Sharing digital photos - F2F

[GeckoGeek]

A got a question for all the digital photographers out there. When you shoot photos in your various social groups, how do you share the photos so your friends can see what you got?

My friends accuse me of not having any film in the camera as they never see them. In the old days, I waited for the roll to finish and then took the little envelope of photos to the next meeting. But in the digital world, how do you do that?

I guess I could print them all, but that can get expensive. Seems like such a waste.

Some people don't like the idea of seeing themselves posted on the web. To be sure, publishing to the web sends them much further and wider then one's social group - and has legal implications. And it lacks the social interaction that one had with physical prints.


There are digital photo frames, but they are still a bit expensive and are not battery powered. You'd have to be tethered to a power cord.

DVD players are reasonable, but I tried a cheap one that could play back a CD of photos, but the photos were horrid. The player stretched the photo to fit it's screen and the colors looked like it was rendered in 256 colors. I have not yet tried to convert the stills to a movie. That may work, but seems like a lot of effort.

So, I'm asking here what others have done to pass around photos.

[helen]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

I tend to give a CD containing the photos. Even the cheap DVD players can display the JPEGs on such a CD.

Printing the photos, if I had to print somewhere between 1 to 5 photos I don't think it's hardship on me but printing something like 100+ photos might be an issue.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

I tend to give a CD containing the photos. Even the cheap DVD players can display the JPEGs on such a CD.

That's what I tried and was so horrid. I'll have to try another player.

[TATTRAT]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

CD, or link to the gallery, then they can print them out if they like.

like HERE

[scrivener]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

I zip them all up and upload them to my own (hosted) web server. Then I email everyone the URL and tell them to take what they like. I always ask them to return the favor, but they never do . I'm not a big fan of photo-sharing services I've seen so far (many of them don't let you save the files, meaning you have to do screen-caps if you want any of them).

Another option, which I use with my yearbook students because we like to keep everything private, is to set up a (free) Gallery2 album. I password-protect the entire site and give all-access privileges to my students. This way, while the photos are on the web, only people I invite to view them may do so. Then I teach the students how to use FTP to upload their photos (there are other ways to do it, but FTP has been the most convenient for the number of photos we take) into albums they create themselves. Since the yearbook is a collaborative effort, new albums are created by staffers as necessary, photos are moved from folder to folder and renamed to suit our purposes. Gallery2 is very, very cool.

[mel]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

First off I hate photos taken of myself and I would hate to see them on the web.

That out of the way, it depends on the photos I am sharing. As some of you know I have plenty of photos published at websites such as Flickr, BuzzNet and a few at Webshots. These are the ones I don't mind sharing with everyone. What I like about some of these websites is they allow remote hosting of the photos through their embed tags so that I can publish them elsewhere without the photos taking up space on my own server or blog. Flickr, BuzzNet and Photobucket are pretty good for this purpose.

Photos of a more personal nature, I have them stashed in a couple of private online photo albums at Kodak Gallery, Picassa and BuzzNet. Those are password protected and the only way I let people look at them if I am in the same room as them accessing it through a computer that is there. I don't give out the password.

With my family, I've made traditional printed photo albums many times (especially before digital), sent out on a CD to my parents only (they don't have a computer and look at them on the DVD player), or just send them printed, loose in an envelope. With the CD I have saved the photos as Quicktime slideshows that were converted to the VCD format (I don't have a DVD burner).

The photos sent out as VCD look okay on the DVD player; none of the problems one of the earlier posters noted.

Be aware that some models of DVD players do not support Kodak CD or the viewing of JPG files, just like how some models do not support MP3 playback of audio files. This generally applies to older DVD players.

I keep a bunch of my favorite and personal photos in my iPod, and if I have the iPod with me, then I let a few people look at photos on the tiny screen of that device. And if I remember I sometimes take the cord for the iPod with me that allows the photos to be viewed on a standard TV.

And of course depending on the digital camera I am using, photos just taken can be viewed on the camera, or on the TV if I remember to bring the cord to hook the camera up to the TV. That has worked several times for me. Sharing but not giving away the photos.

