Not sure if this is the right forum, but I’ll let the mods decide.
Anyway, like a lot of folks these days, I’m a digital photography junkie. You can’t beat the convenience of snapping a hundred photos all instant image review, you don’t have to deal with the hassle of developing prints and stashing them in albums, and you can store a truckload of them on a hard drive easily.
But how do you share them with the family? Sure, you could have everyone huddle around the computer, but that’s no fun. And doing the whole develop-prints-and-stash-them-into-albums biz is so 20th century (not to mention pricey).
The obvious solution, of course, is to display them on a TV, especially if you’ve got something respectably large. But a cursory examination of the field shows a limited set of options; I recently picked up the Sandisk Photo Album, but it’s kind of rough around the edges – photos are displayed in filename order, and “albums” are nothing more than eight-character MS-DOS directory names (Having “My Great Summer Vacation” truncated to “MYGREAT~” is very ).
I’d go for something better, but I haven’t found anything yet. Hooking a computer (or a Mac Mini) to the TV might work, except then you’d need to work a mouse and keyboard just to look at pictures. Fine for geeks, but flunks theGrandma Test™.
So I ask the collective Doper Digitarati: what are your ideas on displaying and showing off your digital snaps, preferably in an idiot-proof manner?
When confronted with this same quandry, I opted to go for video (DVD) slideshows. Back in the film days, I used to have these slideshows (actual slideprojector, etc.) for family or friends. When I converted to digital, I wanted to come up with a nice way to do the equivalent for a larger audience.
Pros:
certainly satisfies your “idiot proof” criteria. Once you make the slideshow, it is a no brainer to play it.
Can add nice music, narrative, captions, etc… So you may not have to be present in order for people to enjoy the show.
Aside from lots of different transition effects (hint: just pick a simple one and stick to it. People will soon get bored/annoyed with fancy ones and they distract from the show), you can do neat effects - panning across panorama shots for example.
Cons:
TV resolution isn’t near as good as your computer monitor resolution, so the images won’t look as good. They can look “pretty good”, but this now places a dependency on the TV that you’ll be showing it on.
Making these slideshows takes time…potentially a lot of time depending on how much you want to do with it. The first one, in particular, will likely take a LONG time. However, once you get the basics figured out, successive slideshows will go a lot faster.
There is a variety of tools (software) available for you to make these with. From pretty simple (geared toward slideshows) to full-on digital video editting tools. I opted to go with a digital editting tool (Adobe Premier) as I knew I would want to mix video footage into some slideshows. Premier is a bitch, no two ways about it. But once I got the basics figured out, I was able to do what I want with it.
If you have any particular questions, feel free to ask.
If you have a large, flat, white space (like a wall) your could get one of those projectors for your computer. I entertained that notion for a while; I liked the idea that I could show my own movies, projection-style.
Now-a-days, I upload my photos to York Photo. It’s free to join, it only costs money when you want to order prints. Even then it’s pretty cheap, like $.12 a piece for a 4x6. You can set it up so that your entire family can view your online albums from their own computer and order prints if they want to. They just need to set up their own accounts (free) and then you have to click the “share album” button. It also allows friends/family to download hi-res versions of the photos for free. Added bonus: the photos are on the website not your hard drive. Although, I think they’ll only hold them for 90 days, but you should probably be using cds anyway.
I have a big family that’s spread across all corners of the Northeast. So this was the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way for us to display/give photos to each other.
rjung, I’m almost ashamed of you. Hook your Mac up to your TV (which is how I watch DVDs…), use iPhoto to download all your photos from your camera (or just use iPhoto to recognize all your existing photos), then hit the ‘Slideshow’ button, pick some music from iTunes, and stand back and let the photos slide on by.
Believe me, Barbarian, I’d go that route if I could. But using a keyboard and/or mouse (even wireless) to navigate iPhoto on a TV does not pass the “Grandma test.”
I’d enjoy it, sure, especially if I could just bring up Safari and do some wide-screen web surfing, but it’s not at the level of idiot-proof appliance usage.
And IMO, Apple could easily crank out some software for this, tying it into their iLife suite. Throw in a Keyspan remote for navigation, set up an account to auto-login, and you’re done. But they haven’t released such a beast, at least not yet…
But if you use iPhoto to put together a slide show, what’s there to navigate? My wife and I purchased this Monster cable for our iBook and use it all the time to show photos to friends and family, including Grandma. Of course, she never has to touch anything, just watch. And, ff someone does want to pause or move back and forth, it’s as simple as hitting the space bar or arrow keys. Short of being able to beam photos to the TV without a cable and maybe having a remote control, I’m not sure how it could be any simpler.
My experience has shown the opposite. Whether I patch my iBook directly into the TV or create a DVD slideshow, my photos actually look better on any television.
I thought you were looking for a way to do it in your own home. Are you looking for a way for your visitors to entertain themselves, without your having to operate it?
Anyway, one possible solution is to use video output of your digital camera, if it has one. You can get an extra memory card and dedicate it for this purpose. Digital cameras usually have simpler interfaces than computer applications.
Hey, if you want Grandma to navigate her way through your computer, you are SOL, but if the family comes over and sits in front of your TV, it’s a one-click operation.
You can’t browse several thousand photos using just the space bar and arrow keys. Not unless you’re a masochist, anyway.
That’s why I’d love to go the Mac Mini route, myself – hooking it up to my widescreen’s DVI and getting the whole HDTV experience would be killah…
Both. I want it to be in my home, but I don’t want “have rjung here to navigate the damn thing” be a requirement. The only other technically-literate person in this house is my son, and he’s only five.
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