scanner/camera

[Shawn T. Rutledge]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 05:39:50PM -0700, Kevin Buettner wrote:
> And for the camera, pick one supported by gphoto.  See
> 
>     http://www.gphoto.org/cameras.html

However gphoto uses the serial port to transfer pictures, and it's
slow.  I've found it more practical to remove the compact-flash card
from the camera and plug it into a CF adapter.  Mine is on the IDE
bus but you can also get a PCMCIA-to-CF adapter, which would work in
a notebook or a Linux supported PCMCIA slot drive.  And you might also
be able to do it with other media types, but I think CF has the best
future (can be used for more than memory... IBM microdrives, modems,
wireless Internet devices, etc).

Someone else mentioned Mavicas.  They have a lot of nice features 
considering, but I find the whole idea of storing pictures on a floppy
disgusting; floppies are too unreliable and easy to erase, and the camera
would waste a lot of power operating the motors to spin such a relatively
huge disk and move the head around etc.  And it would tend to be more
sensitive to environmental conditions like dust and moisture.  A coworker 
has one of these cameras.  It takes longer to store the pictures on the 
disk, and you can only store a few on a floppy.  It has a big battery to 
make up for its inefficiencies.  The camera is large overall, like an old 
Polaroid.  The "movie" feature is kindof cool, but movies of only a few 
seconds at a time have limited usefulness.

-- 
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