Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tonyappuk]

Afternoon All. My Better Half would like a digital photo frame to display pictures of the grandchildren (mostly). I have seen 7" versions for between £30 and £40 and I wonder if other forumites have bought or had experience of these devices. The questions I have include whether mains powered is better than battery, can they all be loaded from your PC, do they all have built in storage or do you have to load everything onto a camera card and plug it in? As you can tell my knowledge of these things is very basic and the relevance of DPI and contrast ratio in this LCD application is still a bit of a mystery to me.
Has anyone any guide lines they can offer and pitfalls to be avoided?
I shall have a wander around Salisbury later today and see what is available but I'm sure they will be cheaper on line, that's why I need my hand held!
Tony

[dave.m]

The one I have is mains powered and is probably better than mucking about with rechargeable batteries.
It uses a SD card so all I do is make a new folder in My Pictures and then click on each of the pictures I want to use and 'copy this file' (in the folders tasks box on the left) to the new folder. I then 'Send the contents of the folder to the SD card and plug it in the Picture frame.
 You can select how long each picture is displayed before it changes to the next one.
You can also 'Hold' a picture for display so that only that one is shown.

£30 is about the right price to pay for one now. What you will probably notice is that the pictures if in landscape do not reach the edge of the frame because they will be something like 4:3 on you computer and the frame is something like widescreen.

dave

[tonyappuk]

Thanks for your response, Dave. Having explored the Salisbury shops and done a bit more research on line I think I am better placed to make a wise purchase. Unfortunately my Olympus camera uses Smart Media memory which was discontinued last year and so I really need a frame with USB input and internal storage rather than use the method you do since the cheaper frames don't accept Smart Media cards. But there still seem to be lots to choose from.
Tony

[dave.m]

Tony,
My old camera (which is now on the scrap heap) used XD cards but all I did was buy a couple of 1GB SD cards just for the picture frame, one was in the frame and the other was being loaded with different pictures from my PC and then waiting to be used when we got fed up with the pictures and wanted a change.
Even if the Smart media is discontinued, just uplad to you PC from the camera and thensort and make a folder, as I said I do, then copy to the SD card or whatever card your frame accepts.

I tried to find one originally that you could plug a USB stick into but someone said that it wouldbe prone to getting knocked and damaging the contacts on the frame, which would work out expensive.
Any with their own onboard memory to store would need to be connected to the PC to upload everytime you wanted a change. I think the memory card idea is the most convenient.

dave

[tonyappuk]

Dave, I am sure you're right about a USB stick getting knocked. On the only one I have seen the USB socket was near the edge and the stick would stick (!) out. However I may still opt for the loading from my PC to internal storage scenario since I don't have a card reader. I know they're quite cheap but the Olympus has a USB socket and the snaps are downloaded as necessary to the PC so I have never needed one. I would also need to buy duplicate SD (or whatever) camera cards. Thanks for your input. As usual you have been very constructive in your responses.
Tony

[dave.m]

Looks like the 'onboard' memory frames are starting at about £80+
Some with and without ob memory here to give you an idea of prices.

http://www.digitalframesdirect.com/digital_photo_frame_7_digital_frames/

dave

[tonyappuk]

Ta.
Tony