As she puts it, Christina Parascandola has the bad luck of having an unusual name.
The 37-year-old attorney was mentioned in news reports and blog posts about a heated dispute between residents of her Washington neighborhood and a noisy local bar that hosted some gay-themed events. Parascandola was worried that she came across in the articles as homophobic, particularly to potential employers.
When you Google my name, it looks like I'm some kind of monster," she says.
Parascandola set out to minimize the bad publicity. She hired a company called ReputationDefender Inc. that promises to help individuals "search and destroy" negative information about them on the Internet.
Businesses and others have long employed so-called search-engine-optimization techniques to try to make themselves appear higher in Web-search results. Now services like ReputationDefender and DefendMyName are charging fees that can run into hundreds of dollars to help clients remove or downplay unflattering online information.
The companies cite success stories of customers who have buried snippy blog comments, embarrassing photos or critical mentions of their names. But, as Parascandola found out, the services can't wipe everything off the Internet, and their efforts can backfire.
ReputationDefender sent a letter to political blog Positive Liberty asking it to remove Parascandola's name from a critical entry on the grounds the post was "outdated and invasive." Blogger Jason Kuznicki refused, and posted a new entry mocking the request. He says he "had a good laugh over it."
Michael Fertik, a 28-year-old Harvard Law graduate who founded ReputationDefender in October, said misfires represent a "tiny percentage" of the company's efforts to fight the "permanent and public" nature of negative online content. For fees starting at $10 a month, the 10-person Louisville, Ky.-based company scours blogs, photo-sharing sites and social networks for information about a client, then charges $30 for each item the user instructs it to try to correct or remove. The service won't say how many customers it has.
He declined to say how many times ReputationDefender has succeeded in having content removed. He cited recent examples including a man whose ex-lover posted revealing photos to a Web site; an identity-theft victim who had his personal information published on a blog and a medical student who had discussed his own clinical depression in an old newsgroup that he didn't know was public. Fertik declined to identify those clients.
Janel Lee, a mortgage loan closer in Minong, Wis., sought ReputationDefender out after her ex-boyfriend began posting her work and cell phone numbers in response to several questions on Yahoo Answers, including "What is 50 Cent's phone number?"
She got 15 to 20 calls a day, sometimes as late as 3 a.m. One after-hours voicemail, presumably intended for the rapper, was a lengthy rap performance. "I sing blues, jazz and rock. This was painful," said Lee.
Lee said she contacted Yahoo Inc. directly but was unable to get most of the information taken down. So she paid ReputationDefender about $240 for a two-year membership, plus about $150 for the posts that the company, over three months, got removed. "It was quite a great relief knowing that someone was working on it for me," she said. Fertik said Yahoo removed the information after being contacted by ReputationDefender.
A Yahoo spokeswoman said the company doesn't discuss individual customer-care cases, but that if someone's contact information is posted on Yahoo Answers without approval, the site will remove it.
ReputationDefender begins by sending emails on behalf of its clients to Web-site owners. The letters typically introduce the company, identify the client and the offending content, and ask the recipient to remove it. The letters don't make threats -- Fertik, despite his training, and others at ReputationDefender aren't lawyers -- but instead try to appeal to recipients' sense of fairness: "Like our clients, and perhaps like you, we think the Internet is sometimes unnecessarily hurtful to the privacy and reputations of everyday people," one such letter reads.
"The first thing we do is we just ask, very politely," said Fertik. "Thereafter, we can get less polite," including contacting a site's Internet service provider to complain about the site. When Web site owners don't respond to its letters, ReputationDefender sometimes suggests that clients hire a lawyer, though Fertik said that happens infrequently.
Kuznicki, the blogger, said he refused to take down the information about Parascandola because he merely included published information and expressed personal opinions. "I was surprised to get a notice like this, because I don't run an unprofessional or defamatory blog," said Kuznicki, a Bowie, Md., policy researcher for a think tank.
