** 2 page regular series / 1550 words ** Digital Photography ** Intro paragraph ** There is a firm conviction out there that serious professional work is not possible with Atari Computers. Among the many weaknesses cited are the lack of support for digital photography - which is simply wrong. Almost all of the new wave of consumer and professional level digital cameras work happily with our machines and this series will explain how to do just that and de-mystify digital technology along the way. Keep in mind this article has already been translated twice - first from my native Brooklynese into New York English and finally into British English. Obviously my girlfriend and the editor are responsible for any errors in the article. Dave Barkin. We're talking digital Information processed by your computer is handled in the form of numbers. This includes images and photographs, hence the term "digital." Programs automatically translate the digital numbers into the information you are processing; words, spreadsheets or whatever the information or data which the program is using. A digital camera is a device which uses conventional lenses to focus the image onto light sensitive receptors instead of light sensitive film. A processor in the camera converts this received light into digital information and stores it in the camera. The storage medium varies tremendously, but various standards are slowly emerging - currently the majority of today's devices store information on removable "cards" which may be called Flash Cards or Smart Media Cards and other grandiose names - but they're all effectively matchbook sized removable memory chips. Generation gaps The first generation of consumer digital camera's took only poor quality black and white images, were of dubious mechanical quality, and came with a small amount of internal memory good for 8 blurry images. After acquiring such a gadget You stood in awe of the fact that you had just spent nearly two months income on a device which was not even of a stable enough design to be used as a paper weight. For the same amount of money you could have purchased a usable flatbed scanner but no... The next generation which emerged in the early 90's were a great improvement - the images were on a par with those produced by Polaroid cameras. In computer jargon they typically offered 24-bit color at resolutions around 640x480 pixels. Although they were of limited quality they could be used for "professional" work - estate agents in particular adopted these with the same relish as they took to electronic measure tapes. Although the number of images which could be stored internally was limited they were fun and film free! As the nineties rush headlong towards the millennium we've seen more memory, better optics and extra features bolted on to the same basic design. I remember dreaming about digital photography when I was around ten years old which, without revealing my age, was long before computers could do such work. I bought my first digital camera in 1988 and it occurred to me at the time that I lacked sufficient cash, that I would always lack sufficient cash and that I would never get a girlfriend. Thus when I purchased my Apple QuickTake 150 in 1995 I also went out on my first date. ** QUIKTAKE.GIF here ** A year in computer terms, much like dog years, seems stuck at around seven in the real world so even though this camera has long since been deemed obsolete it still comes in handy. The colors are rich and saturated. Admittedly its resolving power (its ability to reflect detail in the image) is weak but it's still more than adequate for quite a few tasks. My girlfriend still uses it to create images which serve as templates for her paintings - we're not talking 35 mm or even 110 quality but it's still exciting and fun [Ed: You're confusing girlfriends and cameras now!] Today's Generation As of late 1997 consumer level digital cameras took a big leap forward. The internal memory was replaced by removable memory. Optics improved and best of all the size of the resulting shot became much larger. The Olympus 600L, which I purchased last spring, has a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 in 24-bit color, which equates to a 4Mb TIFF file for each image, and the image quality is certainly comparable to the output from a 110 camera. ** OLYMPUS.GIF here ** The real advantage offered by digital images is the ease with which results can be edited using image processing software. Furthermore because there's no film you can delete your mistakes and select which images to retain or output for posterity. Although you no longer need film there's no such thing as a free lunch and you'll need batteries - lots of them, and it's interesting to note Kodak also sell batteries! It's worth making an investment in rechargeable batteries otherwise you'll spend more on batteries than you ever did on film. Then there's the removable memory, the Olympus comes with one 4Mb Smart Media memory chip. Since the Olympus stores its files in JPEG format, this card is good for four shots. Not much, so be prepared to spend money on these as well. I now own six 8Mb cards (the maximum size of these cards has recently increased to 16Mb) which gives me 48 high resolution images. Since the Olympus includes the ability to take lower resolution 640x480 images, I can still shoot my catalogue pictures without running out of "film." Where do Atari Computers fit in? When I purchased my Apple QuickTake camera the only way to access the images was via a serial cable from a Mac or PC. The images could have been downloaded to an Atari machine if someone had written some suitable software but it didn't happen. However almost all the current generation of digital camera's can be used with Atari machines - so what's changed? After purchasing the Olympus I discovered that it took a whopping 20 minutes to download the images from one 8Mb memory card to my Mac which I found unacceptably long. There's also a gadget which houses your memory card and plugs into the floppy drive of your computer. This cuts the download time to five minutes but at the time of my purchase was unavailable so I looked for an alternative. My solution was to use a PCMCIA Card Reader. This is a device which plugs into the Mac SCSI chain of a Mac (parallel versions of this device also exist for PCs) and all sorts of gadgets can in turn be plugged into a PCMCIA reader including CD-ROM drives, modems and memory chips. The card reader cost $275 (around œ165) and the smart media adapter cost $59 (around œ35). After installing the software, was able to read the JPEG's written by the camera to the card (see boxout) and then I discovered I could also plug this device into the SCSI chain of my Atari computer! In fact the reader works far more efficiently on my Atari then it does on the Mac. It takes just 10 seconds to download the eight images and in addition I can even upload images to the memory chip! There must be a catch mustn't there? Well, if there is I haven't encountered it! Coming Up... Next time I'll cover some photographic issues and their meaning along with a feature guide to help you decide which camera is right for your needs. I'm happy to continue covering the Atari as a serious machine as long as you encourage me with feedback so write to me via the editorial address or send me email at: dave@ataricomputing.com ** boxout ** Connecting an Atari to a PCMCIA card reader The following procedure was performed using a Minolta PCMCIA SCSI card reader with the Smart Media adapter card. Although the adapter is Minolta badged it's actually manufactured by Microteck who sell the exact same device under their own name. Smart Media removable memory cards were used exclusively. I've successfully tested this procedure on both a TT and Hades 68060 machines so it should work on other Atari models BUT before you rush out and buy similar kit please note neither myself nor Atari Computing accept any liability if it doesn't work! ** UL ** * Connect the SCSI card reader into your SCSI chain. * Install a copy of HD-Driver v7 (v6 also works). * Run MEDIACHG.TOS (part of HD-Driver package) from the desktop. ** /UL ** You should now be able to transfer data from the memory card. In fact, you should also be able to transfer data TO the memory card! Notes: The ICD hard disk software also worked on the TT (but doesn't run on the Hades). On my Hades I could also access the card by running BIG DOS the Auto folder instead of MEDIACHG.TOS but this didn't seem to work on the TT - this may work on your machine or other models. ** /boxout ** ** Include DEMO2.JPG on renegade CD ** ** REPROTRY.JPG here ** The above images were cropped to show the resolving power of a 1280x1024 compared with a 640x480 image. The top two images were taken with an Olympus 600L and the bottom two with an Apple QuickTake 150. Magazine repro allowing (the image is included on the renegade CD) you can actually read the text in the top two images even at extreme magnification, whereas the Apple QuickTake images have seriously degraded.