Images these days can be captured, stored, manipulated and transferred by many means: cameras, video cameras, laptops, camera phones, and CCTV cameras to name a few.
It is more common to have a digital camera these days rather than a film camera, but this doesn't necessarily mean that they are better. Film cameras have the advantage of being:
- simpler to use,
- more durable,
- used to have better quality pictures,
- way more exciting to receive the packet of pictures back from the chemist after they had been developed!!!!
Digital cameras have the advantage of:
- it's made it easier to share, manipulate and distribute the images.
- easy to keep in touch quickly with friends and family from overseas, by emailing pictures or viewing them online.
A disadvantage of digital cameras surrounds the storage of the images. It is easier to leave them on the computer/camera rather than printing them out. This leaves us with the issue of safety of our images-if our computers get stolen we have no backup. Even backing up our images on CD's has a limited life-of the actual CD-being approximately 15 years. (Plus, it's way more fun and personal to sit around looking at an album, rather than a laptop looking at the holiday pics!!)
One of the large ethical issues that we have to consider when using digital images is informed consent. As outlined in the previous posting, people have to know that their picture is being taken and where it will end up. Digital pictures are easily copied, and if posted onto common sites (eg Facebook), one has to be careful who has access to them to avoid them being downloaded by unknown people and being used for means otherwise intended.
As Occupational Therapists, practice is starting to include the use of digital cameras in a multitude of ways:
- taking pictures of outings to put together a scrapbook with clients,
- taking pictures of client's houses in order to place them into a report for application of funding,
- digital images are being used to promote Occupational Therapy as a profession, for example, The New Zealand Association of Occupational Therapy encourage therapists to send in images of what they are dong to celebrate the national "Occupational Therapy Week".
Another way to share digital images with the world is by using certain brands of software that come on your computer. "Picasa", a standard software for storing digital pictures on pc's, has created a way for users to share their albums online with family and friends. You just need to sign up with a google account, and then you can post your pics, create photo gifts, edit your pics, and invite friends and family to view them. Too easy!!!
Terminology:
One of the things to be aware of when using digital cameras are the differences in the zooms:
- Digital zoom will "grab" a part of an image and blow it up with the same ratio as the original picture. It does not give such a high quality of picture as optical zoom.
- Optical zoom is the better kind of zoom. The lens will move in and out on the camera and will produce a higher quality finished image.
- You can see in this picture examples of digital VS optical zoom: (picture retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Digital_zoom_example.png 29/05/09). The first box is the original picture, the second box is digital zoom, and the third box is optical zoom. Note the difference in quality.
Also, the term megapixel (MP) can be compared to tiles on a mosaic. One pixel is an individual tile, and a megapixel is one million pixels. Pixels have sesors which "pick up light". Generally about 7.2MP is decent enough for a camera to give good quality enlargements.
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