collections of free plugins to give you a taste of their larger plugin selection. PhotoFreebies is exactly that, a taste of the comprehensive PhotoWiz plugin set. Featuring a handful of useful plugins that complement the existing toolsets of Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Corel, etc. Included in the collection are a Black and White conversion that outperforms the embedded version in most photo editing apps; Desaturation Gradient; Histo Fix; Remove Transparency; a customizable Sepia; Luma Negative and two RGB channel converters. Upgrading to the more fully featured PhotoWiz is entirely optional but this is definitely a solid addition to any photo editing suite. [Windows 9x/2k/XP $0.00]

B/W: Turns the image into grayscale, but with a better method than the one available in Photoshop or PSP. Works like the B/W button in ColorWasher and FocalBlade. No Dialog.

Desaturation Gradient: Gradually desaturates the image in four possible directions.

Histo Fix: Like in ColorWasher it fixes a chopped histogram by interpolating lost image information. There is an option to regain 1/2 bit, 1 bit or 2 bit of image information. Works only on 8bit images.

Remove Transparency: Makes a transparent layer fully opaque. No Dialog.

Sepia: Lets you apply uniform or colored sepia effects. Includes 5 effect types, a color slider and a ContrastFix check box. A sepia effect of this quality isn't that easy to achieve in Photoshop or PSP.

RGB2HSL and HSL2RGB: Converts the RGB channels into HSL channels without leaving RGB mode. That allows you to manipulate the HSL channels. The second plugin converts the HSL channels back to RGB. No Dialog.

RGB2YCC and YCC2RGB: Converts the RGB channels into YCC channels without leaving RGB mode. That allows you to manipulate the YCC channels. The second plugin converts the YCC channels back to RGB. No Dialog.

Luma Negative: Turns the image into a negative without changing the colors. Has a dialog with a slider.

If you're willing to tolerate a Hyundai ad before each lesson, Imaging Resource has an awesome collection of free instructional videos for photography enthusiasts. The ZugaPhoto.TV photography tips will help beginners and seasoned shutterbugs hone their skills in a variety of photography settings. You need IE because of the video delivery engine, so this may be a no go for Firefox fans. According to Imaging Resource: "We're very pleased to bring the Zuga Photo video photo lessons to our readers. You can learn about a wide range of photo topics from true masters in the field, learn about everything from basic composition to better ways to photography your kids, to professional lighting secrets, and a load of stuff in between! There are currently no fewer than 48 short video lessons available for your enjoyment." Watch the Imaging Resource photography tips.

I'm currently on the lookout for a new portable digital camera. Several years ago I purchased a Canon S110. I still have it, although Robin uses it more than I do at this point. I've also got a Canon G5, which is great for some setting up on a tripod and taking photos, but doesn't fit my rule of pocket portability which is, if it won't fit in my pocket, I probably won't use it. I could reclaim the Canon S110, but it's old enough it may fail someday soon and the resolution compared to similar sized models makes it seem dated. Better to start shopping for a better solution now. I'm setting my criteria for a new pocket camera as follows:

• Minimum Effective Pixels: 5 million or 5 megapixels
• Minimum Optical Zoom: 3x
• Takes Movies: AVI, MPEG-4, WMV
• Memory Type: Compact Flash or Secure Digital
• Battery Type: Rechargeable
• Maximum Weight: 6 ounces
• Maximum Dimensions: 3.5x2.5x1 inches

I realize there are many other features to look for when selecting a digital camera, but I'm specifically shopping for portability. I've set minimums on key feature areas that will directly impact picture quality, but this is the point-and-shoot world, not SLR, so I'm not hoping to get all the manual adjustments and add-on features commonly found in cameras with bigger bodies. Read on for the initial round of cameras I'm examining and how they fit into my criteria.

