Household Uses for a Digital Camera

I.  A couple of days ago I wrote about fixing one of our digital cameras.  Once I discovered digital imagery there was no turning back.  Within days the camera was attached at the hip.  I'm serious that a digital camera is always within easy reach basically 24 hours a day, 7 days as week!  I quickly realized that a digital camera is so much more than a tool simply to take pictures of family, friends and events.  f you have been following any of my blogs you will know that five of the six usually have digital images included in each post.  These are images I have either taken or created myself.

It dawned on me shortly after getting my first digital camera that this could be an extremely useful tool to document the contents of our house.  This is an ideal way to prove household contents in the event a claim is ever needed.

To document household contents I use: digital camera, recordable discs, 2 memory sticks and a Sharpie. 

How to document household contents:  Set the camera to the best setting for what you are photographing along with date stamping.  Go from room to room snapping pictures of all views as stills.  Set to movie then go back and do a walk through on movie setting.  In each case make sure you get good views of all insurable items.  Upload your images and movie to your computer.  Save these files in a folder of your choice on your computer.  Burn both the images and movie to disc and to both memory sticks.  You now have 4 copies of the images and movie.  It is imperative that one disc and one memory stick be stored off site preferably in a safety deposit box.  Store the other memory stick in your home safe or in another safe location.  Keep the images on your computer as an additional back-up.  Make sure you do an update every 6 months.

In addition to simply documenting household contents, I use the digital camera for so much more.  When it comes to insurance purposes something like the condition of our juke box (1) is documented but so are things like my Dionne Quintruplets original newspaper clippings scrapbook (2) that could not be replaced.  I do a lot of textile projects so one of the easiest ways to show someone who is learning to knit is to send them a picture of what the pattern should look like (3). 

I do a lot of genealogy research.  Photocopying if available ranges anywhere from 25¢ to $1 per copy.  I have found that I can get very clear images from the digital camera from microfilm (4), books, newspapers and so much more.  The best thing is it takes me seconds to snap the picture saving me a lot of time in addition to the money savings.  Digital images are perfect for recording appliance label (5) and parts (6) details.  I routinely take pictures of small household repair problems (7) that need to be repaired.  I do like the colours in our family room so took a picture of both the border and paint (8) that is fairly close to the actual colours.  I also would like to match a set of cappuccino cups I got for Christmas (9).   Then I uploaded these images to the iPod Touch so I have it available when shopping so I have an instant comparison for colours and packaging.  This is easier than carrying around photos and fabric swatches.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Repairing a Digital Camera

I have been fascinated by digital cameras ever since I picked up a very inexpensive, no flash or memory card digital camera.  I could only take 10 images then had to upload them to the computer but that didn't discourage me!  It quickly became apparent that as much as I loved using a digital camera I was actually quite abusive to them.  My first digital camera ended up with all kinds of paint spots on it, the second digital camera ended up with a multitude of scratches and the third (Canon PowerShot A530) was dropped while the lens was out rendering an experiment in taking a digital camera apart and selling it for parts.

Pictured is my fourth digital camera, a Canon PowerShot A540.  It too suffered a fall that broke the holding clasp for the battery and memory card chamber.  So I used a bit of tape to hold the chamber shut (1).  When it seemed that this was causing the batteries to die quicker I bought a Panasonic DMC-TZ5 as a replacement.  Then it occurred to me that perhaps the camera could be fix which would give a back-up camera.  I found the necessary front case online for $20 and ordered it. 

Care is needed when taking apart a digital camera as there is an internal battery that can give a nice shock!  There are also a lot of very tiny screws that have to be taken out using a small jeweler's screwdriver (2).  Once I got the front and back cases separated, I put the new front on (4) then re-assembled the camera.

With the camera re-assembled as pictured it was ready to test it out.  The camera worked like a charm!  It still seems to be a bit of a heavier drawer on batteries but perhaps it always was and I just happen to notice it more.  This camera uses 2 - AA batteries so the is not as efficient as the battery packs that came with my new camera. 

I discovered that there are replacement parts available for many digital cameras.  Since the price has come down so low on these cameras they are viewed almost as a toss-away item that doesn't fit well with my eco-friendly views.  It's nice knowing that I can repair either if necessary in the future.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

The organized chaos has begun. I had been decluttering before as part of the spring cleaning previously mentioned. More decluttering will happen as part of the packing process as well. The number one key factor for a smooth move is organization. Two things I consider essential when moving are a Sharpie marker and a camera. In my case I'm using a digital camera. The first question is why a camera?

A camera can save you considerable time and frustration both during and after the move. Before you do any packing take a walk through your house and take pictures of the rooms. You've now created scrapbook moments and memories to be used later. There may be some elements you would like to recreate in your new home. A picture is worth a thousand words in this case. Next and this is important if you are hiring movers, take pictures of what they will be moving. In the event there is any damage during the move you have a pictorial of how that piece of furniture was before they moved it. This is a good idea to do even if you aren't moving for insurance purposes. There is nothing more frustrating than going to set up certain electronic equipment without some type of instructions for the wiring. Even more frustrating is trying to write this out then losing the instructions in the move. We solved that problem by taking pictures of the wiring layout for things like the receiver, VCR and satellite as it does have to be connected in certain layout for our set-up. One inventive use for a digital camera when packing for a move is to take pictures of what is in the box, print them off and tape the picture to the box. Once at your new residence you have a wonderful visual of the contents of each box to help you organize there. Images should be uploaded to your computer and a back-up CD made just in case. If printing the images for boxes, set the printer to draft or ink saver mode. You will still be able to identify the items but it will be cheaper to print. If you are using actual film, have it developed before you move and keep it with your personal papers.

