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If you're considering the purchase of a digital camera for use with your RISC OS computer, here's a brief survey of peripherals and software that you may find useful.
When buying a digital camera you should check carefully that it does indeed include a serial port, if you want to avoid the expense of additional equipment. The new Olympus C-2040 Zoom, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, does not include a serial port.
Assuming that your camera does have a serial connection, it's worth considering the purchase of an expansion card to provide additional serial ports for your computer, especially if your machine only has one serial port. Intelligent Interfaces sells one such card. This would allow you to have several serial devices (such as camera, modem and perhaps a graphics tablet) attached to your computer simultaneously.
If your camera does not have a serial port (or even if it does, and you want a more flexible and convenient way of transferring images), you could opt to buy a card reader device for your computer. These come in two varieties: CompactFlash and SmartMedia versions. Most cameras use either one or the other of these types of storage medium (or occasionally both in high-end models); the Olympus cameras reviewed elsewhere in this issue all use SmartMedia cards.
At the time of writing, Surftec Ltd has recently brought out the DigiFlash CompactFlash reader for RISC OS and is on the points of launching a SmartMedia version of the product, too. Unfortunately the product wasn't quite ready in time for me to test it for this article (Surftec was awaiting some final technical documentation before the software could be completed). However, it should be available by the time you read this. [Addendum: Surftec's DigiFlash readers are discussed in a feature in issue 8.]
A SmartMedia reader device will accept the card straight out of your camera, and should allow you to transfer the images to your hard disc via normal drag and drop operations. An additional benefit of a SmartMedia reader is that, unlike a serial connection, you can transfer images to a SmartMedia card as well as downloading them from it. That's particularly useful if your camera is capable of being hooked up to a TV set (all the Olympus models reviewed in this issue have this capability), as you can put a selection of pictures on a SmartMedia card and use the camera itself to display a slideshow on your TV. Then, when you've finished, you can of course reuse the card for taking more pictures.
If you're transferring via a serial cable, though, you'll need appropriate software to download the pictures from the camera. Various packages have been available to do this in the past, but currently the only available option is the PhotoLink software from Photodesk Ltd, which costs £69 when purchased on its own but is supplied free with any cameras that Photodesk Ltd supplies.
In use, PhotoLink allows you to download thumbnails from the connected camera (either all of them at once or a range that you specify) and then displays them in a window, allowing you to select individual pictures and either save them to disc or transfer them straight to other applications. As well as allowing certain optional processing and conversion operations to be applied to the images, PhotoLink offers a variety of other options: the camera can be operated remotely from the computer and pictures taken directly; photographs on the camera can be protected, unprotected or deleted from the RISC OS desktop; and various items of information stored on the camera (such as date, time and owner details) can also be set from the software.
| PhotoLink allows you not only to download all the images from your camera to the computer, but also to control many of the advanced options of the camera and take photos from your desktop |
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First of all, PhotoFiler from Warm Silence Software provides a particularly ingenious and well-integrated function. This inexpensive piece of software (which costs just £10 ex. VAT) enhances the RISC OS filer with the ability to display thumbnail images instead of the usual filetype icon for individual files.
| PhotoFiler replaces standard filetype icons (in this case, JPEG images) with a thumbnail of each image in the standard RISC OS filer's directory displays |
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The thumbnails appear on each image in turn while the machine multitasks, so your work is not held up when you open a new directory containing lots of images, and the standard convention of holding down <Ctrl> when opening a new directory to avoid booting any applications that it may contain will also suppress PhotoFiler thumbnails for that directory. Of course, it does take a few seconds for a directory viewer to be updated if it contains many images, but the benefits of being able to use the RISC OS filer as a file previewer-cum-photo album are enormous. The program is not just limited to working with JPEGs: it can also provide thumbnails for sprites, Draw files and optionally other filetypes. PhotoFiler also offers a number of further filer-enhancement options, such as the ability to suppress the ! character from the start of application names, and to add unique icons to particular directories.
