Digital cameras
are ideal if you are planning to place your Family History pages
online. High resolution images are not required for the internet,
so a digital camera capable of producing 640
X 480 pixel images is perfectly adequate. More recent cameras
can achieve pixel resolutions of 1024
X 768 or higher. Expect to pay in the region of £300
- £500 for a decent camera.
Digital Cameras
have become progressively cheaper in the last year. Remember that
several lower end cameras for general use in a school are better
than one higher end one which may end up being locked away in
the cupboard.
Most digital
cameras work on Macintosh or Windows PCs. Check the compatibility
of the camera with your computer before purchasing. Also check
if the camera uses a serial or USB interface. Serial interfacing
cameras are often very slow and cause bottlenecks in the classroom
when the data is being downloaded. It is much better to purchase
a USB interfacing camera but you need to have a USB port on your
PC. USB is 'hot pluggable' meaning that you can connect and reconnect
devices without having to reboot the PC.
ABOVE
IMAGE: USB CONNECTOR
There are
two main types of 'digital film' used by digital cameras. These
are SmartMedia cards and CompactFlash (used in Kodak cameras).
The cards may be removed from the camera and placed into a card
reader and downloaded to the PC, releasing the camera back into
use. Some cards work with a PCMCIA converter and can be directly
downloaded to a laptop. This is useful if you're planning a field
trip as a part of your project.
IMAGE 1:
SMART MEDIA CARDS
IMAGE 2:
COMPACT FLASH USED IN KODAK CAMERAS WITH PCMCIA CONVERTER
(THE CARD
PLUGS INTO THE CONVERTER WHICH IN TURN PLUGS INTO A LAPTOP)
You can reformat
the cards inside the camera once you have downloaded the images
to the PC. Some reliability issues exist with SmartMedia cards
and certain card readers. 'Digital film' can be bought in values
of 4mb, 8mb or 16mb. The number of images on each card depends
on the compression settings set on the camera. Most cameras enable
higher or low levels of compression depending on the image quality
that you require.
