[Leica] Digital

["Dale R. Reed" <dale-reed@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>]

Surf to http://www.investors.com/web_edition/today/viewfrontpage.html
to read the article below.  Guess I bought my Leica just before it
becomes obsolete.  

Just kidding. Don't shoot the messanger.   Dale

Today's Memories Going Digital Tomorrow? 

Date: 3/24/98 
Author: Matt Krantz 

Will proud grandmothers and blushing brides one day reach for the
computer mouse instead of the photo album torelive happy memories? 

That's not likely to happen soon. But the advent of digital cameras is
expected to give consumers a choice between conventional and
electronic photography. Digital cameras let you bypass photo
developers by taking floppy disk-based ''film'' and plugging it into a
personal computer. And the Internet will help you share photos with
family members. 

Ultimately, that means computers may become the means by which
you display, track and preserve some of your photos in the future - if
you find the benefits of digital photography outweigh the drawbacks. 

''There are 150 billion photos in shoe boxes around the world,'' said
Jim Hollingsworth, vice president of marketing for Sony Corp.'s
multimedia products unit. ''After a house burns down, people always
say the things they miss most are the photos they lost.'' 

But making and preserving these electronic memories will cost you. 

First, there's the expense of a digital camera. It can set you back $200
to $800; a conventional camera can cost as little as $50. 

If you're turned off by the price of a digital camera, then you can have
a photo developer make computer disks from regular film. The cost is
$10 for 24 prints. You also can purchase a scanner to electronically
reproduce and store conventional prints. Consumer scanners cost $100
to $200. 

One key advantage of digital photography is that once photos are put
into computer form, they can be safeguarded from the elements. One
method is to send them over the Internet to an electronic photo vault. 

Some online services also safeguard photos. But they're not cheap.
Eastman Kodak Co.'s Picture Network charges $5 a month to store
100 photos on its protected servers. 

For saving photos from age and disaster, digital photography beats
albums. A carefully stored photograph can last 80 years - nearly twice
the life of a computer disk - but digital photos can be duplicated over
and over again for free. 

And most people won't see the difference between a photo and a
computer printout. 

The new 5700 Color Jetprinter from Lexmark International Group
Inc., priced at $249, can print photos with 38% higher resolution than
most similarly priced color inkjet printers, the company says. 

Like the 5700, the Stylus Color 600 printer from Epson America Inc.
($249), has an ink cartridge with two colors most cartridges don't
have: light cyan and light magenta. These colors smooth out the
grainy appearance of older color inkjet printers. 

There's a catch, though. For best results, both printers must be loaded
with expensive ''photo stock'' paper. Much like the special paper used
to print pictures, photo stock is especially thick and nonporous to give
the computer prints a glossy look. 

Lexmark's photo stock paper costs $12.50 for 20 8 1/2- by-11 sheets.
And the color ink cartridges can cost more than $40. 

That means it costs up to 80 cents to print a 4-by-6-inch photo using a
PC and color printer, says Nicolas Van Den Berghe, president and
chief executive of LivePix Co., a software maker in San Francisco.
Standard processing averages 40 cents a print. 

But software can help organize photos. One of the easiest programs to
use, Mountain View, Calif.- based Storm Technologies Inc.'s
EasyPhoto, lets users sort pictures into subject groupings. It also
displays thumbnail-size photos in a group for quick access. 

The software, which comes bundled with most of Storm's photo
scanners and also with Adobe Systems Inc.'s PhotoDeluxe 2.0 photo
editing software, also lets users enter a text description of photos. 

Both the PhotoDeluxe 2.0 and LivePix 2.0 Deluxe photo editing
programs let users lay out photos on a simulated album page and then
print out the page. LivePix plans to issue digital photo album software
by May that will let users upload ''pages'' to the Web and also record
verbal descriptions of photos. 

For users who just want to sort and catalog photos, not edit them,
ACDSee32 from Canada's ACD Systems Ltd. may be helpful. 

It uses a Windows 95-like interface to visually group and view
thumbnail-size photos. Since it's geared for just sorting and viewing,
ACD's program is faster than other software that has photo imaging
tools. It can be bought over the Internet for $30 from ACD's Web site. 

Both EasyPhoto and ACDSee32, teamed with a special PC video card,
can make viewing photos more of a family affair. With STB Systems
Inc.'s $199 Velocity 128 video card, PCs can display photos on TV
screens. 
- -- 
$  dale-reed@worldnet.att.net   Seattle, Washington U.S.A.  $