subject: Digital Photo Frame Buyers Guide – General Features [print this page] Digital Photo Frame Buyers Guide General Features
If you have never seen a digital photo frame working, your first impression may be that they show digital photos one at a time until the end of time or there is a power cut. Well your right they do, but with a lot more style and controls than you would expect. Some are more like portable computers and multimedia centres than picture frames. Ultimately their main purpose is to show off your digital photos.
This article is intended to give you an idea of what general types of features you would find on an average digital photo frame, also known as a digital picture frame. Cheaper unbranded frames will probably have a basic set of features while the top of the range branded frames will have lots of features to make your life easier or more confusing.
Digital photo frames use the same memory cards that are used in digital cameras. The most widely supported type is the SD cards with newer frames supporting the high capacity SDHC cards. Multi Media Cards (MMC) and combinations of the Memory Stick, MS Pro and MS Duo cards are also well supported with xD and CF cards supported to a lesser degree.
More information here www.digislides.co.uk/buyersguide.html
Most digital photo frames have internal memory allowing you to store photos in the frame itself, freeing up your memory card. Though in most cases you will be better off buying a memory card to run your slide shows from, as the internal memory is quite often small compared to the capacities of memory cards.
To manage your photos the photo frame will have options to copy and move photos between internal memory and memory cards. Photos can also be deleted. On top of this you may be able to create folders which can hold different slide show collections allowing you to change the photos to whatever mood you're in by selecting a different folder.
To get started you will need to choose where you photos are stored, on a memory card or internal memory. You can then show all your photos as a slide show or select, also known as mark, only some photos to be shown and create slide show play lists. At this point you can start your slide show with the standard settings and enjoy your snaps. Alternately you can delve into your options menu and set-up various ways of displaying your photos.
Here you will find the following types of options:
Transition Effects: this is what effect should be used to change one photo into the next. This can be a gradual fade or dissolve or the new photo slides in from the one side and off in the opposite direction. The next photo may be shown through stripes or a checker board effect or various wipe effects. If your undecided then choose random then at each transition a different effect is shown.
Collage or Tile effect: this is an option where the display is separated in to square or rectangle regions, each region displays a different photo which is then sequentially updated with a new photo.
Delay: this adjusts how long a photo stays on the display before the next photo appears. This can be from a few seconds to several hours. Some frames will just have the options short, medium, long which may range from 5 seconds to 1 minute.
Aspect Ratio: this is to change the display between stand size (4:3) and wide screen (16:9).
Digital photos will generally suit the stand size unless you have a panoramic or wide view camera then wide screen will be more suitable.
More information here www.digislides.co.uk/buyersguide2.html
Fit to Screen, Full screen: This option is dependent on the aspect ratio of the digital photo frame and the photo being displayed. Fit to screen will stretch and squash your photo to fill the whole of the display. On landscape photos this will not be too noticeable but for portraits this will be more noticeable. Full screen will zoom into the image until the whole of the display has been filled though this will mean that parts of the photo will be out of view or cropped. Wide screen images will have the sides cropped and standard screen will have the top and bottom cropped. If neither fit to screen or full screen is used then the unused areas will be filled with black boarders.
Auto Rotate: when this option is used, photos that have been taken in portrait are rotated so they show correctly. This only works for photos taken on cameras that store the orientation in jpeg exif data. If no Exif data is available then the photo will be show as landscape.
Colour, Contrast & Brightness are all adjustable to suit your taste.
Clock, Calendar and Alarm: these options speak for themselves but along with the clock or calendar a picture or slide show can be displayed.
Auto off: this option sets how long a slide show will be shown before the digital photo frame switches off.
