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Home >> Photography >> Accessories The Pocket
PC and the Photographer This is not a direct review of a specific Pocket PC, but more a general comment about what a Pocket PC can do for you as a photographer. Besides which, the Pocket PC I use currently (the Toshiba e740) has been superceded by a new model. I first came across the possibilities of a Pocket PC through Michael Reichmann’s Luminous Landscape website where he described how he uses a Pocket PC or Palm compatible device to determine when and where the moon rises for his photographic trips. It looked so cool from a tech-geek sort of way :-) I’m not a photographer able to do the many varied and wonderful trips that Reichmann does, so knowing the phase of the moon and what degree it will rise over the horizon is not important for me. However, that did not stop me from downloading a shareware program from the Internet, so that I too can pull out my Pocket PC and determine when the moon will rise :-) The moon phase program I use is a freeware program called Ephemeris by Jonathan Sachs. Sachs offers some pretty interesting applications for the Pocket PC including a Depth of Field Calculator that allows you to type in the basic parameters of lens focal length, aperture, resolution desired and focus distance with the application providing you with the closest focusing, the farthest focusing, and the hyperfocal distances. Sachs also offers an Exposure guide program that offers you suggested exposure settings in Aperture or Shutter Priority modes. A bar graph leads the way from bright white to deep black with many increments in between that you tap on for guidance. Even his non-photographic applications could still be used for photography, as he offers a Stopwatch/Timer/Calendar program that one could use to accurately time a long exposure. And all of them for free with regular updates provided, very worthwhile to check out and very generous for Sachs to provide. You will get to see actual screen shots of his applications at this download website, instead of having to look at my pathetic shots below of his applications. Update: it has come to my belated attention that Jonathan Sachs is the original developer of the landmark application Lotus 123; however, that is not his only claim to fame. He is also the author of Picture Window, a photo editing application that is considered just as good as Photoshop, but without the high price and add ons that make Photoshop such a daunting piece of software. However, Picture Window also does without the reputation and widespread adoption of Photoshop. Norman Koren, a netizen with a scientific background and strong following of his own is one who has high praise for Picture Window and what it can do for you for a fraction of the cost of Photoshop. Consider that Picture Window would cost about CAN $150 versus CAN $1200 for the full version of Photoshop 7. If you're on a tight budget for a digital darkroom photo editor, Picture Window seems worth a look.
Admittedly though, my primary intention for using a Pocket PC is to cheat a bit when I’m stuck for ideas for posing couples and to be able to quickly reference some scanned images downloaded to the Pocket PC. I can flip through about 60 images loaded into a folder using the freeware DAVA image viewer. I’m a bit chagrinned to find that the image viewer I paid some money for (a small amount) turned out to be a piece of inefficient crap versus the freeware DAVA Picture Viewer. Images took too long to load and scroll through whereas DAVA works pretty quickly and efficiently. Although DAVA does take a bit too long to go from a full screen view of an image back to the normal compressed view with file and menu options available. You can download DAVA from here.
Another useful tool is a city map and being able to type in an address and then zooming in to find exactly where in the city it is. The initial Pocket Streets map program from Microsoft costs US $25, but then many city maps are for free afterwards. You can download a variety of maps and even purchase a GPS accessory item for the Toshiba Pocket PC that will coordinate with the map program. The price of the GPS accessory is a bit dear, so I won’t be doing longitude and latitude searching anytime soon.
Lastly, the Pocket PC has the ability to play back MP3 files to while away that spare time in between shoots. It is not a specific feature of the Toshiba e740 to play back MP3 files, but it can through the Windows Media Player built-in. It is rather unsatisfactory though because you can only play back one file at a time with the original Media Player and you cannot scroll through the main list to the other MP3 files unless you go into File Explorer mode. You can download an update to Windows Media Player for the Pocket PC along with a basic skin to provide playback and forward/reverse functions; however, Microsoft has altered their latest Windows Media Players so that some of my MP3 files cannot be played back. Most dastardly of Microsoft to do so since their older Media Players had no issue with any of my MP3 files. Enter another freeware program to playback MP3s more satisfactorily, which will allow you to scroll through and play back the MP3s continuously. Not as fancy as the pay-for MP3 players for the Pocket PC, but I don’t need any flourishes or skins to playback my music files, since the Pocket PC turns off the LCD display after a minute of inactivity anyway. I use PocketMusic by PocketMind, available here. Update: After living with the buggy PocketMusic application for a while, I gave up on it and cleaned out the Pocket PC of all programs and returned it to its original state, meaning the original Windows Media Player, which recognizes and plays all of my MP3 files. I also realized that it isn't quite as limited as I thought it was and so, I'm groovin' once more. And people complain about Microsoft being buggy...
