When taking digital pictures do you use a disk and store the pictues on it, or is this an extra feature that you must purchase ?

-- Tony Neibert (TJN1101267@aol.com), February 14, 1999

Answers

Sorry for the slow response - I've been off to the PMA show, just back.

Some Sony cameras store images directly on a floppy disk, but most digital cameras use small removable "flash" memory cards. You can either read the data from them while still in the camera, using a serial cable, or can get various reader devices that plug into your computer's parallel (printer) port or USB port. For Macs, there are units that connect via the SCSI port. The separate readers will always be much faster than the serial connection.

Some cameras use a type of card called "SmartMedia" that's very small. There's an adapter (called a FlashPath) for the SmartMedia cards that looks like a floppy disk, and (using its driver software) can be plugged right into your floppy drive and read as though it were an actual disk. Some SmartMedia cameras "bundle" the FlashPath with the camera (like the Olympus D-400 Zoom), but it's usually an extra option, for $70-100.

Hope this helps!

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), February 21, 1999.