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? This statement in relation to digital camera technology has a lot of truth in it. Although digital cameras are seen as the way of the future they don’t have all of the aspects that the old film camera provides the user. Some of these aspects could include the element of surprise when the film is developed, the fun receiving photos of an event weeks after the event accrued.

List some of the ways that digital images can be stored transferred and manipulated using other communications technology. Digital photos can be stored on websites such as flickr, they can also be stored on computer programmes like i photo. They can be stored on cell phones, cds, flash drives etc.

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. Ethical issues that need to be considered when taking photos could be in In OT practise- gaining permission from clients and family Being aware of peoples privacy and rights We have a responsibility to ourselves our clients and anyone we might take a photo of.

Briefly discuss some of the ways that digital images could, or are, being used in occupational therapy practice. Digital cameras are used to take photos of home visits to show other OT’s for there thoughts. Photos may be taken of clients for teaching purposes.

Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Flickr.com Flickr.com is a internet site were anybody who is registered can store photos online. Other people can access this photos, this is a good way to keep friends and family in touch with the latest photos. E.g grandchildren, wedding photos

Name one other photo storage website which offers a service similar to Flickr.com Other sites which are similar are bebo.com and you tube.

Explain what the difference is between a digital and an optical zoom Most cameras have both optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. Image quality stays high throughout the zoom range. Digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size, then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again. Digital zoom results in a significant loss of quality as is clear from the examples below. It's pretty much a last resort, and if you don't have it in camera, you can do a similar job using almost any image editing program.

Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel One of the main ways that manufacturers categorize their digital cameras is in terms of pixel count. What this is is the number of individual pixels that go into making each image. Today this number varies between 1 million (1 Megapixel) to around 14 million (14 Megapixels). A million pixels is abbreviated to MP, so a 1MP camera has 1 million pixels and a 3MP camera has 3 million pixels. Currently most popular consumer digital cameras have between 2MP and 5MP. A 3MP camera can make excellent 4"x6" prints and very good 5"x7" prints. If you intend to make lots of 8"x10" prints, then perhaps a 4MP or 5MP camera would be a better choice. Sometimes two numbers are given, total pixels and effective pixels. Total pixels count every pixel on the sensor surface. Usually the very edge pixels aren't used in the final image. Effective pixels are the number of pixels actually used in the image after the edge pixels have been dropped.