Digital picture frames: A quick intro
March 24, 2008 3:24 am Electronics
Americans have always loved their photographs. Even back in the nineteenth century when photographs were in sepia, were difficult to take and develop, and generally weren’t very good, people still had to have pictures of themselves and all of their loved ones. Of course, photography has gotten a lot better over the decades. It’s more convenient, more colorful, and with the introduction of digital technology, photography is also much more convenient.
Americans have always loved their photographs. Even back in the nineteenth century when photographs were in sepia, were difficult to take and develop, and generally weren’t very good, people still had to have pictures of themselves and all of their loved ones. Of course, photography has gotten a lot better over the decades. It’s more convenient, more colorful, and with the introduction of digital technology, photography is also much more convenient.
The conveniences of digital photography are far reaching. For example, with digital photography you don’t have to mess around with film and developing. Digital photography also allows you to immediately view the photos that you’ve taken so that you can delete any that you don’t want. This alone makes digital photography much more cost effective than old fashioned film photography. After all, it costs money to develop film and you can’t tell if a film photograph is worth keeping until it has already been developed.
One major shortcoming of digital photos is that you don’t automatically have a physical copy of the photograph to display. Many companies have come up with a solution to this in the form of a digital picture frame. A digital picture frame is essentially a gadget that’s based on LCD technology and memory that will display photos on a gadget that looks like a conventional picture frame.
Digital picture frames have actually been around since the beginning of the decade, but in recent years these gadgets have gotten technological upgrades to make them even more useful than they were in the past. In the beginning, digital photo frames were only capable of displaying digital still photos that were stored on their own internal memory. Now a variety of models have wireless connectivity built in that they can use to get digital photos from elsewhere. For example, the Celva Logic digital photo frame has a memory card slot for your own photos or can be attached to a wireless adapter that can access photos from an online account. The Kodak Easy Share EX 811 has wireless capabilities that let it get photos from a photo sharing website that’s run by Kodak. This model can also get photos from a local computer network as well. Pandigital’s digital picture frame also has a wireless adapter that’s sold separately.
Another addition to the repertoire of what digital picture frames can do is an ability to display video. The Kodak Easy Share EX 811 and the Westinghouse DPF-1411 both have the ability to display videos. Many of the various models also come with remote controls, and can automatically cycle through various photos in order to display variety.
Of course one obvious concern about digital picture frames is that it takes energy to display a digital photo on an LCD screen. This concern is all the more poignant when you look at the rising cost of energy, the rising consumption of energy, and the environmental concerns associated with energy. While digital picture frames obviously add to this energy burden, they also comes with features to moderate it. For instance, many models have motion sensors that will cause them to automatically turn on when someone enters a room, and then turn off after they don’t detect motion for a certain amount of time.
In all, digital photo frames are ingenious and useful gadgets.