Parascandola criticized ReputationDefender for sending a letter directly to someone who had already written critical things of her -- an approach she considered clumsy. "I certainly would not have authorized that," she said. Fertik said he apologized to Parascandola and refunded her fees.
While Fertik said such problems are rare, takedown attempts that go awry can generate considerable unwanted attention. Stuart Neilson, a statistics instructor at a university in Cork, Ireland, claimed on his personal Web site that he was the victim of "academic bullying" by a colleague. After the other professor hired ReputationDefender to try to have the accusations removed, Neilson rebuffed the firm and posted his exchanges with the company on his site. Those posts received wider attention when they were republished on a blog devoted to faculty discord in academia. "It has merely generated additional publicity," he said.
ReputationDefender also sent a takedown request to Consumerist, a Gawker Media blog that had written about a man who was briefly jailed for harassment after repeatedly calling online travel agent Priceline.com Inc. for a refund. The letter asked the blog to remove or alter the archived post, saying it was "outdated and disturbing" to its client. Consumerist editor Ben Popken blasted the request with a profanely titled entry, calling it an attempt at censorship. "It's not like we're spreading libel," he said. "They were trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube."
ReputationDefender's Fertik said the company is no longer sending letters to irreverent blogs like Consumerist, which may be more likely to mock the company's efforts. "We are no longer taking those kinds of risks with those kinds of outlets," he said.
DefendMyName, a two-year-old unit of Portland, Maine-based marketing firm QED Media Group LLC, markets itself as a way to remove negative mentions from search-engine results. What it actually does, said founder Rob Russo, is attempt to bury them below promotional sites, blogs and forum postings it creates for clients. The company's rates start at $1,000 a month, he said, though he declined to say how many clients it has.
Adding positive content to combat negative mentions isn't against Google Inc.'s rules, a company spokeswoman said, as long as the content is original and the companies don't use manipulative techniques to push pages higher in search results. She declined to comment on individual reputation companies.
Chris Dellarocas, a University of Maryland associate professor who studies how reputations are built online, said the services are fighting a growing trend of sites that let users recommend, rank and opine on other people, from RateMyProfessor to Rapleaf, a site for people to rate each other after business transactions.
Reputation-management companies "have a place in this new ecosystem, but a limited one," he said. "Let's not forget that all of these mediums are protected by the First Amendment," he added. "The question is, what is defamation and what is a genuinely deserved negative comment?"
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-reputation0618,1,7610253.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Bottom-feeder SLRs: Do you dare?
No-nothing cameras or sleeping beauties? Read the story, examine our tests, and you’ll be surprised.With all of today’s automatic luxuries, even in budget SLRs—e.g., focusing, loading, winding and rewinding, exposure and bracketing, plus built-in flash—would you even consider a Chinese-designed SLR without any of these features?
Probably not. Yet every year, the tail end of our annual SLR chart contains a gaggle of these beasts that somebody must love. Even though I seem to have ignored their existence, I felt it was time to find out just how good, bad, or dreadful they were, and discover who would possibly want them. Be prepared for the unexpected.
I cherry-picked the least expensive models ($160 street) bearing the Phoenix and Vivitar names: the Phoenix P-2000 with 28–80mm f/3.5–5.6 Phoenix lens and the Vivitar V3800N with 28–70mm f/3.4–4.8 MC lens. But let’s wring out the bodies first.
There is no Phoenix or Vivitar camera factory. Both bear the importers’ brand names, and are the brainchildren of Chinese engineering based on Japanese camera designs of 20 or so years ago. Looking at the prices, you might expect plastic bodies. Not so. Each has a supersolid, all-metal chassis with polycarbonate top, bottom, and hinged back, metal lensmount, and the trim, angular external cosmetics of the midlevel cameras of their origin.
