11 posts tagged “digital”
No, not that big ask.
I'm in the "ask" business. It's called "corporate contributions." People I've never met write letters to my employer, asking for donations. They thank me for taking time to speak with them when I've never spoken to them. They ask for contributions for their school raffle, silent auctions, and tricky tray activities. They ask us to donate things we don't manufacture. And, of course, some just ask for cash, usually in a four-page letter describing every imaginable tragic circumstance that might befall someone.
(Those tragic-sounding letters, in particular, sounds awfully similar. I wonder if there's a website that tells visitors how to grift cash by writing to corporations.)
And, after 18 months of reading these epistles, I've come up with a few basic tips on how NOT to ask for donations:
- If you're going to ask us to donate a digital camera, take a moment to proof-read your letter. Nearly every such request that hits my desk asks for a "digitial" camera. Spend a moment with a Target ad, or even our website. It's digital. Says so right on the box. Use your spell checker! (To be fair, this is a widespread goof; even Amazon.com sometimes botches a spelling.)
- Don't try to sweet-talk me by referencing an earlier phone conversation we never had. I'd remember. Besides, I keep a log of who asks for what.
- Ask for something we actually make or sell. Our website gives a pretty good showcase of our digital cameras, printers, films, digital frames, and so on. We don't make LCD projectors, waffle makers, or laptop computers -- so we're unlikely to donate items we don't sell.
- Silent auctions or raffle item requests are fine. But I've made it a policy to flat-out reject requests for donations for "Chinese auctions." Buy a calendar and a thesaurus -- it's 2008, and I'm sure Asian-Americans in your town aren't thrilled with your "Chinese" auctions!
- Most big companies engaged in charitable giving have a page or so on their website that spells out what they will and won't support. If you're going to ask, stop by that website first, and figure out if there's some intersection between what you're asking for and what our company cares to support.
- Asking for cash? Fine. Show me your 501(c)(3) documentation -- or at least, mention it in your letter of request. If you don't have one, don't wait by the mailbox for a check. It's not in the mail.
Do we donate digital cameras? Sure, when the charity's purposes intersect with our business objectives. We do the right thing, most of the time, and we'd like to get a little recognition for it.
That's how it works. So, as those end-of-the-year pleas for contributions swell my in-box, keep these tips in mind. Ask for a digitial camera, and I'll send you a book. Possibly a dictionary...!
This is the flip-side of those swanky new digital cameras that came out at CES in Las Vegas last week:
Millions of cellphones were discarded last year. The New York Times' Sunday magazine has an intriguing story about what becomes of them. It's great reading.
At our house, we've donated our outmoded cell phones to a local women's services agency (such as the YWCA, which has them reprogrammed to call only emergency services).
But, as the king of electronica on my street, I have a few more outmoded digital cameras. A few of them -- 2- and
And, unlike the cell phones that we got for under $100 (or even free) when introduced, my old reliable Kodak DC4800 camera carried a $799 price tag (!) when it rolled onto the market in June 2000. That camera still works well, but no one wants one of these relics when you can grab an 8-megapixel bruiser like the one below for $249.
Some of the manufacturers have trade-in programs where they'll give you a few dollars toward the purchase of a newer model when you trade in the old one. But $25 for a $599 camera seems paltry, especially if your old camera still works.
And if you drop one of today's plastic-rich digital cameras, you're likely to damage it beyond a reasonable cost of repair. It's really less expensive to buy a replacement camera than repair one that's more than a year old.
As the Times suggests, modern consumer electronics, including digital cameras, probably have some precious metals in them. I haven't seen the company that's responsibly extracting these metals from unloved digital cameras.
I don't know what to do with 'em. So, there's a file cabinet in my house where this old camera (and its siblings) lives -- remembered fondly, but unlikely to see serious shooting duty anytime soon.
This is important, whether you are giving or receiving a digital camera for the holidays.
Regardless of brand or manufacturer, the LCD screen on any digital camera is the one part most susceptible to damage. It's a 2.5-inch sheet of very thin glass. And it's not the same grade of glass as your typical windshield.
So, if you're not going to use a Delkin pop-up shade (described here), find an old plastic credit-card sized card. (Old "loyalty cards", membership cards, or key cards that I've forgotten to drop off at the hotel desk on departure work great.) Slip it in the camera case so it acts as a barrier between the LCD screen and the case. Or hold it in place with a rubber band.
