SMART Phone and Photo Blog

If you have old family movies, you can get them put onto DVDs.  But what if you want to take a short clip from one of those DVDs and post it as an MPEG file to YouTube for the family to see and enjoy?

Thanks to a customer of ours, Martin Strell, we know it’s easy.  There’s a free simple video editor you can use at:  http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/  With this you need to enter a file extension manually for your new clip.

If you’re going to collect and organize your photos digitally, there’s a couple of ways to organize them.  You can put them in folders but then you must decide if the folders will be named by date (”2009″ with “Jan” “Feb” etc underneath that) or by topic (child name, activity etc.).  This can also be a problem if you move one of the photos out of its folder, by itself it isn’t searchable.

A better way is to rename the files.  If you right click on a photo file in Windows, “rename” comes up as an option.  If you have a photo of a family member, Aunt Ethel, from 1948, at the house in San Francisco, you could rename it:  “1948_AuntEthel_family_SanFrancisco”  That way it’s searchable by ANY of those names.  Note that in Windows you can use names with spaces in them, BUT beware that if you ever put a photo on the web it’s going to work alot better if there are NO spaces.  So use _ or no space at all is that recommendation.

If you give a group of photos all the same name as a “rename” Windows will number them consecutively with the same name.  The FIRST photo though will be a blank number, the second photo will be “1″ and so on – a bit counterintuitive but still a good way to go overall.

Stop by the store and we can show you how this works, it makes a big difference to organize your photos this way.

Any photo or document that can be scanned can be restored.  The original will generally be given back to you on the spot.  The restoration work is done with Photoshop typically.  There’s a number of examples on the website of “before” and “afters.” 

It’s possible to “fix” a photo that’s been torn in half.  It’s possible to fix badly faded photos.  And generally it’s possible to rebuild missing body parts in photos.  Also you can colorize and old black and white – in this case you need to provide hair, clothes and eye color.

Pricing is $34.95 typically.  Stop by the store and we can discuss in more detail and show you some examples.

Most digital cameras today, including some Digital SLRs even, have a video mode.  These generally take decent videos at medium quality resolution.  It’s not going to be the quality of that old camcorder you never use anymore.  But it can be taken with that small camera in your pocket – a good trade off.

Note that digital video files are HUGE files though.  So if you have a 1 GB memory card in your camera, that’s ALOT of photos, but not that much video.

My suggestion is to use these video capabilities to take 5-10 second clips with photos before and after.  So if you visit the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, take alot of photos, but then work in some video clips on the roller coaster and such, to give some multimedia context to your trip.

The bigger question is:  what to do with those video clips afterwards.  That’s the next, broader discussion.

Stop by the store and give us your perspective on camera videos.  Or stop by and we’ll show you how your video works and how to use it.  We also have a selection of large capacity memory cards you can purchase for those big files.

Camera phones are very prevalent.  But while they may have high megapixel counts (=resolution) they still have very small apertures and lower quality optics.  It’s physics.  Small aperture = very little light.  Good/expensive cameras have BIG apertures to let alot of light in.

If you are taking photos outdoors in bright sunlight, even your good Nikon SLR would close the aperture down very small.  Thus outdoors in good light, camera phones can take very good pictures.

If your camera phone has a flash, it’s probably nowhere near as good as a regular camera’s.

So indoors your camera phone is not very likely to take good photos.  No, your baby doesn’t have jaundice, that yellow is from the low light you took that i-phone photo in.

How to get your photos out?

1) you can send them to your email.  Most phones support MMS (multimedia messasing service) where photos can be sent to other phones or email addresses

2) you can connect to your computer with a data cable, or

3) if you have a removable memory card in your phone you can just take that out and insert it directly into a printer such as our Sony kiosk here in the store.

Stop by the store and we can show you how to use your camera phone and how to get images out.

We’ll put all your camera phone photos on a data DVD for just $4.95.  So if you have a bunch of photos in there, get them out where you can enjoy them!