The Pocket PC also offers voice recording and playback via a built-in microphone and speaker. I’ve not tried the voice-recording feature, since I have little use for it, but the speaker is tiny and tinny, like a cheap transistor AM radio. The Toshiba e740 has a headphone jack and this at least provides some measure of quality when used with good headphones, nothing like cranking out Dick Dale’s Misirlou through the Pocket Music Player. Incidentally, I store the several hundred megabytes of MP3 files on a ubiquitous 512 MB Compact Flash card, which the Toshiba e740 can accommodate along with a Smart Disk slot, for dual storage capability. The specific Toshiba model I have has built-in wireless capabilities, to make it an even more versatile device and you can surf the Internet with it despite its diminutive size vis a vis a laptop computer. Not that I really enjoy surfing the net with something so small after being used to the coverage that my 21-inch CRT provides me, but if ever I’m at a McDonalds with wireless connections, I’m good to go, with fries please :-) The Pocket PC in general is a pretty slick device that seems to run circles around the entry level and monochrome Palm M125 I bought for my wife. First obvious difference is in the Pocket PC having a bright color display, which adds so much life to the PDA experience. Second is the greater available space for viewing files or images and third is the higher resolution available from the Pocket PC. None of which is absolutely critical and the higher end Palms that compete in the same price range as the Toshiba unit certainly have similar capabilities and features. The two primary PDA types offer similar features, such as:
I have never been an appointment book kind of guy, as my life has never been so busy or varied to require something to bring order to it. However, I can appreciate that other people do lead very busy lives and need some assistance and a PDA with its ability to sync to a primary desktop PC is a smashing success for them. The evolution of the PDA to be something more than a glorified appointment book makes it a very interesting tool for a geek like me. The basic operations of the Palm and Pocket PC devices will not be a challenge for anyone comfortable with computers and able to work a top notch 35mm SLR, but the Pocket PC does seem to have a few more quirks, which I suppose is commensurate with its higher quality and greater feature set than a very basic Palm unit. It freezes up at times and I have to do a “soft” Reset to jar it from its stupor, thankfully without losing any data. Synchronization with the desktop can be lost at times and require a reseating of the Pocket PC in its docking cradle. The Toshiba e740 and its successors have user replaceable rechargeable batteries, which makes it a more useful device than those units with no user replaceable battery. As most people know, batteries have a finite life and will eventually have to be replaced and the Toshiba makes it very easy. A lock switch keeps the unit from turning on accidentally and draining the battery. With its accessory keyboard, the Pocket PC can become the poor man’s laptop with the ability to type up e-mail, letters and reports quickly. It does make me wonder about the state of today’s software and computers. For digital photographers, there can never be enough speed, memory or storage due to the large file sizes involved, but for the everyday user not needing state of the art computing power, it harkens back to the days when programmers were forced to write efficient software due to the high cost of processing power and memory. Ah, the days of the old 8 MHz XT PC from my youth, when a younger cousin and I would while away the hours playing Gauntlet that was played back surprisingly faithfully to the arcade version of the time. Nowadays you probably need the reams of memory and MHz’s of a Pentium 4 just to run an updated version of Pong. The Pocket PC typically have modest memory compared to a desktop and the processor speed, while leagues ahead of my former and ancient XT PC machines (as well as the 386 PCs I’ve had), still are not powerful enough to view MPEG or other video files effectively without choppiness. However, I’m still pretty amazed at what such a small device can do and how effectively it can do it. Not quite Star Trek tricoder capable, but perhaps closer than we think :-) What I would not mind seeing though is a USB port built into the Pocket PC for attaching accessories, such as a card reader or even a printer. How cool would that be to be able to hook up a Pocket PC to a printer and being able to generate reports on demand, or being able to transfer data via a USB key for those computers without wireless or beaming capabilities? Hell, there are already digital camera attachments for the Pocket PC, so why not be able to print immediately from the Pocket PC to a portable printer like those from Canon? To take it to the next level, design a Pocket PC that is the same size as the Toshiba e740, but with a flip up LCD, landscape oriented screen and a full keypad on the base section, so that it resembles a tiny laptop. Give it a bit more power and memory but keep the compact flash slot and add in a USB port and hell, while I’m at it, create a similar sized external 40 GB hard drive to mate via that USB port (version 2 of course) and you’d be grooving with a killer portable computer. This dream machine would be smaller than even a sub-notebook and should be priced much lower to allow it to compete against the steady lowering of laptop prices. Update: Sony has come out with a new PDA that seems to come closest to my ideal mentioned above, the Clie UX50 with a flip-up landscape oriented LCD and built in keyboard with WiFi, Bluetooth, digital camera and voice recorder built-in. Price is CAN $1000. A Pocket PC or Palm PDA might just work out for you too and before coming to a situation in which the Toshiba basically fell into my hands, I was seriously considering the Viewsonic PDA’s for their small size and low cost compared to other Pocket PC devices. The Viewsonics also have a decent complement of included applications to allow you to listen to MP3 files or view image files immediately instead of having to search for and then download an application, as I had to do with the Toshiba. All in all, pretty useful devices to have and now I seem to be becoming more of an appointment book kind of guy – electronically of course. Readers Comments
I like what Sony has to offer in their high end PDA's and if I had the money, the Sony units would be at the top of the list; however, I didn't have the money (it's rare that I do these days) and I was fortunate to have received the Toshiba Pocket PC as payment for some website work I did. I would not have been able to afford something as good as the Toshiba otherwise, which is why I mentioned looking very closely at the Viewsonic PDAs that come in at half the cost of the Toshiba units. I am also in a position that I have received very favourable upgrade costs for computer hardware and software, such that I have not had to look for more cost effective alternatives for my digital darkroom needs. Without getting into too much detail (confidentiality reasons) I have been most fortunate to have access to hardware and software that would be far above my actual financial means. I know of Picture Window and did look at the dedicated page prior to writing the Pocket PC article, but admittedly, never gave it more than a cursory look, hence the reason why it was not mentioned in the article. However, you've done a good job of describing it, so I've created links back to the relevant web pages in your comments above. If Jonathan Sachs were to provide a review copy of Picture Window, I would be happy to review it, but I will not be purchasing or soliciting anything from him myself, as doing so would be redundant and I'm also gun-shy about purchasing software that is not necessary or provide a means to resolving a problem I face, e.g., I purchased ACD Fotoslate because I found it more flexible than Qimage Pro for certain types of print jobs I wanted to do, but other software I've purchased, such as an image file manager, were loaded, looked at and then never used again because I had no desire to do the hours of initial data entry needed to create new "albums". Update: I have now reviewed Picture Window Pro |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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