A long time ago, in the mid 1970s, I was studying Photography at art school when I came across an astonishing new photo workshop, called “Photography for the Blind.” It showed the work of a man who gave Polaroid cameras to legally blind people. And the results were astonishing. People who couldn’t see more than 3 inches were able to take instant photos and view them under strong magnification, and were able to see their world for the first time. I have never forgotten that incredible idea.
So now I have my sister visiting my home, and my little niece is legally blind. She isn’t totally blind, but requires magnification assistance to read and can’t see much beyond about 1 ft. And suddenly, it occurred to me, hey, what if I gave her a digital camera?
So here’s the question. I need to find an inexpensive, kid-proof, rugged digital camera that has as large an LCD as possible. The biggest issue is the size of the LCD. I know cameras are getting smaller, so if anyone knows of existing, perhaps older models with large LCD preview screens, could you please let me know?
Neat idea. Unfortunately digital cameras have always had small screens because of cost and power consumption issues. I think the old SONY Mavica cameras (the ones that use floppy disks) are as good as you get. They should be very cheap by now, but they’re rather slow.
Does it have to be a still image? If a real-time image is acceptable, many camcorders (especially those by Sharp) have very large displays. A notebook computer with a built-in camera would be even better, but cost and battery life may be a problem.
Hey, I think you’re on to something there. I’ve seen large (well, 4 inch) LCDs for sale as external monitors for video cameras. But it sounds too clunky for a kid to use.
And yeah, it sorta does need to be a still image. I’m no expert in this, but it seems that the still image gives the viewer more of an opportunity to take in all the separate parts of the picture.
Well anyway, I suppose she could always use any regular digital camera, and just have her dad print stuff at the end of the day. But it seems to be a step backwards from the immediacy of the Polaroid idea.
The LCD size should be no obstacle. It shouldn’t be too difficult to upload the images to a computer, and enlarge them on-screen using graphics software, accessibility software, or a combination thereof.
A video-to-computer connection is also an interesting possibility, with the benefit of real-time… not so confident of the image quality though, which would be a problem with digitally enlarging the output.
Well, part of the attraction of this idea is the immediacy of the instant viewing. That’s the whole reason I was thinking digital, its the optimum combination between cost and performance. But perhaps the Polaroid idea is cheaper overall, it certainly is a lower starting investment, but I think she’d take as many photos as she is able to, and I’d like to encourage that.
Another option is the Kodak Palmpix camera attached to a color Palm Pilot. The setup is compact, and the Palm has a decent 3.5" screen. Perhaps there are similar products for other handheld computers too.
Sounds like I good idea, but I have concern about magnifying an LCD. If she needs to magnify the LCD, it’s likely that she’ll just get an eyefull of garbled RGB light, without a coherant image. Screens don’t magnify too well. However, the digital camera LCD might be fine enough to work. Good luck!
Going back to the small(ish) lcd monitor idea, http://www.partsexpress.com sells 4, 5.6, and 6 inch color lcd monitors which operate off of 12 volts and RCA input. I use a 4" one in my car computer setup, and it works great. They’re cheap too. $100 for the 4" one.
Power consumption is a problem for a portable device like you’d want, but that can probably be worked out by adapting camcorder batteries or something.
Many cameras (such as my Kodak dc4800) have RCA out for displaying on tv. You could hook up the camera to the screen, and have a decent sized “digital polaroid” setup quite easily, in a relatively small and light package.