It may save your camera's LCD -- and since fewer digital cameras have actual optical viewfinders, a camera with a dead LCD is basically a very expensive paperweight.
You'll thank me later.
Paul Simon grew up on the very same street where I lived in Queens, NY. We never met. But when he sang "Momma don't take my Kodachrome away," I had a feeling we knew each other.
Kodachrome's still around, although it's harder than ever to process. Just one lab in the U.S. -- Dwayne's Photo Service in Parsons, Kansas -- processes the stuff. I didn't use it much. But I carried a Nikon camera everywhere, starting in the mid-1980s. And I sang softly: "I've got a Nikon camera, I love to take photographs..."
This is my Nikon: a battered, black Nikon FM that just can't be killed. Sure, I have a few digital cameras, and a nice collection of 35mm rangefinders. But this little guy pre-dates my daughter, the College Student.
I had it serviced about seven years ago, when the meter disc cracked. It came back better than new. Now, the College Student's using it. (See example below.) And they both just keep on rocking.
Here's the thing about single-lens reflex cameras like this one: they force you to take part in making a picture. It's at once intimate and participatory: you compose it with an optical viewfinder pressed up to your face. You adjust the aperture and shutter speed. You're engaged in a creative process, rather than holding a point-and-shoot at arm's length so you can see the LCD screen. Sort of.
They can't take that away from me.
Today, I happened upon a group of well-meaning souls who are dismantling the assets of a defunct camera club. Darkroom equipment, light boxes, film processors -- all the once-useful gadgetry that you'd use to process and print film. In a darkroom.
Those days are gone. We mostly shoot digital. And, occasionally, a Nikon FM.
But among the assets they asked for help in finding a new home for: a couple of old Nikon FMs. A little dinged and brassy-edged, and not very pretty. But they work pretty well.
And I offered to find them a home.
Let me know.
My luck ran out.
I've had great success buying refurbished digital cameras. Usually, refurbished meant someone had inserted the memory card wrong, or the batteries backwards. The camera didn't work, so they returned it to the store.
Usually.
The following images came from a factory-refurbished Canon A570is camera. They're not edited in any way, just resized for the web. You'll see odd lines running through the pictures. In at least one, there's a bit of red pooling on the blue chairs. The overexposed shots speak for themselves. (Despite what you may have heard, it doesn't snow on a 65-degree day in Rochester, NY.)
These are telltale signs of a bad sensor.
Surprising for Canon, which usually has terrific quality control.
If you get these results right out of the box, race back to your retailer and hand the camera back.
Remember that wall of post office boxes I bought over the summer? I'm going to use it as a repository for most of my beloved film cameras. The market for 1970s era 35mm rangefinders -- my first photographic love -- has pretty much eroded. I love using these mostly mechanical marvels, because their lenses usually yield much sharper images than those obtainable from a compact digital camera.
I'm also partial to most of the little Olympus point- and-shoots, because even the lowliest of them seemed to have good lenses.
I still use my heavy Nikon SLRs, too. But only when I know exactly what I'm planning to shoot, and can choose the specific film for the job.
Photographer Chris Usher, whom I interviewed for a podcast this year, offers a similar point of view here.
After "vinyl records," you could also add "newspapers."
Of course, if Berke Breathed were right, maybe we'd still be reading his comic strips in the newspapers. Instead of looking at them online.
My pal Lori Page in Kodak's Atlanta office has put a great deal of effort into the Kodak Inspiration Tour, a traveling interactive digital photo experience that's traveled to state fairs, NASCAR races, and community events since earlier this summer. It'll make at least 13 stops around north America through early 2008.
I did my tour of duty at the Inspiration Tour's stop at the New York State Fair yesterday, in 90-degree Syracuse, NY. I showed unsuspecting fairgoers how to edit and print their digital pictures. And, accompanied by ace video producer Pat Maley, we shot interviews for an upcoming podcast.
I haven't visited many state fairs, but New York's has pretty much anything you'd want to see: Prize-winning livestock (especially llamas). A midway with more sawdust-filled Stewie Griffin dolls than anyone would ever want. And a surprisingly strong free concert series (yesterday's acts included Pure Prairie League, Poco, and Firefall -- a '70s MOR playlist come to life!).
