Managing Your Digital Photos: Day 1

Flash Memory

Digital cameras store photos on "Flash Memory", an inexpensive storage format based on a silicon chip with no moving parts.

Digital Storage Basics

It's very easy to make copies of files or folders on a computer:

• Copy leaves the original in the same place.  To make backups, I make a copy of my photos.  On the computer, a copy of a copy of a copy of a file is still identical to the original.  Each copy does use up more storage space, and I find keeping lots of cluttered copies of the same photos makes things harder to organize or understand. 
  
• Move removes the original.  To clean out my camera's internal flash storage, I move my photos off the camera instead of making a copy.  For important photos sometimes I will copy first, verify the copy is OK, then delete the original (internally, this is how move works). 
  

Steps to copy digital photos from a camera or phone to a computer:

1. Make a new folder to store the new photos.
• On Windows, right click in an empty area where you want the new folder, and hit "New" -> "Folder" in the menu (or press Ctrl-Shift-N).
• Rename the folder by clicking once on the name, and it will become editable.
• Folder names can be simple like "2017 Photos", or really specific like "Orion's 2017 Birthday in Fairbanks: Pre-Cake".  (Simple names are easier to maintain; specific names make the photos easier to find later.)  I keep folders named by person, place, or thing--here's how I organize photos.
• Leave the new folder window open so you can copy the photos there.
  
2. Plug the camera or phone directly into the computer's USB port using a cable which comes with the camera or phone (often just the charge cable will work). 
   
• If there's a special cable, or special software needed, I usually remove the flash storage card, and plug it directly into a USB card reader.  Most laptops and some desktops have an SD card reader built in, although you may need a microSD-to-SD adapter. 
  
• Sometimes the flash storage pops up immediately when you plug in; sometimes you need to open File Explorer and look for the flash drive in My Computer or This PC.
  
• Once connected to the computer, digital photos are stored in the "DCIM" folder (Digital Camera Image). 
  
• Each image is a separate file of type JPG, and named with some letters and a number, which counts upward each time you press the shutter.  For example, photo number 3 might be named dsc_0003.jpg
3. Now select and drag and drop the photos into your new folder:
• To copy an image file, click on it to select it, and drag and drop it onto your new folder.  (Click the image, hold the mouse down, drag the mouse out to the new folder, let go of the mouse.)
  
• To copy all the image files, press Ctrl-A to Select All.  Now drag them all to the desktop.
• On Windows, if you drag a file from flash to a folder on your computer, it makes a copy.  But if you drag it between two folders on the computer, it moves.  If you're not sure if it's going to copy or move, drag using the right mouse button to make windows bring up a "Copy here" / "Move here" menu over the destination. 
  
4. Before unplugging the camera or phone, disconnect it from the computer (sometimes called "Eject", "Unmount", or "Safely Remove"). 
   

Computing sizes

• Byte: one letter, or a number from 0-255
• Kilobyte (KB): 1000 bytes, about enough for a small email or short web page
• Megabyte (MB) or "meg": 1000 kilobytes, about the size of one digital camera image.  Copying a few megs across the internet is not a very big deal, and should take under a minute.
• Gigabytes (GB) or "gig": 1000 megabytes, about the size of a CD.  Flash storage, as used in cameras and phones, is usually measured in gigs.  Copying a few gigs across the network is a fairly big deal, and could take hours on a slow connection.
• Terabytes (TB): 1000 gigabytes, about the size of a recent desktop computer's hard drive.  Flickr will give you a terabyte of storage for free, but copying all your photos there could take a long time!  A typical computer can store nearly a million digital photos today, so don't be afraid to keep them, but organizing them is important.

Hard Drives, Flash Memory, USB, CD, DVD, network, and other storage

• Make backups!  I've had hard drives go bad, flash drives stop working, CDs that won't read, and cloud services vanish.  I keep the main copy of all my photos on my main computer (my laptop), which I back up to my desktop computer.
• Cloud storage is also a good way to back up your photos, and their backup strategy is normally excellent (typically three copies of your data at three separate datacenters, enough that even a fire or regional disaster won't destroy everything). I still prefer to keep an offline backup, since cloud companies can sometimes make it hard to get your photos back in a reasonable format, or they go bankrupt, or change their terms of service, or other problems that keep you from accessing your photos.

Pixels

The basic reality and mystery of pixels: little rectangles storing a red, green, and blue brightness.  One million pixels makes a "megapixel" (or "MP"), which is actually quite a few pixels.  For example, the highest 1080p HD video is only 2 megapixels.  So a 10MP camera is capturing quite a bit more detail than you can see on the screen, but this lets you zoom afterwards, or print poster-sized output. 

The general rule with pixels is it's easy to make fewer pixels, by averaging colors, but you can't make more pixels.  I've got some beautiful photos from my wedding that are nearly useless because they were taken on a 0.1 megapixel digital camera!

