Digitally Capturing Images Using a Camera and a Scanner

by James H. Ditmore

I have used both both digital cameras and scanners at school for the annual staff, Water Valley history book, school's website, Teacher's lesson plans, personal pictures, and for ex students. Both are needed, depending on what you want to do with the images. Resolution, the number of pixels per inch used to create an image, is the key to understanding capturing digital images.

Method

Examples

How to Capture Image

Advantages

Disadvantages

Digital Camera

Photo taken by James Ditmore with 640X480PPI low resolution camera setting.

Edited and magnified by James Ditmore with loss in resolution.

This photo was taken by James Ditmore at Trent on 09/13/02 with 2048X1536PPI high resolution camera setting..

These two photos Edited and magnified by James Ditmore without much loss in resolution.

There are many Digital Cameras on the market. I use an Olympus C-4000 4-Megapixel Digital Camera.

When setting up the camera for taking photos, the resolution setting is set for 2048X1536 JPEG. This resolution was chosen for photos that might be put into the yearbook. This resolution is best for resizing and keeping photos from degrading while resizing. With a 64MB smartmedia card, the camera will take approximately 67 photos. When taking photos for athletic events, the mode setting is set for athletic. Up to 6 different configuration settings can be set for this camera.

Make sure the 4-AA Ni-MH Rechargable Batteries are charged enough for the job. Take the lens cover off, turn the switch to the appropriate place for taking photos.

Point and Shoot until you run out of memory. Then, download photos to computer for viewing, emailing, sharing, or printing.

There are more versatile features that permit more or less controlled and creative shootings.

Photos are saved on a smart media card, saved to a computer for viewing, editing, emailing, publishing on a web site, sharing or printing.

Fast access to the photos without waiting for the film to get developed.

Saves time and money.

Save only the photos that you want to keep and delete the bad photos.

Photos can be stored on zip disk or compact disk.

Photos can be emailed to grandparents very fast.

Initial expense is costly.

Learning curve for learning how to use camera and software to download, edit and print photos.

Printers and photo quality paper are expensive initially and maintenance of cartridges and photo paper is costly.

The higher the resolution, the more memory has to be used to store the photo.

Scanner

Scanned with resolution set at 150 PPI by my multimedia 2001 class.

There are many scanners on the market today. I use an AGFA Snapscan Touch Scanner. The maximum resolution for this scanner is 9600X9600Pixels Per Inch (PPI). Resolution is the key to scanning also. If you are going to email a scanned image, then the resolution should be set for around 150PPI. For Yearbook photos, the resolution should be set for 300PPI or higher.

Open the software up on the computer, set configuration settings for: data path to save image to, resolution setting, image file type to save image as (jpeg, tiff, bmp...etc.).

Start the scan, scanner warms up the lamp for scanning, then scans image. The image is ready to be edited before it is scanned again to be saved where it was told to be saved.

Easy to copy pictures for use on Web Site, printing copies of photos, printing copies of text images for editing, and for sharing images to be sent by email.

Images can be stored onto hard drive, zip disks and compact disks.

Initial expense is costly.

Learning curve for learning how to use scanner and software for scanning, editing and printing copies.

Learning curve for learning how resolution works.

Slower process for just making copies of text than copiers.

Elements of Principles of Design

Balance: All the images above are balanced or the rule of thirds applies.

Emphasis: The emphasis in the football photos is the catching of the football and the team. The scanned image is emphasizing the yearbook cover.

Variety: The football photos before they were magnified, have a variety of background images. The scanned image has some variety on its cover.

Contrast: The contrast in the football photos is more evident than in the scanned image of the yearbook cover.

Texture: The texture of the grass and football helmets in the camera photos are noticeable. The texture of the cover of the yearbook is really noticeable.

Researched Links:

Digital Camera

http://www.watervalley.netxv.net/annuals.htm

http://www.watervalley.netxv.net/football_hs_varsity.htm

http://www.mpsuperstore.com/digital/indexMy.htm?discr18821.htm

http://eshop.msn.com/softcontent/softcontent.aspx?scpId=2273&scmId=1081

Scanning

http://www.agfa.com/

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/Scanning/

Created by James H. Ditmore

Digital Graphics and Animation 101

Module 1 - Discussion #3

10/15/2002