Tutorial Two Technical Description

Tutorial Two: Digital Camera use and applications

“A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature”. Briefly discuss this statement in relation to digital camera technology. What would you consider to be some of the pluses and minuses digital camera technology holds in relation to more traditional film based cameras?

Digital cameras these days can be considered as reversible. This can be explained by the fact that once a shot or photo is taken, the viewer can see the photo and decide whether or not it suits them or not. They can then follow through to delete it and retake the shot. There is also a larger limit on the amount of photos that can be taken. The digital cameras can store a lot more images and then can also be transferred from the camera onto a computer, laptop or CD to be printed off or kept.
Some minuses of a digital camera are that it requires batteries. This can become a hassle when the batteries are flat and the camera is needed. Compared to the older style cameras that require film processing, they do not need to be charged up to work.


List some of the ways that digital images can be stored transferred and manipulated using other communications technology.

The images from a digital camera can be transferred from the camera itself onto a laptop or computer where it can be backed up in files and stored there or transferred from there onto CDs that can be processed either in a specific photo processing store or printed yourself with a special photo printing printer. The images can be used to upload into web pages, blogs, screen savers, emailed to others around the world and also changed to suit the viewer.



Given the prevalence of image capturing devices, and thinking about the issues discussed in tutorial one, consider what sort of ethical issues may arise with their use.

If an image is taken of a particular object or person, anything in the background has not given informed consent for that photo to be processed if the user chooses to keep that photo. Therefore, the person in the background does not have any control over what happens to the photo or who will see it.


Briefly discuss some of the ways that digital images could, or are, being used in occupational therapy practice.

Can be used as visual aids for patients or clients

They can also be used to show patients adaptive devices that may enable them to return home. Photos can be taken of environments if advice is needed from other professionals within the team.



Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Flickr.com

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. It was one of the earliest Web 2.0 applications. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by its organization tools, which allow photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means. As of November 2007, it hosts more than two billion images.
Retrieved February 16, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr


Name one other photo storage website which offers a service similar to Flickr.com

www.pixigogo.com



Explain what the difference is between a digital and an optical zoom


Optical zoom is equivalent to physically moving closer to the subject (although your lens is moving and not you) so you capture the actual image without any kind of digital manipulating on the part of your camera. The result is a clear shot, just like any other photo.Digital zoom is where the camera crops and enlarges the part of the photo you are trying to zoom in on. So it's not really a zoom, its just an enlargement. When you enlarge a photo, your camera has to make up the spaces in between the pixels (those tiny colour blocks that make up the photo) that didn't exist in the original shot. The problem is that cameras aren't that smart, so the result is always blurry and sometimes discoloured in areas because the camera's software duplicated the wrong pixels. This process is called dithering by the way, and there's more than one way to dither, but none of the dithering technologies is anywhere near being close to fooling the eye. That's why optical zoom is the only thing you should look at when considering a camera to buy.
17
Pts




Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel

This term is generally used with digital cameras when it is referring to the number of pixels that make up the image sensor that makes up a photo.


A megapixel (that is, a million pixels) is a unit of image sensing capacity in a digital camera. (A pixel - a word invented from "picture element" - is the basic unit of programmable colour on a computer display or in a computer image.) In general, the more megapixels in a camera, the better the resolution when printing an image in a given size. A digital camera with a 1.3 megapixel resolution will print a good quality 4 x 3 inch print at 300 dpi (dots per inch). If a higher quality is needed or a larger print at the same quality, a camera with a higher megapixel value will be needed.
The number of images that can be stored in a given size of flash memory for the camera is determined by the size of the flash memory and the size of each image in terms of megapixels.