Polaroid Cameras I manual

Cameras I Basic operation and features Why Digital? With digital photography you can do th ings that you can not do with film: • Snap anytime- there is no cost until you print! • There is no such thing as a roll of f ilm. Snap 2, 10 or 100 photos at a time. • Use the camera’s automatic m ode – a computer helps take a great picture. • Re[...]

1 D igital v . Film: C am era Sales 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Ye a r Un it s, Million s Di gi t a l W or l dwi de Di gi t al US Fi l m W or l dw i de Fi l m US Di gi t a l W or l dwi de 5. 5 11 18. 5 30. 5 50 78 Di gi t al US 2 4. 3 6. 5 11. 5 17 23 F ilm Wo r ldw id e 67 71 66 63 57 49 Fi l m US 1 6 . 8 2 0 . 6 1 91 91 6 1 3 1999 2000 2001 2002[...]

2 shutter button and lens are virtually the only pa rts of the cam era that remain in digital cameras. The film has been replaced with a light se nsitive chip, called a Ch arge Coupled Device (CCD). This chip is an array of millions el em ents that are sensitive to light. W hen light hits an element in the CCD array, a electrical charge is accu mul[...]

3 The block diagram shows a fast microprocesso r, memory, a color display and buttons for a user interface; with a power supply for rech argeable battery operation . That would be a good description for a laptop computer. Add th e lens and the CCD module and you have a camera! All of this processing power means that the camera can m ake many calcul[...]

4 What the heck is a megapixel? Mega is a prefix that means m illion. A pixe l refers to the element on the CCD that captures light. Thus a 4 m egapixel camera ha s approximately 4 m illion sensing elements on its CCD. The megapixels a camera has nothing to do with the size of the image, but has everything to do with resolution. You can get a print[...]

5 Remember: while you can alwa ys decrease reso lution using editing software, you can never increase it. A rough rule of thumb is that the memory required per picture is one half of the megapixel rating of the camera. Thus a 4 m e gapixel camera will require 2 Mbytes of storage per picture. Professionals put the resolution required for pa rity wit[...]

6 Can you see the difference? You can probably te ll that the 1 megapixel camera is not as good for 8x10s. It is still adequate for email or eBay work but not acceptable for taking quality pictures that will be enlarged. Is 2 megapixels enoug h? That is up to you: it may be, if a camera has other features you lik e. Certainly by the time you get to[...]

7 Many cameras offer a digital zoom in addition to the optical zoom. That’s ok. If you never use the digital portion, which is activ ated automatically when the limit of the optical zoom is reached, then you never suffer a loss of resolution. It is always there if you really need it. Do you need greater than 10x? A professional camera with ch ang[...]

8 Remember the rule of thum b for storage? One half the megapixel rating per picture. S o a 4 megapixel camera will require 2 m egabytes of storage per pictur e. Thus the 32 mbyte card that came with the 4 m egapixel camera will on ly hold 16 shots. 16 shots is not enough for a good afternoon, especially if you deci de to shoot some video. Unfortun[...]

9 Good, Better, Best or Normal, Fine, Superfine At the highest quality, Best or Superfine , the compression removes only the artifacts that the JPEG scientists decided that humans cannot resolve anyway, in other words the picture quality is near perfect. Setting your camera to the lower quality setting, with higher compression, will result in the a[...]

10 are spread over a larger area so apparent disto rtions are lessened. Professional qua lity cameras have large lenses with large object ives. Higher zooms require more light and a larger objective lens. Of c ourse cameras with such lens es won’t fit in your pocket. Cleaning the lens of a camera Lenses are extraordinarily fragile, and once damag[...]

11 new disk drive. Newer operating system s, such as W indows XP may do this automatically, older operating system s, par ticularly Windows 98 and ME, will require that you install drivers from the included disk. After you plug the cable into the computer, leave it there. Don’t ca rry it around with you. It is difficult and expensive to replace. [...]

12 Microsoft Picture-It , (free with XP?): Pretty lim ited, but good for sim ple tasks. Make sure that the software (and the drivers for the camera), are compatible with your own computer. If you are running Windows 95 or a Macintosh, you are likely to have a more difficult time finding a camera and softwa re that will work with your computer. Wind[...]

13 The final result Photo restoration: The following severely damaged file wa s restored using Photoshop Elements:[...]

14 File types Different file types can be determined by the suffix on the file name, for example, a JPEG file might be called “ filename.jpeg ” or “ filename.jpg .” The most common file types are sufficient for most uses, they are: JPG : example: “ filename.jpg ” or “ filename.jpeg .” This is the native or internal file format for m[...]

15 tend to be smaller and are definitely more e xpensive, and standard s ize batteries that you can buy in any electronics, grocery or drug store. Proprietary battery packs: If you opt for a very small camera you are goi ng to get a special small battery supplied by the manufacturer. If you want a second back-up battery they are expensive, $40 to $[...]

16 Some other common featu res on many cameras There are a number of other common features on most dig ital cam eras. Most cameras have the following modes. • Automatic: The cam era makes the decisions: It m akes pretty good ones most of the time! • Manual Mode: Set the flash on to fill or adjust the exposure manually. • Movie Mode with sound[...]

17 Both of these ads appeared in the Sunday paper. There are three cameras in them that you should not buy. Can you spot them? Hint: Digital zoom without an optical zoom is not a good option. It turns out that the Polaroid camera will take a memory card, although one is not included. It doesn’t matter anyway because it does not have an optical zo[...]

18 Printing at the digital kiosk You don’t need a computer to enjoy the benefits of digita l photography. With the introduction of digital kiosks in many phot o, discount and drug stores you can select, edit, make prints and burn your photos onto a CD without ever getting near a computer. The photo at right is a kiosk at a well known department s[...]

19 Addendum Copyright law If you take a picture with your camera, you ow n it. You can copyright it, print it, sell it and freely modify it. If you use someone else’s copyrighted image, from the internet for example, you lose some of these rights. Un less you obtain perm ission of the original photographer or the owner of th e photograph, you may[...]

20 Buying a digital camera: Checklist: 1. Megapixels: □ < 2 Megapi xels – eB ay low quality only □ 2 Megapi xels □ 3 Megapi xels Very High Quality □ 4 Megapi xels □ 5 Megapi xels □ 6 Megapi xels Professional □ 8 Megapi xels □ 11 Megapi xels 2. Zoom: □ Digital Only □ 3X Optical Zoom □ 7X Optical Zoom □ 10X Optical Zoom ?[...]

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22 Addendum 2: Digital cameras versus the Space Shuttle I make the comment all the time, “Your digital camera has more computing power than the space shuttle! Is th at true? Let’s look at the facts: Space Shuttle: Camera: Computer: Computer is a hardened derivative of the IBM 360 mainframe, first introduced in 1964. 480,000 operations per secon[...]