Casio Exilim EX-Z750 Digital Camera

• Effective Pixels: 7.2 million
• Optical Zoom: 3x
• Takes Movies: AVI, MPEG-4
• Memory Type: Secure Digital
• Battery Type: Rechargeable
• Weight: 4.5 ounces
• Dimensions: 3.5x2.3x0.88 inches

Although Casio makes me think of cheesy consumer keyboard sounds from the 1980's this camera looks solid. The 2.5 inch LCD screen is bigger than most of the cameras fitting my criteria.

Canon PowerShot SD20

• Effective Pixels: 5.0 million
• Optical Zoom: No Optical Zoom
• Takes Movies: AVI
• Memory Type: Secure Digital
• Battery Type: Rechargeable
• Weight: 4.5 ounces
• Maximum Dimensions: 3.5x1.8x0.7 inches

This one strikes out with no optical zoom. The 1.5 inch LCD is smaller than everything else I'm looking at, but comparable to what I'm used to with the S110. I've always loved Canon quality, so I may hold out for the newly announced SD400, with 5 megapixels and 3x Optical Zoom, which is a several generation advancement over my trusty S110.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T33

• Effective Pixels: 5.1 million
• Optical Zoom: 3x
• Takes Movies: MPEG
• Memory Type: Memory Stick Duo
• Battery Type: Rechargeable
• Weight: 5.12 ounces
• Dimensions: 3.5x2.36x0.7 inches

If only Sony could standardize on a media format that was compatible with a wider range of products, I might actually buy a Sony digital camera. They make great products, but I want something that supports the stacks of Compact Flash and SD cards I already own. SD would be ideal because I've got an SD slot on every PC in my house.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P200

• Effective Pixels: 7.2 million
• Optical Zoom: 3x
• Takes Movies: MPEG
• Memory Type: Memory Stick
• Battery Type: Rechargeable
• Weight: 5.12 ounces
• Dimensions: 4.09x2.03x1.1 inches

Like other Sony models on this list, Memory Stick is the storage format. If the shutter lag outperforms every other camera, which it looks like it might, this moves to the top of the list. I'm almost willing to revise my size specs to fit the Sony DSC-P200 into the list without bending my rules.

Kodak EasyShare LS753

• Effective Pixels: 5.36 million
• Optical Zoom: 2.8x
• Takes Movies: MOV
• Memory Type: Secure Digital
• Battery Type: Rechargeable
• Weight: 5.76 ounces
• Dimensions: 4.3x1.9x1.2 inches

I should really kick this one off the list because it's only got a 2.8 optical zoom and it's slightly larger than my criteria. The LS753 is the most affordable camera on this list at $199 and still fits comfortably in a pocket so it remains for now. It's one of the older models on the list but we haven't seen anything better in the compact camera category from Kodak.

Nikon offers a couple Coolpix options that are small enough but fail to meet my megapixel requirement, which is one area I won't budge. Olympus doesn't include rechargeable batteries in their compact models, which I find to be a ridiculous oversight. Several other lesser known brands are making cameras in my criteria range, but I don't know enough about them yet to make an educated judgment about their viability. I'm still shopping so I'll update this once I've had time to sort through more of the portable options.

My husband got me a digital camera for Christmas and I'm really frustrated by the gap between the time I press the button to take a picture and the moment the camera finally reacts. How can I speed this up?

We're all frustrated by that little feature of digital cameras. There have been numerous times when my son does something I want to capture with a camera and by the time the capture actually happens the moment has passed. This is not something we of the 35mm point-and-shoot generation are accustomed to. Even though I'm aware of the slow response time, I still find myself forgetting on occasion and blowing what was otherwise a really great shot. The only surefire way to avoid this problem is to buy an expensive digital camera. I've considered replacing my Canon G5 with a Digital Rebel specifically because I want a better reaction time. On the other hand, I find it hard to justify the expense because I don't take that many pictures. There are several tricks to making the most of a digital camera's slow reaction time, if you know how to make the camera work to your advantage. Read on to find out more.