Photoshop is sold in two versions:  Photoshop Elements (sometimes referred to as PSE) or Photoshop CS# (CS4 currently).  CS stands for Creative Suite.

The PSE version is $100 or less ($50 in some cases).  The CS4 version is $200+.  Unless you’re really sophisticated I think PSE is all most people need.

There are many tuturials on the internet for Photoshop (Google “photoshop video tutorial” and you’ll get plenty of choices).  The KEY logical of Photoshop to grasp is layers.  Imagine you’re looking down at your photo and you see all the visible layers top down.  You will pile layers upon layers and decide which are visible.

So for example you have a basic photo of some people in front of a non-descript background.  You create a duplicate layer of the original, on top of the original.  Then blur the layer on top.  Ok you have a blurred photo.  Now on the top layer, ERASE the people in the middle of the photo you want to highlight.  Now you’ll have a photo with a blurred background but the people showing clear from the layer on the bottom.  If you can grasp this basic concept of layers you can get photoshop.

Stop by the store if you want us to show you what’s explained above.  We’re not a Photoshop training center, there are classes that others give for that.  But we are photo enthusiasts and will show you this layering effect.  2 minutes from us can save you hours of trying to figure this out on your own.

Or if you have photoshop on your laptop, you’re welcome to sit at our table here in the store and we’ll give you tips and pointers when it’s not busy.

If you want a free, Photoshop-lite product, try Picasa from Google.  It’s more limited than PSE, but the price is right, and Picasa does alot of neat things in and of itself.

If you go to http://picasa.google.com/ you can download Google’s Picasa software FOR FREE.  Picasa is like IPhoto on the Mac substantially.  Picasa is also a Photoshop-lite type product.  It doesn’t layer photos like Photoshop does, but it is a very good editing tool for basic stuff.

Picasa is also the easiest way to straighten a crooked photo.  If you scan photos on a flat scanner, they don’t scan to the edge.  If you need to scan something to the edge you need to place it out in the middle of the scanner glass and it could come out crooked.  If this happens, Picasa’s straighten tool is for you.

If you can bring in your laptop to the store, we’ll show you how to download and run Picasa, for free.  If you come by at the right time, we might even have fresh popcorn for you!

On our website there’s a number of tips for taking better pictures.  http://www.smartphonephoto.com/PhotoVideoTips/PhotoVideos.html

One of best tips though is a fill flash.  If you have a person standing in front of a bright background, the camera’s light meter usually is faked out and under exposes the picture relative to the person in front you’re interested in.  To get light on the person without over exposing and washing out the background, use the fill flash.

With many cameras you have to switch into manual mode, and switch to “always on” on the flash.  That will make the flash go off on all shots.

Most close up photos of people in outdoor environments will benefit from a fill flash.  Note a flash’s effective distance is only about 5 – 10 feet, so don’t bother at the ballgame etc.  But most any photo of a person outside can benefit from fill flash.

Stop by the store and we can show you how this works for your camera.

4:3, 3:2, 7:5, 5:4, 16:9 who cares?  Those are critical ratios any good photographer should understand.

From the “old” tv standards, most cameras today take pictures in a 4:3 ratio. 

Most prints made are 4×6, which is a 3:2 ratio.  When does that matter?  If you take a landscape (sideways) photo with a tall person in the middle, that guy’s (me usually…..) head will get chopped off if you send that out for a standard 4×6 print.

5×7’s are slightly different and of course 8×10’s (4:5) are different again.  16:9 is the HD tv standard.

So what to do?

1) when you take photos DON’T crop too close.  Get close to your subject, but leave area around your subject for future cropping.  Leave your original in its original shape while editing it (light etc.) and then crop just before you print.

2) be involved in your printing.  If you make 4×6 prints here in the store on our Sony kiosk, you can adjust the crop on your 4×6’s before you print them.  If you send them out for wholesale printing, you lose control of what is cropped out.  If you print them yourself on our instant kiosk, you’ll know exactly what you’re going to get before it comes off the printer.

Stop by the store and we can walk you through this in more detail.