Week Two:Digital Camera use and applications

“A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature.”
This week in class we discussed this statement and tried to label pros and cons that digital camera technology holds in relation to more traditional film based cameras. Occupational therapy practice use digital cameras for many reasons some being:
• Evidence
• Progress resource
• To get further help
• To use to show the need for house modifications.
Some of the Pros of digital cameras:
• Can check you have a good picture and ensure you have a picture you want.
• Easily manipulated and can change lighting and add effects to your picture easily
• Can be small and compact.
• Can pick and choose what pictures to print.
Some of the Cons of digital cameras:
• Cost of the camera
• Cost of the memory card
• Storage devices of photos only last about 15 years unless you print out photos.
Some of the pros of film based cameras:
• Now who didn’t enjoy the surprise of looking at the photos once they were printed.
• The negative lasts alot longer than digital storage so always have access to pictures.
Some of the cons of film based cameras:
• Cost of getting pictures printed
• Unable to check that the picture is in good quality
• Quite bulky cameras.
Some of the ways digital images can be stored, transferred and manipulated.
• On a computer
• SD and all other computer cards
• In print
• On websites on the internet
• CD/DVDs
• USB pens
• Can be edited
Some of the ethical issues that may arise by using digital cameras are:
Privacy, you may take a picture of someone or something that may be private to someone else. This can be done without meaning to.
When images get put in peoples files, or on the internet many people start having access to them. Some people in the photos may not want lots of people to see the picture.
Informed consent may be need especially in an occupational therapy practice.
What is Flickr.com?
Flickr - almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world - has two main goals:
1. They want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
2. They want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.
What is the difference between a digital and optical zoom?
So everyone knows the bigger the number the better but what is the difference between digital and optical zoom?
Digital Zoom: Pixel count, pixels expand. Digital zoom grabs the middle of the photo and blows it up.
Optical Zoom: Focus and retain pixel count but still enlarge.