Back to the Inspiration Tour. In Syracuse, you have to hunt for it. Kodak did not get a great location. Go past Chevrolet Court (the concert park area with the shiny Chevys). Head back toward the grandstand (where the pricier nighttime concert entertainment includes Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, and Kenny Chesney). Instead of turning right toward the grandstand, turn left. Look for the classic fire-spotter's tower like those erected all over the Adirondacks. The enormous yellow-and-white tent with all the cool Kodak digital technology is near the bottom of that tower.
Inside: it's air-conditioned. I don't know how you air-condition a tent, but it made our spot pretty popular when the temperature cracked into the 90s.
You go in and they hand you a digital memory card. Give it to one of the cheery hosts, and he or she'll take your picture in a NASCAR simulator, an Olympic medalist's stand, or a Disneyland scene. Then, there are about a dozen ways to print that photo right in the tent, and then upload it to the Kodak Gallery.
We had fun, even though we wished we'd seen a wider variety of guests come through. Maybe those Stewie Griffin kewpie dolls are a bigger deal than I thought.
Finally found a solution for trying to use a digital camera in bright sunlight: the Delkin LCD flip-up screen shade.
Circuit City (the company I vilified in a post a few months ago) recently served up the 2.5-inch version for $5 -- a lot better than the $10-$20 I've seen in other stores. So I bought a couple. (Prices vary, but look around.)
Good news: it works as advertised. It keeps sunlight from washing out the LCD.
The frame self-adheres to the camera back. You can remove it once, maybe twice, but I wouldn't expect the adhesive to last indefinitely if you do it repeatedly.
The shade has a transparent glass window, so there's actually some protection for the LCD. The shade folds flat when not in use.
But I'd rather be able to see what I'm photographing in daylight, so this is a pretty good solution.
(Full disclosure: my employer does not sell these shades, or have any business relationship with the Delkin people.)
I spent an hour this afternoon with Steve Sasson, a Kodak engineer who, in 1975, was asked to put together a filmless camera built around a charge-coupled device. After a year of cobbling together parts, components, and sub-assemblies, this is what he unveiled on Dec. 9, 1975:
This is the very first digital still camera. It used a zoom lens pirated from a Kodak XL55 Super-8 movie camera. It recorded crude black-and-white digital images to a digital data cassette (looks like an audio cassette, on the upper right side of the camera). Each "capture" and storage took about 23 seconds. The thing ran on a tray-ful of AA-size Ni-Cad batteries. The idea was to make a solid-state device with no moving parts, but since hard-drives at the time were the size of a washing machine, Steve opted for the tape-drive as a storage medium. Overall, the camera weighs about 8.5 pounds, and is as large as a kitchen toaster.
Don't even ask how you view the pictures, once they're captured; it required another entire playback system, linked to a big old TV screen.
I'm still looking for the notches where you attach the neck strap!
Steve's not big on being called the father of the digital camera. He readily admits he had lots of help from other researchers and technicians at Kodak to make this device come alive. The camera itself sits in a demonstration room inside Kodak's headquarters, but it's not kept under glass. At least, not yet.
But, years from now, someone will haul out a palm-sized copy of Trivial Pursuit, and the question will come up: "Who invented the first digital camera?"
Now you know.
Winter drags on. And I think it's going to drive me crazy.
Luckily, I have an insane amount of photos. Unluckily, many of them are Polaroids, dating back to the SX70 era. The SX70 was a semi-cool camera in its day, spitting a photo into your hand a second after pressing the shutter. Wait a minute, and you could watch it develop in your hand. The pictures themselves weren't anything great, but they had the cachet of being "instant."
The whole Polaroid thing died a couple of years ago. Polaroid got steamrolled by digital photography. A bunch of investment bankers ended up with the brand name. As a result, anything you buy with "Polaroid" on it is likely made in some Asian factory, and it no longer has roots in California or Boston, where the company once thrived.
But, rummaging through myUntidy Archives, I unearthed these early 1980s Polaroids of my college theatre friends from St. Bonaventure University:
Handsome bunch of actors, you bet. We were semi-famous for meandering the streets of Olean, NY, looking for offbeat trinkets and hard-to-find copies of the New York Times. Olean's a solid seven hours west of New York City -- Cleveland and Buffalo are closer.
But Olean, and our theatre director, Stephen W. Gray-Lewis, always welcomed us back for a visit. When he died last year, we all felt as if a very long-running theatrical production had had its last curtain call.
And we gathered last September once more to remember our dear director. Digital camera this time, in place of the Polaroid:
We're not exactly ready to go club hopping. But on a frosty March evening, it's good to remember old friends, and thank the photographer who snapped this photo.
