Digital camera « Tech – for Everyone

Sunday Beauty #129

Here’s another pretty picture for your Sunday..

Click on image to see more by this artist (reco’d)

“A cloudy sunset i a summer night in sweden” by imagesbystefen, courtesy of Flickr Commons

Today’s quote: “All men should strive
to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.” ~ James Thurber

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

July 28, 2013 Posted by techpaul | Digital camera | Leave a comment

Quick Tip: Digitally Document Your Possessions

Photographic Proof For Insurance (Included: a good “general tip”)

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say; but if you had a catastrophe and your insurance company refuted, or undervalued, your claim – a picture could be worth thousands of dollars.

If your house burned to the ground, and your insurance company disagreed with you about the contents of your home, or severely undervalued them, or both, how would you respond? I would open my email.

What did he say?

Step 1) (Takes an hour, or two, or so) Get a hold of a digital camera, or use your cell phone’s camera if you have no other option, and photograph all your rooms in a “panorama” type perspective. Also be sure to take good pictures of all your key (valuable) possessions – furniture, electronics, appliances, jewelry, artwork, vehicles, power tools, silverware, etc. Open your closets and snap some pics of their contents (your wardrobe); and also your cabinets with all your pots and pans and popcorn poppers. Create a “visual tour” of your home/garage/tool shed.

Step 2) Transfer the images to your PC into a folder you create named “Insurance” (or.. something similar). Then apply a “batch resizer” to the JPEGs (the pictures) you just took. Digital images from cameras usually are quite large (file size, I mean) and to complete the next step, you need to ‘shrink’ them down to a smaller (file) size — say, under 500 KB each. It is easy, don’t worry; scroll down for my reco on a “resizer” tool.

Step 3) Now import (or attach) the (smaller) images to an email and send the email to yourself.
This may be easiest if you use a “zip” utility (such as Windows’ Send to compressed folder).
Now, no matter what happens to your camera or computer, a copy of those photos will be stored on your email server – ready to show to your insurance claims adjuster should you ever need them. It may take more than one email to send yourself them all..
(And naturally, I hope we never do need them..!)

And let’s face it; if we had to sit down and write out a list from memory.. how many things would we forget without that visual reminder?

(Optional Step 4) “Burn” a copy of the original “Insurance” folder to a CD/DVD (the large size images) and put the disc in your safety deposit box (or give it to a friend to keep for you.)

Walking through with a video camera is a great thing to do too. But be sure to store the ‘tape’ somewhere else.

And YES, folks: you have to do this before the tornado (or hurricane, or earthquake, or..) strikes.

Today’s free download: Batch Image resizing made easy. Fotosizer is a free batch photo/image resizer tool. It lets you resize hundreds of photos in a matter of minutes in a quick and easy way.

(The tip here can be good to know just for “GP”. You never know when you might want to email a large number of photos..)

Related: Home Inventory: How to Document Your Personal Property (there is also a link to two videos at the bottom..)

Not directly related: Back to School 2011: ‘What to buy your kid for college’ guide

“Back to School 2011: College is an investment, not just for those who go, but for parents too. Give your kid a helping hand with these tech essentials.” Read more…

Today’s quote: “My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.” ~ Phyllis Diller

Yes. I'd say so.

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August 1, 2011 Posted by techpaul | advice, computers, Digital camera, Digital Images, e-mail, how to, shopping for, tech | advice, back to school shopping guide, batch resize, claim, digital, document, email, evidence, how to, how to document your property, images, insurance, large, photograph, possessions, proof, resize, send, tip | Leave a comment

Does Your Android Wear Goggles?

Phones That Can See, Read, and Translate (aka “My Phone Is Smarter Than Me”.)

Here’s how it works:
* Point your phone at a word or phrase. Use the region of interest button to draw a box around specific words
* Press the shutter button
* If Goggles recognizes the text, it will give you the option to translate
* Press the translate button to select the source and destination languages.

Wow. Could I have uses that French class.

What am I talking about? Google Goggles is an “mobile app” that combines OCR (optical character recognition) with Google’s ability to translate languages — which gives your phone’s camera the ability to read French (for example), and tell you what that item on the menu is (for example).

Is this something out of James Bond fiction? Nope. Just another example of The Future Is Here Now.

