I have found a digital camera I would like to purchase but I have a few questions...The camera has 2MB SmartMedia..can this be removed and placed in some kind of adapter to put in my 3.5 drive to download photos without using a serial port?

Also, there was available a 8MB Digital smartMedia Memory Card Is this a replacement card for the 2MB SmartMedia??

What kind of adapter will I need to use this in my 3.5 drive??

Please explain in terms for dummies!! Thanks

-- Joanne Anderson (bjanders@ipa.net), October 22, 1999

Answers

We use the 3.5 floppy adapter with our smart media. The adapter looks similar to an ordinary 3.5 disk. It came with a battery (tiny). The media slips into it like you are slipping it into an envelope. We pop it into the drive and drag the files over to the hard drive or a zip disk. It's very fast. The floppy adapter was by Olympus (same as our camera) and came with software for Windows or Mac.

-- Eileen Morrisot (we108918@nassaulibrary.org), October 22, 1999.

Usually the largest card that you can afford is the best. It allows you to take more pictures before you have to offload them to the PC.

The number of pictures you can take on each card depends on the two things:

1) quality of the picture and the number of pixels... the larger the better.

2) the method the image is saved on the card. The image can be compacted base on different rules. The more complex the rule the larger the file. Example. If you want to save a picture of a black cat in a coal mine. The software could simply save instructions to "Save black picture" or it could save "Save black picture except ..." Either would be smaller than saving all the pixels but one would produce a more realistic image when it was decompressed on the computer. This stuff is mostly automatic and you only have to understand the concept. If I want a really great image use high quality and little compression. If I want a so-so image use low quality and lots compression. Why would any one want a so-so image? The computer monitor works can really only display the so-so image, while the printer likes the great image.

My Nikon cp 950 will hold on its 32 meg card anywhere from 6 to 750 pictures based on these concepts.

-- dave clark (daveclark@mail.com), October 23, 1999.