When your digital camera is set to an automatic mode (which is always on a camera with no manual settings) it must progress through a series of steps before taking a photo. Light is metered, shutter speed is gauged, the lens is focused on your subject, information is sent from the image chip to the LCD on the back of your camera to give you a preview; all these things take time. High-end cameras generally have more expensive parts to make these operations move more quickly, but the same process is required for each digital image. Figuring out how to compensate for the time these operations take is the difference between a picture of your son sliding in safe at home plate and a picture of him walking away from home plate.

The Stopwatch Test

Determining exactly how long the lag between button press and image capture is in fractions of a second can help you plan for the lag when you take pictures. With a stopwatch in one hand and a finger on your digital camera's shutter release button, start the watch as you depress the button to snap a picture. Stop the watch or hit the lap count at the point where the image is actually captured by the camera. Repeat this 5 times and take an average of the result to get a fair idea of how long it takes your camera to snap a photo.

Ready the Focus

One of the best ways to make sure you get the shot you want is to arm the automatic focus on your camera. Virtually all digital cameras will perform an automatic focus when the shutter release button is pressed halfway down. By aiming the camera in the direction of the shot you want to take and depressing the button halfway down, the camera focuses and locks the focus waiting for you to press the button the rest of the way. This doesn't completely eliminate lag, but it does reduce most of the gap between the time you anticipate the shot and the time of actual image capture. Pre-focusing on something of equal distance away in another direction can be another way to get a great shot with less lag time. Using the stopwatch test with the shutter release button in focus-ready mode, you can get an idea of exactly how much readying the focus reduces your camera's lag.

Improve Your Anticipation

While this won't work in many candid instances, a greater attention to what's going on around you will work wonders on improving your digital photos, with or without a shutter lag. Using the home plate example from above, when you see your son rounding third base and heading for home, aim the camera at home plate in anticipation of his arrival. Depress the shutter release button to pre-focus the camera, then wait until you see him start his slide. Quick reflexes here will help make sure you get the shot you want.

Lower Image Quality Settings

This one may seem counter-intuitive because we are trained to want the highest quality images possible. Higher quality images take longer to capture because there's a longer write time from the camera's CCD (the chip that captures the image) to the flash memory card inside the camera. Capturing a lower quality image will reduce the time it takes for the write process which means less lag.

Turn off the Flash

Many cameras turn on the flash by default, whether it's needed or not. If it's set to red-eye reduction mode, the picture takes even longer because the flash has to fire several times before the image is captured. Red-eye can be fixed quite easily with software; not getting the right picture can't.

Use A Faster Memory Card

Flash memory cards frequently list speed ratings like 4x, 12x, 16x, 20x, which indicates how quickly they write images taken by a digital camera. Like the other tips here, a faster memory card won't eliminate the lag experienced in the picture taking process, but it will certainly help. Memory speeds have greatly increased over time, improving the speed your camera can write any given photo to the card. It's important to consult the camera manual on this one, as some cameras aren't compatible with all fast memory types. Faster memory cards cost more than slow ones, so if your camera doesn't support a particular memory speed, the extra cost isn't worth it.

[Paul Ludington] Although some people move west to avoid the severely cold winter (mentioning no-one in particular… JAKE!), we Iowans are bracing ourselves for more freezing rain and days of sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures. The coming storm reminded me that now would be a good time to cover some of the basics of shooting digital photos and video in the cold. Whether you want to take pictures of your kids building a snowman or a movie of a friend performing tricks on a snowboard, you need to follow some basic rules when braving the outdoors in winter.

Let your camera adjust to the cold temperature before using it.
Although going into the cold from warmer temperatures is not as hard on equipment as the other way around, you still need to let your camera become acclimated. As with the lenses on eyeglasses, camera lenses can fog up with condensation when going from warm to cold, leaving you with smears that ruin your perfect photo of a snow-covered tree. No need to worry, however, as you have a couple of good options to prevent this from happening. If you plan ahead, put your camera in a cold garage or other protected area while it is still in its camera bag prior to going outside to shoot. This will allow the camera to slowly adjust to the cold temperature and the bag will prevent condensation from forming. If you need the camera to adjust more quickly to the environment, place it in a sealable plastic bag. The moisture will form on the plastic bag allowing your camera to stay dry. So what do you do if moisture forms on your lens anyway? Your best option is to wait for it to disappear. Wiping it may create smudges or scratch your lens.