Looking through the viewfinders of both will give you a shock. Perhaps you’ve forgotten how big, bright, and clear a first-class glass-prism focusing image used to be (before engineers realized that mirror prisms were far less expensive, even though image magnification and brightness suffer slightly). It would be hard to beat the quality and efficiency of the finder systems in each camera, no matter the price. The
Phoenix’s finder image magnification with a 50mm lens (our standard) tested out to be a whopping 0.92X (excellent), and its screen image finder area was 89 percent of the actual picture area (very good), with no parallax error detected. The Vivitar provided an even greater 0.93X (excellent) and, again, an 89-percent image finder area with no parallax error. All of these figures are superior to most other SLRs we’ve tested, save top-of-the-line professional cameras—and even there, the image magnifications of the Phoenix and Vivitar are often superior.
The Phoenix has a horizontally split optical rangefinder plus microprism collar, while the Vivitar uses a diagonally split rangefinder and microprism collar. The entire finder screen areas of both can be easily used for manual focusing, which is more than can be said for most AF SLRs. Both cameras have good centerweighted TTL metering, convenient depth-of-field-preview lever, provision for making multiple exposures, PC-sync terminal and hot-shoe, and the ability to accept threaded cable releases; each is powered by two 1.5-volt alkaline or 1.55V silver-oxide button cells, or one 3V lithium.
ODDEST INCLUDED ACCESSORY EVER: Buy a Vivitar V3800N and you get—absolutely free—a Frame Divider! When screwed into the rubber lenshood (also furnished), you can create many multiple images on a single frame using the camera’s multiple-exposure button.
All that being said, nearly everything else about the two cameras is quite different. The Vivitar’s features closely resemble those of the famous Japanese-made Cosina manual SLR, which has been sold under countless brand names and with various lensmounts—the Ricoh KR5, Olympus OM-2000, various Yashica SLRs, and the Nikon FM10. The Pentax-style K-bayonet mount will work with virtually all K-, KA-, and KAF-mount lenses, with the exception of the newest J-mount Pentax lenses, which have no aperture-setting rings. A user can choose from an almost unending selection of new and used Pentax-mount lenses at highly attractive prices.
The Vivitar has a mechanical, metal, multiblade shutter (similar to what you find in all film SLRs today), with speeds from 1 to 1/2000 sec. In our lab tests, speeds were remarkably accurate for a mechanical shutter—up to 1/1000 sec with only a 1/4-stop variation. However, we found 1/2000 sec to be 1/2-stop slow. Flash sync tops at 1/125 sec.
A central green LED to the right of the focusing screen aids in selecting the correct shutter-speed and aperture combination. Too much exposure, and a red “+” lights above the green circle; too little, and a red “–” appears below. The exposure variation between the correct green and red warnings is about 1/2-stop, a differential that can be used for exposure compensation. Manually set ISO film speeds are 25–3200. The camera turns on as soon as you lightly press the shutter release. Its backslot holds a cardboard filmbox end, reminding you what film has been loaded. The slot has a conversion table printed within, showing ISO and DIN equivalents. The camera body is easy to grasp, due to the rubberish back-and-front covering with built-in contoured finger moldings.
The Phoenix P-2000 is a stranger bird indeed. It’s built on the still-available Minolta X-370 manual-focus, automatic-exposure SLR chassis, and has the same electronically controlled cloth focal-plane shutter as the X-370, but with speeds from 1 to 1/1000 sec (1/60-sec X-sync) rather than the X-370’s 4–1/1000 sec. Instead of the X-370’s shutter-speed array to the right of the finder screen, the P-2000 has three-diode, manual-exposure-control LEDs with a large, green, central OK circle, an equally large red LED on top signifying overexposure, and a yellowish LED below for underexposure. Exposure differentials between the LEDs again appear to be about 1/2-stop.
