Another step on the digital photography path

I take a lot of photos, I always have. But with digital photos I take even more. With 35mm, you naturally printed each photo. Even when I planned on maker made prints, I'd still have the lab print as a basis to get a feel for which photos I was going to print. But with digial photos, I rarely make prints from my computer or from a photo lab. Instead I usually look at them on my PC or using the PhotoShop Elements Organizer which allows me to tag, rate, and describe my photos.

Now in my home I usually have at least one of my computers active at any given time. But still do I want to go through the trouble of running a slide show on my PC, especially if I'm using it. So there you see a Digital Photo Frame on my desk. And since my son finds my things irresistible, you see one of his cars near the frame and a pumpkin on my stapler. He leaves his mark everywhere in the house, but since I don't see him as much as I'd like it's a nice reminder.

So now I can see a slide show anytime, regardless if I'm using my PC. Digital Frames can still be pricy, but so is printing several hundred photos that easily fit on a modest flash card. So after shooting a bunch of photos, I can take my flash card out and show photos from it or I can load them to my PC, edit, select, and copy hundreds of photos to a flash card and plug that flash card in the frame. Very simple. One of my next experiments will be to imolement the PC to TIVO connection and then display photos on my TV through my TIVO and AV system.

But for those who don't have a PC on all the time, my parents and my son, this will be very handy. I am giving each of them a Digital Frame and 2 SD cards. They can watch the photo albums and then every now and then exchange an SD card for a new one that I give them with a new slide show. I could burn photo DVDs as my brother does, but then you put in the DVD turn on the TV and watch it. The photo frame allows the ultimate simplicity. When you power it on it does a slide show.

It seems to me with the dropping flash prices and the digital photo frame, that a non-computer person could use a digital camera and occasionally have a computer friend backup their images. The days of 35mm film seem numbered for sure.

As far as purchasing advice, compare resolutions, sharpness/contrast, PC connectivity (if you want it), size, and of course price.