Digital Camera tips and advice

Digital Photo Frame - Top Digital Camera Accessory this Holiday Season

Don’t you love advances in technology? Around the holidays, this is when I typically put on my tech hat and go searching. There are so many high tech gadgets nowadays that it is tough picking through the truly useful things. When you find something really practical, that’s when it really makes sense! Well, I’ve found one such item: the digital photo frame.

The digital photo frame solves a basic problem: hundreds of digital pictures, from past vacations to birds in the backyard, locked inside multiple memory cards in a drawer in my desk. A friend of ours, who shares the same passion for shooting digital photos, gave us one of these digital picture frames for our anniversary, along with some pictures taken at our wedding!

How it works: the frame does not require a computer – you simply plug in the frame, and then your flash memory card from your camera and start watching your pictures come up on the frame! Ours has a setting to randomly display the pictures, so it’s always a surprise to see what comes up next. And what’s really neat is that I can also play music on it.

We’ve really enjoyed our frame, so we thought we would give a few out for gifts this holiday season. I saved holiday music in MP3 format, found some of our digital photos from past holidays, and put it all together for a great gift. Your gift recipients will know how much they mean to you when they receive the frame, especially with music and pictures already to go.

What to look for when shopping for a digital picture frame

1. Image quality and screen size. Our unit has a 7 inch frame and has a crisp picture. Pay attention to the resolution; ours is 640 x 480. We looked at others with lower resolution, but the picture quality was poor. The bigger the screen size, the more you pay. The 7 inch size is nice to display on the mantle or coffee table.
2. Storage is based on your memory card, not the digital photo frame itself. I recommend buying a large memory module so that you can display many pictures.
3. Look for picture frames that support the memory format your camera uses, and other flash formats. You may end up buying a new camera in the future, so don’t get a limited frame that only supports one or two memory types.
4. I suggest getting a digital picture frame that has music capability. This is a nice feature when you want particular music with a set of pictures.

How to shop: For us, we simply went online and looked at a variety of frames. Do a search for digital photo frame or digital picture frame, and you will see a variety of options from different manufacturers. The photo frame we received was from Edge Tech, and we have been very happy with our gift.

So, for this holiday season, pick up a digital picture frame for that photo enthusiast you know – they’ll be surprised and will enjoy it!