Keep your battery warm and bring a spare.
One of the biggest obstacles to using a camera in cold weather is decreased battery performance. Cold hinders the chemical reaction that allows batteries to release energy, causing your previously full battery to appear dead. Fortunately, an easy way to be prepared for this challenge is to bring along spare batteries. While you are shooting with one battery in your camera, keep the spare in an inside pocket of your jacket, next to your body, to keep it warm. When the in-use battery seems to run out of power, swap batteries to go on shooting. Make sure you put the original battery in your jacket to warm it, as you will need to rotate the batteries in and out of use. If you have an audience of friends with you, this is your chance to amaze them with your body's magical ability to recharge batteries.

Make adjustments for bright snow.
Winter provides many inspiring artistic opportunities with landscapes covered by freshly fallen snow. Unfortunately, most digital still and digital video cameras do not deal well with large, bright areas of white. Many times the cameras auto-adjust to compensate for the white of the snow and end up leaving parts of your image underexposed and your fresh snow grey. Some manufacturers have anticipated this problem and include an option for snow and surf on their cameras. If you are lucky enough to have this feature, select it to allow your camera to make the necessary adjustments for you. For cameras without an automatic snow setting built-in, you can compensate for the bright white by manually tweaking the exposure on your camera. You will want the camera's exposure values to overexpose the image slightly in order to return the underexposed snow to a natural color. Glare can also be a problem in snowy scenes but can be overcome with the use of polarizing filters. If you don't have a polarizing filter handy but have a pair of polarizing sunglasses, try shooting through the sunglasses to achieve a glare-free photo.

Wear thin gloves and warm clothing.
Putting on warm clothing before going out into the cold seems pretty obvious but is important nonetheless. You should dress in layered clothing that will allow you to be comfortable for the duration of your shoot. Gloves are extremely important during cold weather shoots, as your hands will be touching metal camera parts. Remember when you were a kid and stuck your tongue on the metal flagpole? Your hands will easily stick to metal on the camera if they aren't protected. Thin gloves work the best for accessing small buttons while adjusting your camera settings.

Seal your camera before going back inside.
Going back inside from the cold presents a challenge to your camera as well. The warm humid air inside a house will cause condensation to form outside and possibly inside your camera. To prevent this from happening, use the plastic bag trick again by placing your camera in a sealed plastic bag before returning indoors. Your camera may still develop some condensation, so you will need to allow your camera to sit and dry out for a few hours before using it again.

Download PhotoRecovery for Digital Media

It's very common for Compact Flash cards and USB keychain drives to corrupt image files or have them mysteriously disappear. Instead of writing off the family vacation photos as gone, use this app to reclaim missing data from a wide variety of portable media. Don't let the name fool you; this app recovers more than just image files. In addition to recovering image files, camera movie files, and digital audio captured on portable media, support for Word documents, spreadsheets, and a laundry list of other file types. Recovery of MPEG movie data puts this app among the best in its class. Via USB synchronization cable, recovery of data from Palm OS and Pocket PC devices is also possible. [Windows 9x/2k/XP/Vista $39.95]

Download VueScan

I can't believe it took becoming a Mac user to discover this application. I downloaded the trial version on a Mac, launched the application, and without issue scanned documents natively on a UMAX scanner that hasn't had new Apple drivers since 1998. TWAIN drivers are bypassed entirely, which seems to be more effective in terms of program speed. Scanning via VueScan on OS X, with UMAX, is faster than it was when connected to an old G3 using the UMAX drivers. Most of us can get by with the basic preview, crop, and scan solution at the core of this application. For those of you who are power users, I'd list all the cool features, but the list is simply too long. Lets just say, if you wanted to configure something about your scanner, this app can probably do it. Registration permits you to use the application on up to four machines. The trial version watermarks scanned images. [Win/Mac OS/Linux $49.95]