If you prefer to leave your filer 'as is', though, and to use a dedicated image browser utility, there are lots of alternatives to choose from, both commercial and freeware. A good free utility of this sort, Rick Hudson's Thump, is provided in the View section of the Graphics page in the Free software archive on this CD.
When it comes to viewing the images, there are again lots of alternatives. Several image viewer applications with slideshow facilities, such as SwiftJPEG, were considered in issue 4 of Foundation RISC User, so I won't duplicate that information here. However, it's worth noting that there's another handy image viewer in this category, called EasyView, which is also available in the View section of the Free Software archive's Graphics page.
The second piece of software that I want to highlight in particular here is Décor by our contributor Peter Naulls. This application, which was previously published by Beebug's RISC User magazine, is a very nice Pinboard backdrop changer. It's compatible with both RISC OS 3 and RISC OS 4, and handles both sprite files and JPEGs, converting them into sprites before plotting for maximum screen-updating speed. (This conversion is optional for RISC OS 4 users, as the RISC OS 4 Pinboard can plot JPEGs directly.)
Décor is intended primarily as a backdrop changer: it will pick a random picture (or tile) when it first loads and allow you to change it at any time. It can also change the picture automatically at preset intervals, and it replots the picture upon a mode change for maximum quality.
However, Décor's less obvious secondary function, which is ideal for users of digital cameras, is as a handy and unobtrusive slideshow viewer, using the Pinboard itself for displaying the 'slides'. By dragging a directory of images to the Décor icon you can display images just from that directory (on a temporary basis) and optionally step forwards and backwards through the images in sequence, just like a regular slide projector, which is very neat and convenient.
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| This screenshot of a full-size desktop shows Décor in use to display a JPEG slideshow on the Pinboard, PhotoFiler to display image thumbnails in a standard filer directory viewer, and PhotoLink to download images from a digital camera |
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A final note about Décor for RISC OS 4 users: if you want to include the application in your boot sequence, then the best place to keep it is the Tasks directory. However, there is a minor problem in that the Pinboard configuration file, PinSetup, is also stored in this directory and will be run after Décor. This file (which is saved by the Configure utility's Pinboard plug-in) contains a line to set the Pinboard background to a picture, a tile or a plain colour. This command will override the backdrop set up by Décor, and Décor won't replot its picture until you change your desktop's screen size or colour depth.
To correct this minor annoyance, simply load the PinSetup file into your favourite text editor and examine it. You will see that it contains two lines, of which the second is a Backdrop command similar to the following:
Backdrop -T BootResources:Configure.Textures.T1 -Colour &77777700 -TextColour &ffffff00
Simply delete this entire Backdrop line, to leave just the first line in the file (a PinboardOptions command) intact. Then resave the file. Note that you will have to do this again if you re-edit your Pinboard options using Configure in the future, as the Pinboard configuration utility will always reinstate the command when updating the PinSetup file.
A known problem was that if certain JPEG images were rotated losslessly with particular applications, the rotated images could be displayed incorrectly (and would appear to be striped). More seriously, certain types of JPEG, notably 'Exif' (extended information) format images, which have become a de facto standard in modern digital cameras, were not supported at all, although they could still be viewed in dedicated image processing utilities (such as ChangeFSI) and Web browsers.
Prospective subscribers to the new RISC OS Select scheme may be interested to know that the first operating system upgrade issued through the scheme will include, among many other improvements, significantly enhanced JPEG support. The existing JPEG support has been speeded up and otherwise improved, JPEGs that previously 'went stripy' are now handled correctly, and, most importantly, Exif JPEGs are now fully supported. Combined with some of the other improvements introduced with the Select scheme, RISC OS will become significantly better suited for handling digital photographs.
PhotoFiler may be obtained as follows:
| PhotoFiler | |
| Supplier |
Warm Silence Software
PO Box 28 Woodstock Oxfordshire OX20 1XX |
| Tel./Fax | 01608 737172 |
| Mobile | 0585 487642 |
| Web | http://www.wss.co.uk/ |
| info@wss.co.uk | |
| Price | £11.75 inc. VAT |