Not too surprisingly, the P-2000 is available with a Minolta manual-focus MD mount, but can also be ordered with a Pentax K-mount as an alternative. The Phoenix P-2000 has the same red self-timer LED as the Minolta X-370; the mechanical clockwork self-timer of the Vivitar has none. The P-2000, like the X-370, has a white collar around the takeup spool, which makes fastening the film leader a bit easier. Manually set film speeds are ISO 12–3200. The camera has an on/off switch.
Our shutter-speed accuracy tests of the Phoenix showed it to be as precise as practically all SLRS using electronic shutters. The Phoenix camera back has a film-indicating window. Its smooth rear back isn’t as convenient to hold as the Vivitar’s, but the right front grip is rubberized and slightly better shaped than the Vivitar’s.
GO FOR GREEN! Vivitar V3800N (left) view has a diagonally split rangefinder, microprism collar, full focusing screen, and three-LED exposure control. Red warnings are about 1/2-stop away from green. Phoenix P-2000 (right) is much the same although red and yellow incorrect exposure circles are less elegant and rangefinder is horizontally split. But some users may prefer diagonally split rangefinder.
How did it come to be that a Chinese manufacturer was able to use a Minolta X-370 camera body? When the X-370 was introduced about 15 years ago, it was made in Japan. Subsequently, manufacture was transferred to mainland China, and later, according to my sources, the Chinese factory was given permission to produce manual-exposure cameras using the X-370 body. The X-370 and P-2000 cameras are, to my knowledge, the only SLRs still using cloth shutters. Result: shutter action is slightly quieter than the Vivitar’s.
Close-focusing Vivitar
Now for the lenses. The Vivitar 28–70mm f/3.4–4.8 MC Macro Focusing Zoom is Chinese-made, with sturdy metal-barrel construction, half click-stops, and heavily rubberized focusing and zoom rings. It close-focuses to 1:4 at the 70mm focal-length setting (actually even closer—see Lab Results). It accepts 52mm filters.
The Phoenix 28–80mm f/3.5–5.6 Macro is considerably lighter due to essentially plastic (but sturdy plastic) barrel construction. It has no half click-stops and is made in Japan (maybe by Cosina). It accepts 58mm accessories and has a slightly smaller maximum variable aperture because of the longer focal length. The lens also has a convenient, highly grippable focusing ring plus a metal, ribbed zoom ring. You reach macro focusing (marked to 1:4, but it’s actually 1:3!) by turning the zoom ring beyond an indent at the 80mm setting.
The front lens elements of both lenses rotate during focusing, so polarizing or graduated filters should be positioned after you focus.
Lab and field tests indicate that both lenses performed well above what was expected, both at normal and close-focusing distances. At most settings, results from these lenses would be indistinguishable from those made by top-grade lenses of any other SLRs.
Other fripperies: The Vivitar cloth neckstrap is broader and easier to attach. A rubberized, removable eyepiece, which is provided for the Vivitar, sticks to the camera better when a tiny spot of glue is applied. The Phoenix comes with a lenshood and a unique accessory—a Frame Divider—which screws into the lenshood and divides the picture into one quarter, one half, or three quarters for multiple images on one picture frame. Both cameras are provided with well-made, two-piece vinyl carrying cases.
Which camera would I pick? It’s a real toss-up. Over time, the electronic shutter of the Phoenix will probably hold its speeds better, but having all mechanical speeds available, even when batteries poop, is very attractive—and a 1/125-sec sync is better than 1/60 sec. Then again, there’s that extra 5mm focal length that goes with the Phoenix. Hmm…
No matter how magnificently these two perform, who’s willing to give up all the modern conveniences we first listed? Not I. But two types of photographers might: Students, who really want to understand the basics of exposure, focusing, and controlling depth of field, will learn more operating either camera manually than by letting an auto-everything camera do it all; and landscape, scenic, or still-life photographers bent on the same control, who aren’t crushed by the frantic need for operational speed that contaminates most of our lives. One Ansel Adams scenic is worth how many pictures on the sports pages of your local newspaper?
