.KEYWORD camera
.FLYINGHEAD DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
.TITLE Windows CE and digital cameras
.FEATURE
.SPOTLIGHT FIGALT camera-cover.gif
.SUMMARY Every so often an article comes along that we just know will be in one of those "best of" compendiums at the end of the year. This article, by contributing editor Jason Dunn, is one of those. Digital cameras are coming of age (and so are Windows CE devices). Together, they make a pretty powerful team. In this fascinating article, Jason shows how the future of photography is here now.
.AUTHOR Jason Dunn
I’m the kind of person that likes electronic toys. Hence, my love of all things Windows CE. I’m also an amateur photographer, and have been following the rise of digital cameras over the past few years.
Quality has always been the sticking point for me. I wasn’t going to move from my 35mm film camera until I was certain that, if I captured a memory with a digital camera, I wouldn’t think "Darn, I wish I had used my regular camera." Early consumer-grade digital cameras had difficulty with accurate color representation, and flash memory technology was too immature to allow for many high-resolution images to be captured on a single card.
In 1999, however, things changed. Kodak, considered by many to be the leader in both SLR and digital photography, released a new series of digital cameras that caught my attention. The DC-265 has impeccable capture quality, both in terms of resolution (1.6 million pixels, which is 1536 x 1024 resolution) and accurate color representation. A single 16MB CompactFlash (CF) card could hold 100+ images, and the price had fallen to a reasonable level. I took the plunge and purchased the DC-265 after reading many favorable reviews.
.H1 Choosing the right Windows CE device
In terms of hardware, the Clio is a great digital photography companion. With an internal CF card slot, and a PCMCIA card slot, it’s simple to load the images. I also purchased a 48MB CF to be the main storage card for my camera. A card of this size would allow me to take anywhere from 96 to 560 photos, depending on the quality (i.e., the resolution of each image would determine the memory it would consume). An accessory kit purchased along with my camera provided me with an adapter that allowed me to plug the CF card into the Clio’s PCMCIA card slot. I’m a person that relies heavily on being able to do things quickly, so opening the back panel of the Clio to insert the CF was out of the question. Lastly, the DC-265 camera supported multiple methods of connecting to the host, including USB, serial, and IrDA, so I was set.
.H1 Finding the software
I had the hardware in place, but I needed the silver bullet: software. Windows CE has no built-in image viewing software, and the newsgroups are rife with people who have problems viewing digital camera JPEG (i.e., Joint Photographic Expert Group format) images. The problem usually relates to the proprietary headers in the JPEG images that make it unreadable except with special software. So I would need a Windows CE software package that would give me the ability to work with my digital images. Enter Sierra Image Expert for Windows CE.
Although this article isn’t a software review, Sierra Image Expert for Windows CE is the only software of its type for Windows CE. It deserves a close look, because it’s essentially the only way to do the Windows CE/digital photography tango. Installation was a breeze. It takes up somewhere around 600k of space (and can be installed on a CF card).
Once installed, I attempted to see how I could communicate with the camera from my Clio. The most obvious method was to remove the CF card from the camera, but I wanted to push the envelope a little. Although Sierra Image Expert for Windows CE supports direct serial connections to cameras, I couldn’t get it to work with the DC265 camera. I tried every speed option, from 19,200 up to 115,000, but none connected. According to the help files, the DC series is supported, so I’m not sure what happened.
Instead, I opted for popping the CF card into the PCMCIA adapter and browsing the images via Sierra Image Expert for Windows CE. This proved to be a fairly disappointing experience because of one thing: speed. The images taken were 300-450k in size, and it took the Clio nearly two seconds to draw each thumbnail. Multiply that by 50 images, and you’re staring at a screen for quite some time.