Image sizes:

• 10 Megapixels or more: Typical digital camera photo.  The image is often 3000 or more pixels high, so it can be printed poster-size without getting blurry or blocky, and you can zoom in and recognize faces in a crowd.
• 2 Megapixels: Full high definition video, 1080p, is 1080 pixels high.  Even good computer or cell phone displays are only a few megapixels.  Most web sites, including Flickr and Facebook, upload only a few megapixels by default to save space.
• 1 Megapixel: High definition video, 720p, is 720 pixels high.  Moderate laptop or cell phone displays are 720p.
• 0.3 Megapixel: DVD quality video is 480 pixels high.  Digital cameras from 15 years ago are often 640x480 pixels.
• 0.25 Megapixel: Facebook timeline photos show up at 500x500 pixels by default.  If you zoom in, Facebook switches to a higher resolution image!

The trickiest part about photo output is choosing a size.  More pixels gives you more detail, but also takes more disk space and network time.  You can shrink photos down one at a time in the GIMP or many other programs.  Picasa can shrink photos in batches, and can also automatically burn CD's.

• Email: small is better; preferred size is less than 1000 pixels across.  It's often better to just post a link to a website, rather than email photos directly.  WARNING: sending more than a few megabytes can lock up your recipient's machine, or cause their email to stop working!  Don't email people tons of huge photos!
• Website: tiny (500-pixel!) preview, medium-size (2000-pixel) fullscreen image.    More than about two thousand pixels across is usually wasted on the web.  See Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug, etc.  
• CD/DVD/USB drive: prepare pictures just like for a website (with previews), but then burn to a disc or copy to a USB drive.  This is the best way to send a whole archive of photos to a friend or family member.
• Printers: higher resolution is generally better--an 8x10 print will need all the pixels a low-end camera can produce!   Generally figure 150 to 300 dpi should be enough.  Buy an inkjet printer (tiny dots of expensive ink), a laser printer (dots of toner), a dye sublimation printer (smooth tone), or just use Fred Meyer or Walmart or any of the dozens of similar places.
• I usually take photos at the highest possible resolution, then scale them down for output.

Taking Nice Pictures with Digital Cameras

Digital cameras record light.  The more light there is to record, the better the image will be.  The amount of light captured is a product of:

• The amount of light in the scene.  Open some windows and turn on all the lights before resorting to your flash!  (In addition to consuming lots of battery power, the hard electric glare of the flash just doesn't look very good to me; although professional photographers will often use a big diffused flash to light up the foreground so it stands out better.)
• The size of the camera's aperture determines how much light makes it onto the sensor.  Aperture is measured in f-stops, and smaller is better: a small point-and-shoot might be f/3.3, while a big "fast" lens is f/1.6. Aperture is one of the few remaining features where the more expensive interchangeable-lens Single-Lens Reflux (SLR) cameras have a serious advantage over point-and-shoot handheld consumer models.  There is a slight downside with large apertures that it gets trickier to keep the whole image in focus (large aperture means small depth of field), but generally more is better.  I often buy digital cameras based on the lens aperture rather than the megapixels.
• The exposure time determines how much time the sensor records light.  More time equals more light, but more of a chance for the camera to move during the exposure, which blurs the image.  Most people's hands are pretty steady up to about 1/60th of a second, but if you hold your breath and have something steady to lean against, you can get good photos down to 1/8 second exposure or even slower.  Longer than that, and you need to use a tripod (they're pretty cheap!).  Blurring gets worse with telephoto zoomed in, or fast-moving objects like sports or cars.
• A digital camera's "ISO speed" actually refers to the electrical amplification done inside the camera: higher ISO gives you a brighter image, but more noise.
• I usually leave all these settings on "auto", except I turn the flash off!  If the shots come out blurry (because the exposure time is too high), I'll use a tripod before turning on the flash.

Other tips and tricks:

• It's handy to plug your camera directly into a TV, using either the yellow RCA plug (this goes into the TV aux input, like an old video game console), or on newer cameras an HDMI plug (this goes into the TV's HDMI port).  Using the big screen of the TV can be a pain to set up, but it is a decent way to show photos to friends and family, or to get a good look at the menus!
• Push the shutter button *halfway* down to let the camera do its autofocus and exposure calculation.  For a tricky shot like a flower, I sometimes will autofocus on something the correct distance away,then pull the camera over to the flower before pushing the button all the way down and taking the picture.  The button halfway down trick can reduce shutter lag, when you're trying to catch something moving fast. 
• For closeup shots, some cameras have a 'macro' mode or button, some automatically switch to closeup, and some don't take good closeups at all.  
• One tiny grain of sand can jam up the little gears that zoom your lens in and out.  This is the traditional reason for using a camera bag, but I find them bulky and never quite the right size.  I often just keep the camera in a clear plastic sandwich bag, which is cheap, tiny, and waterproof.
• Don't forget about digital video!  Modern digital cameras shoot surprisingly good video, usually high definition at 30 frames per second.  

Homework

• Read your main digital camera's manual.  There's probably stuff in there you'll be glad to find out. 
• Copy some of your digital photos onto your computer.  How many megabytes is each photo?  How many gigabytes are free on your computer?

Managing Your Digital Photos is an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute course taught by Dr. Orion Lawlor.