There are three basic ways to get an image into the computer:
Scanning
If you shoot slides or prints, you can use a scanner to
capture the image digitally. This gives a very high quality digital
image for the money. In most price bands you can actually buy a scanner
and point-and-shoot film camera that will give a higher resolution
and a sharper picture than any digital camera available today.
Scanners come in two types: flatbed (good for prints,
and for film if it has a transparency hood) and film
scanners (good for both slides and negatives - don't be misled by
wrong information that says these are for slides only).
Digital Cameras
Digital cameras are convenient, fast and fun.
Digital cameras let you take a picture, look at it immediately to
see that it is okay (on a built-in monitor) and then download it to
your computer. Two-
megapixel cameras give images that can look
nearly identical to a standard photo print at 4x6 and even 5x7
inches in size. Once you have the camera and memory cards, there are
no film processing costs.
Disks
Photo disks and Photo CD and Picture Disks.
These are storage
devices made from scans of your film image done at a photo lab. They
are inexpensive ways of getting high-resolution images into a
computer as almost every computer has a CD-ROM drive that will read
them. Plus, you don't need to buy any new equipment. They are,
however, only as good as the person doing the scans, so you may see
a difference in results from lab to lab.
get digital images from my digital camera to the computer?
There are two ways of
doing this:
Direct Transfer
serial cable from the
camera to the computer with a serial cable. This is fairly easy to do, but
very slow.
Use a camera with a floppy disk. Very
convenient because most computers have a floppy drive (though newer laptops do not)
, but extremely
limiting because of resolution. These cameras will not give you top
quality digital images - the
resolution is too low. They can't go higher,
because the images then won't fit on a floppy.
Download
the images through a USB port. If your camera can use the USB
connection, this is an extremely easy and convenient way to download
images.
Indirect Transfer
Use a card reader. Most digital cameras
use a memory card to store images. You can take this card out and put it
into an inexpensive card reader attached to your computer. This is a fast
and easy way to get digital images into the computer. The reader acts like a drive
on your computer.
Use a floppy adapter. Smart
Media memory cards can be used with a floppy adapter in the floppy drive.
Convenient, but as slow as a floppy drive usually is.
Use
a PC card adapter. If you have a laptop, you can get a PC card
adapter that will fit in your PC card slot. They are available for all
memory cards and just act like another drive on your laptop.
Media Types
SD
XDpicture Card
MemoryStick
SmartMedia
Compact Flash Type I
Compact Flash Type II