Google Goggles (currently) requires Android 1.6, and “can read English, French, Italian, German and Spanish and can translate to many more languages.” To find out more, see, Official Google Mobile Blog: Translate the real world with Google Goggles.

… eventually, we will all be wearing OCR cameras (maybe built into eyeglasses), and have Wi Fi/4G wireless transponders (woven into our clothes?), and have chips in our brain which contain dictionaries of all known languages… and using a phone to translate a foreign language sentence will seem quaint. Like Atari’s Pong.
But that’s probably 20 years off. In the meantime, there’s Google Goggles.

Amazing.

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May 8, 2010 Posted by techpaul | computers, Digital camera, gadgets, Google, mobile, News, tech | android, app, cell phones, cellphone, device, foriegn, goggles, Google, languages, mobile, ocr, tech, techpaul, translate | 2 Comments

Tips For Choosing A Digital Camera*

General Advice for Purchasing a New Digital Camera

I understand perfectly why people seek advice when it comes to buying a digital camera. There are literally hundreds to choose from – an overwhelming variety – and when you start shopping, it’s easy to become confused by the jargon.

A “mega” pixel is better than an ordinary, everyday “pixel”.. right? (You bet it is. It contains more vitamins and minerals.)

A long, long, time ago I wrote a three-part advice series on buying a new computer, and today I am going to reiterate a bit of advice from there – when buying a digital camera, you have to hold it in your hands. The “right” camera for you will just, well, “feel right”. If you keep accidentally pushing a button, or put your thumb right on the viewer screen.. that’s not good.

Tip of the day: General advice for purchasing a new digital camera.

* Optical zoom is better than digital zoom. Make sure that the “zoom” feature of your camera is handled by a moving lens. Digital zooming is okay in very small amounts, but the way it works will cause funny-looking “pixilation” when really put to work.

* You want image stabilization. Image stabilization is in my opinion simply a “must have”; fortunately, almost every manufacturer provides it. I won’t spend time, here, describing the different types. If you’re curious, click the link.

* The Megapixel. Folks, there is a lot of confusion regarding the camera jargon word “megapixel”. A higher megapixel number does not necessarily equate with “sharper image” or “clearer picture“.. in fact, they usually have nothing to do with each other.

Megapixels refers to the image (data) size and determines how big an enlargement you can make before you start to experience distortions (think of it as being a bit like film sizes). If the largest prints you ever make are 5 x 7, a three-to-four Megapixel camera is all you need. A 10 Megapixel camera is overkill for the vast majority of uses, and it will simply fill your memory card faster, with fewer shots. (But, you could make poster-size prints.)

* LCD “viewfinder”. I think it is important to have a manual viewfinder, as well as the LCD screen.. but that is personal opinion. In terms of LCD, the factors to consider are brightness, placement, and size. It should be big enough that you can see what it is showing when you hold the camera away from your body, and, it should be positioned on the camera in such a way as to not cause you to hold your hand in a funny/odd way so that you can see it. The image should be bright enough to be seen when you are out in the sunlight.
(And I’d like to repeat, your camera should just feel right in your hand.)

* Don’t buy features you won’t use. If you are not a photography buff, and don’t want to memorize a 200-page owners manual, then you don’t want to buy a D-SLR; you want a “point-and-shoot”, and you don’t need 24 “settings” if you’re only going to use one. Right? Right.

Today’s free link: SUPERAntiSpyware Online Safe Scan, a powerful new tool in the fight against the latest and particularly difficult malware infections.

Today’s free download: NetSetMan is a network settings manager which can easily switch between 6 different profiles including IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, DNS server, Win server, computer name, printer, DNS domain, workgroup, and scripts. Great for mobile devices.

Orig Post: 5/12/08

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December 21, 2009 Posted by techpaul | advice, Digital camera, gadgets, hardware, shopping for, tech | advice, camera, choosing, selecting, shopping, tech, techpaul, tips, tips for buying | 1 Comment

General Advice For Purchasing A Digital Camera*

I understand perfectly why people want some advice when it comes to buying a digital camera. There is a whole gaggle of them to choose from – an overwhelming variety – and when you start shopping, it’s easy to become confused by the jargon.