The pluses include:
- The user is able to check the photos as soon as they are taken and decide if they would wont it to be printed so they are not wasting money on prints that have not turned out.
- Can copy photos onto multiple technologies including the computer, CD, USB sticks.
- The user can develop the photos using any of the technologies above.
The minuses include:
- Quality of digital photos not always as good as the film.
- People often don't get their digital photos developed.
- Because they are stored on other technologies there is the risk of losing the photos or them being deleted.
Digital photos can be stored and transferred using a variety of technologies. Technologies they can be stored on include cameras, computers, CD's, USB sticks and cellphones. They can be transferred by emailing to family, friends and co-workers, computers, pxt messaging using a cellphone, printing the photos and keeping them in albums which is the traditional way to store photos. You can share photos through the albums and also online using sites such as face book and flickr (described below). You can manipulate the photos in minimal ways using such programmes as windows media player and can also manipulate in more complex ways using programmes such as photo shop.
Ethical issues that can arise from digital cameras include confidentiality - the OT is responsible for the client, family, oneself and who they are working for. The OT needs to ensure photos are appropriate and that they have consent to use the image of those in the picture. It is also a good idea to send out awareness letters so people know the intent of the photos and also have a part where they can sign and or opt out of the image being used.
OT's use photos as evidence of what their client's can/can't do, any modifications that need to be done and to share knowledge with their teams and other OT's around the country and world. Occupational therapy websites use photos on their sites to describe what OT's do out in practice and to explain better what they have written on the site. A site that does this is http://www.nzaot.com.
Flickr is the service that we used on our blogs to share photos. It enables you yo upload and share photos online. You first need to create a free account to become a user. Family and friends can then view your photos. snapfish.co.nz offer a similar service to flickr.com.
Most cameras have both digital and optical zoom. Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. Digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size and then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again.
A digital image is made up of tiny squares and through the photo it looks all smooth until it in enlarged and you can see these squares. A mega pixel is 1 million pixels - this is the smallest piece of information in an image. The more mega pixels a camera uses the better the photos will be. Therefore a 4 mega pixel camera takes better photos than a 1 mega pixel camera.