SQF data for 11x14 print size indicate excellent performance at 28- and 50mm, very good at 80mm. However, there was noticeable barrel distortion at 28mm (1.30 percent), and minimal barrel distortion at 50mm (0.43 percent) and 80mm (0.22 percent). At closest focusing distance of 13 inches (1:3) at 80mm, center sharpness was excellent from f/5.6 to f/22. Corner sharpness was poor from f/5.6 to f/8, good at f/11, very good at f/16, good at f/22, and acceptable at f/32. Optimum performance was at f/16.
SQF data for 11x14 print size indicate very good performance at 28mm, good at 70mm. However, there was noticeable barrel distortion at 28mm (1.55 percent), and minimal pincushion at 50mm (0.45 percent) and 70mm (0.22 percent). At closest focusing distance of 13.5 inches (1:3.9) at 70mm, center sharpness was good at f/3.4, excellent from f/5.6 to f/16, and good at f/22. Corner sharpness was poor at f/3.4 to f/5.6, acceptable at f/8, very good from f/11 to f/16, and acceptable at f/22. Optimum performance was at f/11.
CONCLUSION: Nearly professional results at extremely low prices. Fine for close-ups, center and edge, at moderate apertures. Note: Phoenix close-focusing at 1:3 is actually better than its 1:4 specs!
Erase Unwanted Elements From Photos
Use the Clone Brush to remove undesirable people and things.
Feature: Erase People and Things From Your Pictures
Remember the old Twilight Zone episode in which the little boy could "disappear" anyone who made him angry? As a kid, I often wondered how I'd use the power to send people off to the proverbial cornfield anytime I wanted. Would it be for good? For evil? Would I use the power on a whim, or would I show maturity and restraint?
Now that I'm an adult, it turns out that I really do have that power--over my digital images, at least. I've long used the Clone Brush in my image editor to erase unwanted elements from pictures. Sometimes it's just a telephone pole or mailbox. Other times, it's an entire person. And now I know how I use this power: for good. At least, for the good of my photos.
I recently took a picture of my son in front of a sweeping mountain vista. It's not a work of art, by any stretch of the imagination. But my vision was marred by the presence of a light pole in the rear left of the scene. Can it be removed? You bet. I just used a little Clone Brush magic.
The Clone Brush Explained
The Clone Brush works this way: You choose a source location somewhere in the picture. When you paint with the brush, you paste copies of pixels from the source location wherever you click. In this way, you can "paint over" the unwanted element with nearby pixels from the background. When it's done well, you'll never know there was ever something in the background.
Let's review the steps I used to remove that light pole; you may want to download my original image and follow along in your own image editor.
Wielding the Clone Brush
In Jasc's Paint Shop Pro, the Clone Brush is accessed via the eighth icon down from the top of the tool palette. Since it shares this cubby with the Scratch Remover, you may need to pick it from the list. Just click the drop-down arrow on the right side of the cubby and select
Now that you've selected the Clone Brush, look at the Tool Options toolbar at the top of the screen--it includes options for shape, size, step, density, opacity, and more. If you don't see it, turn it on by choosing
Set the size. You can ignore most of the controls, but you'll definitely want to set the size, which determines the diameter of the paintbrush. If you make the brush too small, the cloning won't look natural and it'll take a long time to completely erase the unwanted element. If it's too large, you won't be able to get an accurate, natural-looking brush stroke. Start with a size that looks like it will allow you to erase in realistic looking "bites" (you can see the size of the brush after you put in a pixel value). For our sample picture, try a size of 20 pixels. As you get lower down on the pole, however, you may want to reduce the number of pixels as low as 10 to duplicate bands of color in the background.
Pick the source. Now it's time to pick the source. Move the mouse a bit to the right of the pole and right-click. Now left-click on the pole and you should see some of it disappear.
Erase that pole. Carefully move the mouse and click again, erasing parts of the pole one click at a time. You could simply click, hold, and drag, thus creating one long brush stroke, but that method would probably introduce noticeable irregularities.
