Snap decisions:Advanced technology has hobbyists shooting like pros

Thursday, March 22, 2001 | 9:26 a.m.

Using a Canon PowerShot S100, Vic Parekh snapped a photo of his brother playing electronic games on his cellular telephone outside the Bellagio.

"I was going to title the photo 'Next Generation,'" Parekh said a few minutes later, while looking at the digital image as it appeared on the back of his camera.

As with his other vacation snapshots, Parekh said he planned to upload the photo to ofoto.com, a photo processing website where images can be stored in a personal online photo album.

"My parents in New Jersey can order prints off of it," said the 28-year-old computer programmer from San Francisco. "I have relatives in France, South Africa and India. They can go look at it.

"With film, once every year I would send them prints," he said. "This is much nicer."

Parekh is not alone. As more people are making the transition to digital imaging, they're finding that they're able to take more professional-quality photographs that can be transferred to a computer and sent to friends and family within minutes via the Internet.

Info Trends Research Group Inc., a Boston market research and consulting firm for digital imaging technologies, reported that the number of digital camera users doubled in 2000, bringing the number of digital camera users in households with the Internet to 25 percent.

It isn't convenient only for the computer-inclined, who don't want to bother dropping off a roll of film at, say, the drugstore. For many, the on-the-spot opportunities to experiment with photos are appealing.

On any given day tourists strolling the Strip snap photos, then look at the back of the camera to see if they captured the angle and lighting they wanted to achieve.

"People are looking toward digital," said Terri Branch, supervisor for the digital imaging department at the Best Buy store on South Maryland Parkway. "I'm getting more people buying (digital cameras) than (film cameras). They don't want to mess with film.

"If you're on vacation and it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing ... you want to get the best shot you can. You can look at the picture and decide right there," Branch said.

With digital cameras you have the freedom to experiment, Parekh said.

"I actually use (this) to teach myself photography. Before I take the picture I can see how much light and shadow is there, stuff a professional photographer is going to eyeball, but an amateur is going to have to take 20 or 30 shots."

And with a renewed interest in photography, Parekh said he carries the small camera with him wherever he goes. "I basically (carry) this, my cell phone, my wallet and my keys."

Kevin Lay, visiting Las Vegas recently from Missouri, said he wouldn't think of bringing a traditional film camera on vacation.

He had 144 vacation pictures already stored on his camera's disc that he planned to transfer into his computer, and then send to friends, when he returns from his trip.

"I do a lot of superimposing, anything with Adobe (computer software), sharpening colors, changing colors," said Lay after posing with friends for a photo in front of the Paris Las Vegas.

"I could take a picture of all four of us in front of a building then put us (electronically) in front of a building I haven't been to or put everyone on Las Vegas Boulevard, which I plan on doing," he said.

When looking at his digital camera, which fits in the palm of his hand, he explained, "If I had to use rolls (of film), I wouldn't spend half the time (he does) with the camera. If I had rolls, I wouldn't even have a camera right now."

Photo finishes

Those still using film aren't left behind, however. The photography industry provides digital imagery options for consumers who continue to use film cameras.

Adobe Photoshop software can be used to edit images scanned in from prints from film cameras, and online photo services, such as ofoto.com and shutterfly.com, will develop film that is mailed in, return the negatives to the owner and then store photos, such as Parekh's, in an online collection. At shutterfly.com, users have the ability to crop and add decorative borders to photos, as well as turn them into greeting cards.

Also the Kodak Picture Maker, available at many drugstores and film processing centers, offers reprints and the opportunity to customize pictures by correcting color, adding borders and creating personalized gifts with photographs on them. The Picture Maker will work from negatives, prints and, in some areas, from floppy disks and compact flash cards that come with digital cameras.

While processing prints from a film camera, Kodak can also place the images on a computer disk.

In addition to store kiosks, Hewlett Packard's Photosmart P1000, a print-making machine that creates prints for digital-image cartridges, does not require a desktop computer for making 4-by-6 inch or 8 1/2-by-14 inch prints.

"The industry is trying to prepare itself to handle the digital consumer," said Michelle Lampmann, market research analyst for the Info Trends Research Group. Makes sense, since more than 95 percent of digital-camera users tend to be connected to the Internet and own a printer.

The group expects retailers to further develop related services, she added.

"It won't be widespread in the next year or two," Lampmann said. "It's likely to happen slowly.

Don't forget film

Yet despite the digital interest among new consumers, "Film is still very much alive," said Wayne Kodey at Casey's Cameras on East Tropicana Avenue.

He said only about 10 to 20 percent of customers at Casey's Camera are buying digital. "Digital cameras, our supply comes and goes because I don't order in depth. It's just like computers, the new ones come out and the old ones are tough to sell.

"The computer is the darkroom of the future," he said. "It's getting easier. But it's not as easy as dropping (film) off (at a film processing center). With the digital camera, you have to work a little."

Not everybody appreciates the resolution of digital images, which tends to be a poorer quality than film, especially in photos taken at night.

Others are content with Advanced Photo System cameras that use film cartridges that slip easily in and out of a compartment in the camera, eliminating the need for tugging at the strip of film, aligning it with a red arrow and manually cranking it forward.

"Your APS camera is extremely easy," Kodey said. "You cannot misload. This is the camera for your grandmother.

Disposable cameras are also popular, especially among tourists who can purchase cameras with the hotel's logo -- a temporary souvenir.

Busloads of tourists visiting the Liberace Museum, next to Casey's Camera, also stop in to purchase disposable cameras, Kodey said.

In a small case along the back wall of the camera store, beyond the slick, newfangled point-and-shoot models, large 35-mm SLRs and their attachments and accessories, a dozen or so old 110-model cameras (the slender cameras with a slip-in film cartridge that were popular 15 to 20 years ago) are displayed in a glass case.

Newer 110 cameras are available, Kodey said. "They still make film for them. They still make cameras for them."

But, he said, people buy the older 110s for sale in the glass case "mainly for the novelty."

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