All SIGs and Mini-Courses are Cancelled Until Further Notice

Digital Photography SIG Cancelled for Rest of 2008

To give attendees, presenters and coordinators time to recoup from Ike and focus on immediate concerns, ALL monthly Digital Photo SIG (Special Interest Groups) meetings have been canceled through the end of 2008.  This includes the Digital Photo SIG scheduled for Sat. Oct. 25 at 9:30.  The Photo Fest is also canceled.  Starting in January 2009 we can look forward to resuming the schedule and meeting with friends who share a common interest.

Presentation topics that were canceled will be rescheduled.

Forwarding Emails Containing Embedded Pictures

by jim evans for John Yoder

If a forwarded email is received by someone that had imbedded pictures, but they showed up as boxes with x’s, the SENDER may re-send using a copy of the email with the pictures, but sending it as an original, not a forward. The sender highlights and copies the email, pastes it on a new email and sends it to the recipient. It will work every time.

This was suggested by my ISP, Earthlink, on my Comcast cable connection. They said that successive forwarding sometimes corrupts the imbedded pictures. I don’t know how to restore a corrupted picture email without having the sender re-send by the above process.  In other words, I can’t take a received box with a little x and do anything with it by myself. Earthlink could not help me with that aspect.

Perhaps there is someone in HAL-PC that can shed some light on a fix.  It is interesting that some recipients of a forwarded embedded email that I send receive it just fine, while others get a corrupted version.

Correction & Expansion on a Discussion from the Saturday 6/21 Meeting

I owe Steve K an apology. In a discussion of scanning last Saturday he said he did not think his scanner needed to upsample to obtain higher resolution. I said it did. Assuming he has a scanner purchased in the last few years he was probably right and I was probably wrong. Given this, my position that the better method of enlarging an existing print is to scan at 300 ppi and upsample in your image editor is not as certain as I stated it in the meeting.

To see my mea culpa and a further discussion of overscanning vs upsampling to pump up the pixel count to enlarge an existing print Click Here.

4-up still photo consolidation needed

by jim evans for Dick Brotzman

Is there a software product out there that helps one build a composite photo display [as opposed to printed hard copy] comprised of either 4 or 6 individual photos arranged in either a 2 X 2 or a 2 X 3 matrix? I am trying to put together a slide show on DVD that would show a matrix of about 4″ by 6″ pictures at one time. Once I get the pages of pictures assembled, I would then add some voice narration for each page.

Do you know of any product that provides the capability to build these matrices of pictures? Thanks for the help

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Leo Waltz emailed me this because pictures cannot be included in replies.

How about this example with 3 x 2 horizontal:

These were automatically generated from selected files in a folder, but it’s a snap with Diji Album from
http://xequte.com but for some reason that product is no longer on their home page, so try here:
http://www.xequte.com/dijialbum/ and we find it !! The program has a lot of versatility beyond this.
http://www.xequte.com/software and note the “more software” link at the bottom of the page.
Yes, you can insert a sound file or record directly with the program.

Need Help Burning Files to CD/DVD

by Carl Farley for Charlie Aselin . . .

I’m saving .tif files to DVD or CD rom but the computer hangs before the file is saved. Any ideas? I’ve increased the size of the page files and the computer has 2 GB of memory on an XP Home PC.

Thanks for any ideas you can give me.

Need Help with Binocular Camera

by Carl Farley for Mike Bowers . . .

I’ve recently picked up a BinoCam Binocular Camera, and for some reason cannot seem to get the thing to download pics that I take.  The camera seems to shut down before I can activate a  download.  Just wondering if you’ve had some experience with these cameras?  I went by Wolf Camera Store but the Tech said that he did not know anything about these type digital cameras that are intended for Bird Watching and long distance pics.

Any help would be appreciated as I did not locate much over the Internet.

Need Help with Rechargable Li Ion Batteries

by Carl Farley for Canadaman . . .

I have a camera (Kodak Z-712-IS) that seems to be drawing a lot of power.  The Lithium Ion battery that came with the camera only lasted a couple hundred pictures (but I did have it on auto focus all of the time). Anyway, I have tried rechargeable NIMH batteries and only get like 10 pictures before they need to be recharged.  Does anybody have any idea about rechargeable Lithium Ion batteries? What’s wrong with my batteries or ???

Another Way to Share Photos and Videos . . . Online

by Carl Farley forwarded from a member . . .

I have a lot of photos and several videos that I took using my digital camera that I would like to share with relatives living far away. I tried to send them by email, but the files are too large.How can I share pictures and videos?

Here’s the way I worked out. This is also a way to have files that you can access from both your home and work computers.

Head on over to www.zdrive.com and open a free account. Use a username and password that you don’t mind sharing with friends and family, since you will need to give them the username and password so they can view the files.Once you have made an account, you will need to check your email to get a message from Zdrive with a link in it, click on the link, and your account will be all set up.

Once your account is set up, you can go to www.zdrive.com and log into your account using the username and password you selected.You will see that there are three folders in your account, My Documents, My Music, and My Pictures. You can create more folders if you wish using the “Create Folder” button at the top of the page.

Click on the Folder you want to store your videos in, and a new page will load for that folder. Now, click on the “Upload” icon near the top of the page.

In the Upload page, you will have five sections, each with a browse button. Click on the top “Browse” button, find your file, click on it, then click the “Open” button.

You can repeat this process for the other four files, but you should  note that you can’t go over 200MB with the five files.

When you have selected your file or files, click on the blue “Send” button to copy the file from your computer to zdrive’s servers. When it is finished, you will see your files listed in the folder.

When you are done uploading files, you can send an email message to your family and friends. Just tell them to go to www.zdrive.com and log in using your username and password.They can check off the files they want, then click on the “Download” button at the top of the page.

Does anybody else use this approach?

Do Your Mother-In-Law Pic’s Make Her Look Fat?!

Some of us were talking at the last Digital Photography SIG meeting about a problem that some folks have when viewing photos on their wide-screen LCD laptop monitor. Seems that when a photo is viewed on a desktop monitor (4:3 aspect ratio), the photo is ok. But when the same photo is viewed on a wide-screen laptop monitor (16:9 aspect ratio), the photo makes people look fat. We didn’t have an answer until we asked Jim Evans and he cleared this up for us real fast. The image and description below shows it all.

Desktop Monitor on Top – Laptop Monitor on Bottom

The photo on my wide-screen laptop appears fat (bottom right) because the display is set (by default) for 1024 x 768 (4:3). When I changed the display setting to 1280 x 720 (16:9), the photo appears normally, as it should appear (bottom left).

The trick is sorting out all the display settings that your laptop offers you. On my (15″, wide-screen, Dell, medium-priced, Model E1505) laptop, I have the following choices:

* 4:3 – 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1400 x 1050, 1600 x 1200

* 16:9 – 1280 x 720

* 16:9.6 – 1280 x 768

* 16:10 – 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900

* 16:12.8 – 1280 x 1024

I suspect that a lot of these various (unusual?) settings are used when viewing movies and videos.  

Thanks to Jim Evans for clearing up an important question for us.

Now, don’t make this important mistake when you go visiting the in-laws the next time!