BTW, the ones I share on the open web, they have mostly been dumbed down for web resolution to prevent people from saving and printing high res photos without my permission.

What do you folks think about digital photo watermarks? I've considered doing that at times, but never have.

[helen]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

And of course depending on the digital camera I am using, photos just taken can be viewed on the camera

I have to say that is one of the worst ways to display a photo why?

1) The viewscreen is small, might be okay for one person but not a group of people
2) eats up battery power
3) might be useful to view the last photo or two taken but it might take a while if the photo was taken 50 shots ago.
4) the possiblity remains high that an image might be deleted by accident especially if someone unfamiler is handling the camera

[mel]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

I have to say that is one of the worst ways to display a photo why?

1) The viewscreen is small, might be okay for one person but not a group of people
2) eats up battery power
3) might be useful to view the last photo or two taken but it might take a while if the photo was taken 50 shots ago.
4) the possiblity remains high that an image might be deleted by accident especially if someone unfamiler is handling the camera

And where do I look at most of my photos from the digital camera? At home or at my parents' place where the battery recharger is close by and the camera is usually hooked up to the TV. If I am out in the field, yes, I only look at the last 1 or 2 photos taken just to check.

Of course I carry a couple of battery packs with me if it is my Canon DSLR and extra fully recharged batteries with me if they are the smaller Sony digitals.

I have at least 2 battery sets with me for each camera I own. Plus the recharger and AC adapter close by.

I don't let people touch the camera.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

Well, I'm seeing a lot of good ideas for sharing photos, but I was looking for ones that would allow a group to see them as a small group at a meeting - not at home later.

I'm going to try some more DVD players, but I might end up seeing of I can build a battery pack for a digital picture frame.

[helen]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

If the group is small enough to gather around a laptop, you could either do a slideshow or powerpoint presentation.

[scrivener]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

Well, I'm seeing a lot of good ideas for sharing photos, but I was looking for ones that would allow a group to see them as a small group at a meeting - not at home later.

Well heck. You never said anything like that! Yeah. As Helen suggests, why can't you just show stuff on a laptop computer?

PowerPoint sucks. Use JPEGDeaux or iPhoto or something less of a hassle. You take two hundred photos, you don't want to be messing with PowerPoint.

[mel]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

Last Halloween I shot a bunch of photos for kids at the NextStep Homeless shelter. They had a movie after their party. The movie was going to be projected to the wall via a DVD player that was connected to the projection TV. It had a standard RCA video in, which my Canon DSLR also uses to connect to a standard TV. That same night of the Halloween Party, I projected a very rough slide show, straight from the camera to the projector to the wall before the start of the movie. Kids loved it.

I later burned the pics to a CD and gave them to the people who put the party on.

So in that regard, yes digital photos can be shared almost immediately or with planning by using a CD/DVD and have it shown on a TV or projection screen, or as a Powerpoint, Keynote or Quicktime presentation out of a laptop computer and to a projector as previously mentioned.

BTW, the Canon DSLR battery life is long and even at the end of the night, I still had enough battery power to shoot more pix.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

Well heck. You never said anything like that!

<sigh> The story of my on-line life. I thought I was clear on that. Going back to my original post, I can see how it could be overlooked.

Yeah. As Helen suggests, why can't you just show stuff on a laptop computer?

Well, I guess if I got one that I didn't care about ....

For understandable reasons, I'm rather protective of my computer. It's also more of a "luggable" then something really nice and portable.

[sophielynette]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

Having digital photos printed really isn't that expensive. At most of the pharmacies around here, you can get digital prints for 20 cents each. That's about the same price as having a roll developed by the one-hour-photo. Plus, with digital, you can weed out all the bad shots and only print the ones worth sharing. At one point Walgreens had a deal where you get the first 20 prints free or something to that effect.

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Sharing digital photos - F2F

Having digital photos printed really isn't that expensive. At most of the pharmacies around here, you can get digital prints for 20 cents each.

Well, the first "group" of shots I want to show has 150 photos. Yeah, I can weed that down some more, but it would still cost a little more then I'd want to spend per event.