Ok, so with camera in hand I did my walk through both inside and outside mainly for scrapbooking. This will be the final chapter on this house as it is right now so I want to do a nice layout of how our house looked before we moved. The next thing I did was take pictures of the layout of my bookshelves. I'm rather particular about this so could likely do the layout from memory but a picture will help just in case. I have an inuckshuck in the garden that I'm bringing to the new house. This is construction using only the physics and positioning of the rocks and while I could likely reconstruct it from memory, I decided to take a picture so reconstruction will only take a couple of minutes. I took several pictures of the electronic layout for the television equipment for both televisions. Our stove has a downdraft system so I took pictures of that just in case.

On moving day as soon as we get the word to pick-up the keys, I'll slip to do that as well as stop at the new house to take pictures. I'll go through room by room so that we have pictures of the inside without the current owners possessions and before we start putting ours in. This will serve as another scrapbook moment as well as giving us a pictorial of what the house looked like before we owned it. I am using the tip of taking pictures of what is in certain boxes but only on certain boxes.

When I started this post, I fully intended to discuss both packing and why to use a camera. However, the post is getting long so I'm going to break it into two posts. Watch for tomorrow's post dealing with my method for packing and cameras.

Until then,

Garden Gnome
© 2007

Photo Enhancement

There are many reasons for enhancing your photos. I have been learning how to better use the features in Adobe Photoshop CS Version 8.0. This is a lovely program with a lot of function that I was basically using to simply resize images. Instead of taking the time to learn more about what this program could do, I simply bought a couple of scrapbooking programs when I decided to start into digital scrapbooking. This was not the frugal way to do things when I already had a program that could do all these things and so much more. For my genealogy images, I simply uploaded them to the program without any type of enhancement. Well, suffice to say I am now learning the different features thanks to a couple of very nice Yahoo groups and a lot of tutorials.

On Tap

I've been playing with animation, filters, and layers. So today I tried out a couple of ways to make picture frames. This is the result of my first attempt.

This is a photo taken at a restaurant we enjoy. I always have my camera with me when away from home and within easy reach at home. I take a lot of pictures! Digital just makes it so easy. My current digital camera is a Canon PowerShot A450, 6.0 mega pixel and 4x optical zoom. Holding the zoom control it will go up to 16x but the graininess increases. This only seems to be noticeable on certain photographs though. Back to the photo, I liked the looks of the copper beer tap so snapped a photo of it.

I did something wrong on this tutorial but am not sure what. The only thing I can figure is I merged to many layers. That's easy to do since I'm rather new at using layers. My end result was an 8" x 10" supposed to be frame with no way to remove the background leaving only the frame so I decided to improvise. I opened the photo, did a cut and past, then centred it onto the frame image, added my name then merged the layers. I thought the results weren't too bad and that the colour of the resulting frame accents the photo is rather a fluke too. The frame consists of layers with filters creating texture and beveling.

Ice on Water

Well onto the second tutorial. I used a picture taken by me a couple of days ago. We live on the water so I take a lot of water shots. This one was so much easier to follow. I added my name to the photo and merged the layers. Then I duplicated that layer and added a gaussian blur filter, layer set to multiply and adjusted the opacity. After merging the layers, I created a new layer, dragged that to the bottom and created the first matt by changing the canvas size by .2. The next layer was created the same way with canvas size at .5 and the third at .8. Each matt was filled using a colour picked from the picture using the eye dropper tool then filled with the paintbucket tool. Overall I like the effect. I think it gives a more formal look that will work nicely for enhancing my genealogy photos.

Ice on Water with Filters

This is the same picture as above but slightly cropped with no frame and more filters added. I thought it would be neat to try and get that true sparkly look of the ice. The sun was very bright when this picture was taken so I started playing to try and capture that feeling.

I added the name, merged the layers then did the gaussian adjustment. Now, the gaussian adjustment was another tutorial that works with layers. Depending on how it is used, it deepens the colours and just softly softens the edges a bit. It seems to work better on some photos than others. Once the gaussian adjustment I used a texture filter set to patchwork. That looked rather interesting but it still did not have the sparkle I wanted. An artistic filter set to plastic wrap seemed to fit best and this was the end result. I can't wait to use this in scrapbooking!

Golden Glow

This was something I was just playing around with after working with frames. The picture was taken during sunset the same day the water picture above was taken. The sky was absolutely gorgeous!

I discovered that the marquee gave other shapes than rectangular so decided to test it out. After several attempts and realizing that once it's make if you use the move tool, it moves leaving a transparent background. So I hit copy then new and then paste. Well that looked pretty good but I thought some type of frame would be nice except I didn't know how to do that so I beveled that layer instead. Then I added my name and merged. I liked the effects and think this will be perfect for both scrapbooking and genealogy.

Hopefully this gives you a few ideas of what is possible as far as photo enhancement. I am definitely in the learning stages. It is amazing some of the effects you can get. I encourage you to try some of these techniques. There are a lot of resources to help you learn them. The possibilities are endless and I can't wait to use them in my scrapbooking and genealogy projects!

Enjoy!

Garden Gnome
© 2007