This is a limitation of how fast the Clio can read data off the CF card, however, not a limitation of Sierra Image Expert. However, after you’ve double-clicked on an image and previewed the big version (which you can then decide to delete, etc.) you are taken back to the thumbnail screen where you have to wait for them to be generated yet again. After doing this a few times, the slowness became unbearable. The software would be far more effective if it would let you stay in the zoomed mode, shown in Figure A, and display a blank frame instead of forcing you back to the browse mode. I ended up previewing and deleting most of the images directly on my camera where the thumbnail image was drawn instantly. However, Sierra Image Expert is useful for other things as well.
.FIGPAIR A Here’s the zoomed mode, showing both a full picture and other thumbnail images.
A powerful feature of this software is the ability to create albums of images. You can organize images into collections and folders to manage them easier. There’s also a slide show feature, and even an option to create a shortcut on the desktop or Start menu. This sort of time-saver is a nice thought! The slide shows can be configured to automatically advance on a timer and, it appears, the signal can be pumped out to a VGA card, which in turn can be hooked up to a TV or LCD projector, depending on the card you chose. It would have been nice to be able to eliminate the control bar that is still visible in the slide show mode, but it’s fairly unobtrusive.
.H1 Emailing your images
A surprisingly powerful (and secret) tool is the transfer tool. You can email the photo or transfer it via infrared directly from within the program, as shown in Figure B!
.FIGPAIR B You can email the photo or transfer it via infrared directly from within the program.
The interesting part is that sending an email gives you the option to re-size the image before sending it (down to one-eighth of the original size). When you consider the massive resolution of today’s digital cameras (the DC265 has a 1536 x 1024 resolution), resizing before emailing is a fantastic idea!
Examining the photos closely after they’ve been resized demonstrates the quality of the resizing algorithm. The photos aren’t blurry or distorted. The question is, why didn’t they incorporate this capability into the main part of the program? If I want to update a Web site from my location using the camera, but want to use a more web-friendly image (i.e., 320×240), I have to email the images to myself to get the proper size. It works, but it’s hardly ideal!
Options are also plentiful with the program, allowing you to choose how images are sent via email — either POP3 or ActiveSynch. It also comes with a preset color palette, which apparently is better than the built-in Windows CE palette. I’m at a disadvantage here because the Clio is only an 8-bit device (256 colors), so everything looks quite bad in terms of photographic quality. It’s hard to gauge the effectiveness of the Image Expert palette, because it’s not meant for an 8-bit color device.
.H1 Annotating images
The ink tools are very powerful, allowing you to effectively add comments and sketches to any image. In Figure C, you can see how I took a photo of the TV nook in my under-construction condo, made some measurements, and made note of them directly on the image.
.FIGPAIR C The ink tools are very powerful, allowing you to effectively add comments and sketches to any image.
As you can see in Figure D, you can use multiple pen colors and sizes. Artistic talent not included (evidently)!
.FIGPAIR D You can use multiple pen colors and sizes.
Once the ink has been applied and you’re satisfied with your additions, you "merge" them into the image, as shown in Figure E.
.FIGPAIR E Once the ink has been applied and you’re satisfied with your additions, you "merge" them into the image.
The applications for people like realtors, construction workers, and generally anyone who needs to combine digital imagery with hand-drawn notes are endless!
.BEGIN_KEEP
.H1 Conclusion
Overall, the software is good at what it does. It’s not meant for editing or retouching, but hopefully in version 3.0 we’ll see things like an integrated resizing option, and something like cropping would be tremendously helpful.
Despite a few drawbacks, I’m satisfied with my first foray into the Windows CE/digital photography realm. As the speed and color depth of Windows CE devices increases, they’ll become more and more useful companion devices. As Windows CE software grows, we’ll see more competitors running against Sierra’s offering, and since competition breeds innovation, the software will become more useful.
Now all I need is a flawless wireless solution and PhotoImpact (a Photoshop-like image editing tool that currently runs on Windows 95/98) for Windows CE, and I can be a Webmaster from a park bench.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Sierra Image Expert for Windows CE is available from http://www.sierraimaging.com.
Information on the DC265 is available from http://www.kodak.com.
PhotoImpact is available from http://www.ulead.com.
The Clio is available from http://www.vadem.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
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