It helps to zoom in for a better view and re-select the source occasionally. See the mountain outlined against the lake, for instance? Before you paint over that area, right-click with the mouse pointer positioned directly over the edge of the mountain. Then reposition the mouse to the left and left-click on the pole so the mountain continues perfectly through the spot where the pole used to be. Carefully painting with the Clone Brush in this way can yield professional results.
That's it! When your work with the Clone Brush is done, save the image and you'll have successfully sent a light pole to the twilight zone.
I keep running across tutorials for Adobe Photoshop and other image editors in places I least expect. Just this week, in fact, I discovered a veritable treasure trove of photo tips on a Web site called Bair Art Editions.
Bair Art specializes in reproducing and printing fine art and art photography. It's not the sort of place you'd expect to find a wealth of Photoshop help, but you'll find tutorials on using masks and layers, levels and curves, knocking out backgrounds, and printing. Indeed, there's a great assortment of useful advice. If you're struggling to master Photoshop, give this site a spin.
What do I need in order to copy old Super 8 and VHS movies to a digital format like DVD? Please don?t tell me to send it to some lab--I have hundreds of hours of movies to copy.
Wow--good luck, Mike. You have a long road ahead. I recently transferred about two dozen VHS tapes to DVD and turned the resulting "Johnson Family Boxed Set" into a holiday gift for my parents. I even crafted a box to hold all the DVDs! It took a lot of time and isn't something I'd want to do again.
First, the Super 8 movies. I don't know of any easy, high-tech way to do this. Your best bet is to simply project each movie onto a screen or blank wall in a perfectly dark room and film it with a digital camcorder that has been properly positioned on a tripod. Professionals at your local camera shop may offer a transfer service, but odds are good that they'd do it basically the same way. Once you've got the movies on digital tape, you can transfer them to your PC using the camcorder's FireWire or USB 2.0 port, then use any video editing program to burn them to DVD.
Videotape is a bit easier. If your digital camcorder has analog video inputs, you can simply connect it to a VCR and play the old tapes while recording directly to digital tape.
If your camcorder lacks such inputs, then you might want to buy one of the many USB video converters that are on the market. Connect a gadget like the Instant DVD 2.0 from ADS Technologies between your PC and VCR. It imports video to your hard disk through the USB port. Once you've got the video in your computer, you can edit and burn it just as if you had shot it on digital video.
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This week's Hot Pic: " Volga Church," by John Harrington, Herndon, Virginia
John writes: "I took this photo when I led a Smithsonian group on a Russian river cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg. For the first few days, the boat cruises up the canal to the Volga River. It was there that we passed this church. The Soviets had built an artificial waterway to connect Moscow to the Volga, and ended up flooding neighboring villages in order to complete the project. This church actually stood in the middle of a village that had been flooded and its entire first story is still under water. (The level above the water is the second story of the church). I took several shots using an Olympus C2020 as we approached, and this one, with the reflection, was the best."
We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to
Tips For Getting the Most Out of a New Digital Camera or Camera Phone
What Every New Camera Owner Should Know About Selecting and Handling Flash Storage Cards
With 3.8 million digital cameras sold in the U.S. during the December holidays, representing a 28 percent increase over the previous December, plenty of people are now experimenting with their new cameras and learning about the use and care of flash memory cards. SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the world's largest manufacturer of flash memory card products, offers important advice for photo enthusiasts on how to get the best performance from their digital storage media.
With 3.8 million digital cameras sold in the U.S. during the December holidays, representing a 28 percent increase over the previous December, plenty of people are now experimenting with their new cameras and learning about the use and care of flash memory cards. SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the world's largest manufacturer of flash memory card products, offers important advice for photo enthusiasts on how to get the best performance from their digital storage media.
