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Digital Foci’s Photo Book Gets Third PMA “Hot Pic”

difi-albumDigital Foci’s Photo Book recently picked up it’s third PMA “Hot Pic” award, having now claimed it in America, Australia, and Canada. Apparently it’s expected to be one of the hottest items this season. We’ve got them downstairs, so it wouldn’t hurt our feelings at all if that turned out to be true.

We played with a while back on here, and they’re really quite nice devices. Friendly, large screen and photo album graphics make this a bit more than your usual photo frame, and the leather(ette?) cover makes it even more oriented towards group sharing and viewing. Looking to move to a digital portfolio? It’s a good direction to go, and cheap.



Portable Portfolios

I am increasingly fond of the idea of a paperless portfolio. Nevermind the technical reasons prints are still better (more reliable color accuracy, better dynamic range, smoother tonality), LCDs have gotten competent enough as a whole to be useful enough, and most photos will look considerably snappier on a good LCD than on a good print, if you ask me. I have a new PMP (portable media player, for those of you not in-the-know) on its way, and I’ve already exported a collection of pictures to load it up with in case I need to show off some work on the spur of a moment. Sure, the resolution isn’t the best, but t’s got a nice shiny screen that gives the contrast a bump and ends with things not looking entirely accurate, but certainly “poppy” enough for your average viewer.

That’s a Zune, the smaller screen of iPods might work less well for this. The iPhone and the iPod Touch, though, would make sharp little portfolios, and I bet in this business there’re already quite a few of you in possession of those.

And, when you need something more than just a little screen, there’s always the Digital Foci Photo Album, which got some attention way back when it was announced and which I have finally had a moment to play with myself.

My thoughts?

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Trinkets Abound

Digital Foci Pocket AlbumThis was one of my favorite products last year around this time, when we didn’t have a blog. Now we do and since we just dropped the prices on them I’ll just talk about them now to make up for last year.

I talked about their big brother here, but this time let’s talk 1.5″ Pocket Albums, one of several digital camera accessories from Digital Foci.

A 1.5″ LCD is no award-winner, but it’s perfectly fine for something I have every intention of shoving in my pocket. Actually, given my distaste for fobs cluttering my pockets, 1.5″ might just be perfect.

It holds up to 74 pictures, more than my entire formal portfolio and certainly enough to replace the old wallet pictures. The other plus? Built-in rechargeable battery,with included AC adapter and USB charging, so I can choose. I appreciate that. It’s a bit saddening that it doesn’t take SD memory cards, but at the dimensions it sports I’m not going to whine too loudly, I’ll just move my pictures onto it from time to time, much like managing my MP3 player.

And, the best part? We just dropped the price to under 15 bucks (OK, juuust under, but it counts). At 15 bucks this thing is now officially in the land of “neat trinkets” and not “object I have to budget for.” Plus, if you know anyone like my mother it’s a great idea, then she can always have pictures handy to show off. Gift ideas, anyone?



OLED Magical Goodness

In the wide world of digital camera accessories, perhaps the more interesting ones are frequently the most overlooked. Like digital picture frames. Take a frame, wrap it around an LCD, let it read your pictures off memory cards and everyone’s happy. You can show hundreds of photos, no printing, and you can save the environment a little. And while most won’t take the giant wafers we call compact flash memory cards, they will usually take SD memory cards and other such small media.

And all of that is a long-winded history to introduce this:

Pocket Album OLED

That’s the Digital Foci Pocket Album Deluxe OLED 2.8, winning the award this week for longest product name. It’s big feature is the new 2.8″ diagonal wide-gamut, super-bright, high contrast OLED screen. OLED is a new technology that’s aiming to replace LCD, and I hope it does. The color on our test model there was gorgeous and lifelike, the viewing angle was basically “if you can see the screen you’re fine” with no color or contrast shifts, and it was all around a very “oooh. aaah.” experience.

This little guy has a screen roughly the same size as most of our cameras do, with a very simple and intuitive nav system most people can figure out easily without the manual, and enough built-in memory for hundreds of pictures. And it charges with USB, making it a great gift for modern office-dwellers.



Consumer Guide: Card Readers

Digital cameras use memory cards, we all know this. CompactFlash memory cards, SD memory cards, xD, MemoryStick Pro– there are several popular formats, and different brands of cameras will use different ones. So, it’s entirely possible your household will have at least one, if not two or more types of cards sitting around.

So, if plugging and unplugging a variety of different cameras to your computer–dealing with the mess of USB cables and remembering how to set them all to talk to your computer–sounds just a bit inconvenient, then it’s probably time to get a memory card reader.

Memory card readers can be found that read several different cards at once, up to and including all of them currently used by the newest cameras (such as the Digital Foci Memory Gate). Plug one into your computer, and then simply plug any and all cards you have into it directly, no more hooking the camera up to the computer directly.

In the past, and especially among pros, firewire readers have been preferred, but these days your average USB card reader will perform just as speedily. Plus, USB can be used on far more computers than firewire (even for you Mac users, since Apple has decided not to include firewire on the new Macbooks).

They may seem like just another of the many digital camera accessories out there, but USB card readers are a wise purchase, and will make your shooting experience far more pleasant than you’d imagine.




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