Digital Focus: Experiment With Black and White
Convert photos from color to black and white for dramatic effects.
Dave Johnson
Dave's Favorites: Palm's First Digital Camera PDA
We've become a nation of shutterbugs, taking pictures everywhere we go. That's because we don't need to remember to haul a dig camera around anymore; these days we can just whip out a PDA or mobile phone.
Consider Palm's newest PDA, the Zire 71. This amazing little handheld costs just $299, yet it has a built-in digital camera that takes surprisingly good photos. The camera is cleverly hidden in the belly of the PDA; you need to slide the front of the device up to reveal the lens in the back of the case. At the same time, the PDA automatically enters camera mode (the screen becomes a digital viewfinder) and a shutter release appears at the bottom of the device.
You can store pictures in the PDA's system memory or on the removable Secure Digital card, then transfer them to your PC with ease. The 640-by-480-pixel images are sized just right for e-mail and Web pages.
While such a PDA camera will never replace an ordinary digital camera, it just might change the way you take pictures. With a simple camera in your pocket all day long, you might be more inclined to take day-to-day lifestyle shots of friends, family, and coworkers. That's the hook Sprint is using to lure people into buying a PCS Vision phone, and I think it's reasonable. I know that I've taken a lot more pictures with the Zire 71 than I expected to. What can I say? It's fun.
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