- Determine your camera's card format. The camera should have a card slot that is usually accessible through a special compartment. The most popular formats are SD™, Memory Stick PRO™, CompactFlash®, and xD Picture Card™, which are of varying shapes and sizes. SanDisk manufactures all of those cards, as well as others, and sells them worldwide through more than 100,000 major electronics retailers, camera stores, department stores, drug stores and supermarkets where SanDisk products are sold.
- Upgrade to higher capacity cards. Chances are, the flash card that came with your new camera was of low capacity, perhaps 32 or 64 megabytes (MB). With many of the compact, point-and-shoot digital cameras rated at resolutions of 4 or 5 megapixels, the highest quality settings will quickly consume that memory and store only a handful of pictures. Consider standardizing with a 512 megabyte card, which will give you around 200 compressed images at 5 megapixels. (The precise number will vary depending on camera model, resolution and compression. Also, some older models may not be able to use 512MB or higher capacities.)
- Learn how to transfer images from your camera phone. If you have one of the new smartphones or pocket PC phones with slots for removable flash storage, such as the Motorola V710 or the palmOne Treo 650, you can transfer images directly to your PC via a card reader, which is significantly faster than emailing them through a phone service. Check to see if a card, such as an SD, miniSD™ or SanDisk TransFlash™ module, comes with the device. (With some products, the cards are sold separately. SanDisk's miniSD and TransFlash, for example, are sold separately in retail stores and usually include an SD adapter to allow them to be read using existing SD card readers.) Consult the handset manufacturer’s instructions on how to use these cards as the default to store your photos, as well as how to shift photos from the device’s embedded memory to the removable card.
- Use a card reader to transfer images to a PC. Yes, you can connect your digital camera directly to a computer using a USB cable, but a much faster and easier way is to use a card reader. SanDisk manufactures several inexpensive and very fast readers, ranging from card-specific readers to multi-card readers such as the new 12-in-one reader, which allows you to swap images between different cards. Prices for this handy accessory range from $20 to $35.
- All cards are not the same. Various brands of cards may share the same format and some common characteristics such as an internal controller and flash memory chip that store images. But cards can be constructed differently and the quality of component materials can vary widely. To be sure of performance, always buy your cards from authorized dealers. And don’t let price alone be the determining factor.
- Get faster cards. One of the frequent complaints about digital cameras is the momentary delay for the image to be recorded when you click the shutter. This becomes noticeable when you take pictures at higher-resolution settings and especially when you are trying to capture moving subjects such as soccer players or skiers. SanDisk offers cards that have faster write speeds, under the label of SanDisk Ultra™ II. If you have a camera that is rated at 4 megapixels or higher resolution, SanDisk recommends moving up to these faster cards.
- Flash storage cards are more rugged than film. SanDisk regularly receives notes and emails from customers who relate stories about their solid-state cards (no moving parts) surviving floods, fires, explosions, laundry machines and other punishment -- and continuing to function. In addition, the Imaging Industry Association of America recently tested all of the major card formats in the security X-ray machines and metal-detection devices used at U.S. airports – including the checked-baggage scanners – and found no sign of damage to the cards. By contrast, film is susceptible to spoilage, said the organization, and travelers should ask for hand-searches of their film.
- Avoid situations that can corrupt your cards. According to Lisa Tisdale, SanDisk's technical help desk manager, the things that can harm flash cards include taking pictures with a low battery in your camera and failing to properly eject the card from a computer that has certain operating systems (such as Windows ME or Mac OS). Also, never remove a card while a camera or computer is writing to it or while formatting the card in a camera or PC.
- View your pictures on a TV set – like a big-screen. The new SanDisk Photo Album (suggested retail price: $49.99) enables you to edit your pictures (deleting ones you don't want) and to create shows for viewing on most TV sets. The device has slots for all of the major card formats, and allows you to copy images in TV resolution to a separate CF storage card that archives your "slide" shows. The SPA also can play your favorite MP3 music files, along with your slide show, on a home audio system and doubles as a card reader/writer when attached to a personal computer.
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