My Digital Camera

Pictures

• Galleries - Some of my favourite pictures

See the insides of the Casio QV-3000.

My Hardware/Software Projects

• Casio Photo Library Viewer - Not being satisfied with the bundled image library viewer, I wrote my own software to do it.
• QVRemote - Allows you to use your EPOC handheld computer to control Casio QV-series digital cameras. There is also a SIBO version for older Psion handhelds.
• PhotoBeamer - Allows you to send photos to your EPOC handheld computer via IR using the IrTran-P protocol.
• IrPhotoClip - For EPOC handheld computers. Receives, via infra-red (IrTran-P), photos from your compatible digital camera and pastes them onto the clipboard, ready for pasting into your Word, Agenda/Calendar, and Data documents.
• UHF radio remote control for Casio QV-series digital cameras. (Last updated: 2004-06-20)
• Perl EXIF Utility - A Perl script to read EXIF fields in JPEG files created by digital cameras.

My Decision

Why I decided on the Casio QV-3000.

My Research into JPEG vs TIFF

My comparison between fine quality JPEG and TIFF photos on the Casio QV-3000.

My Research into Resolution (Camera and Printing)

My research into resolution, along with some simple formulas to guide the selection of different resolutions for different circumstances.

Links

Reviews of the QV-3000

• Steve's DigiCams
• Digital Camera Resource
• digital cameras .com
• digitalkamera.de
• imaging resource
• Digital Photography Review
• Casio QV3000 Review & Pricing
• Amazon.com
• ZDNet
• TechTV
• CNET

Also reviews of the newer, but still very similar QV-3500:

• Steve's DigiCams
• PC Pro

QV3000 Specific Sites

• Official Casio web page (Pacific region)
• Maurice Delaney's Casio QV-3000 EX/Ir 3.34 megapixel Digital Camera homepage
• Unofficial FAQ
• DiCaSoft - Remote control program, plus another program that shows information embedded in the JPEG photo files
• ken-ichi Hayashi's home page - Some technical info on the serial protocol used to talk to Casio cameras

General Digital Photography Sites

Here are some sites I found while doing my pre-purchase research and since then:

• Steve's Digicams - An excellent source of reviews, and has a Photo Of The Day competition
• Digital Photography Review - Has web-based discussion forums and reviews
• Digital Camera Resource
• digital cameras .com
• digitalkamera.de (English)
• imaging resource
• PCPhotoREVIEW
• ShortCourses
• photo.net
• Digital Photography For What It's Worth - has a good article on batteries
• panoguide.com - The guide to panoramic photography
• minds@work - Digital Wallet photo storage technology
• Lens/Filter Adaptor for CASIO QV3000EX Digital Camera
• flashmemory.com.au - Australian suppliers of all sorts of memory cards and readers
• DigiCamera.com.au - Australian supplier of general digital photography equipment
• LowePro - Camera bags and related equipment
• ewa-marine - Underwater housings
• IBM Microdrive
• Norman Koren Photography
• Luminous-Landscape
• Cambridge in Colour - Digital Photography Tutorials - A very complete and high-quality set of tutorials

Software

• FotoAlbum - I'm currently using this free software to scan and organise my old film photos. It seems to be doing a good job so far. I have yet to try the online web-based album service.
• PixAround - Panorama maker that stitches individual photos together and creates a single large panorama picture that can be viewed by a supplied Java applet or packaged into a stand-alone executable. While the viewer is still free, the creation program is not.
• The Panorama Factory - The latest versions are shareware, but an earlier version is still available as freeware.
• Autostitch - Fully automatic panorama stitcher. Fully automatic makes it simple, but there's no manual override for when it gets it wrong. Blending is superb. Support multiple rows of photos.
• ArcSoft have several software packages available for free download. I've tried out the PhotoPrinter package - it worked, but uses a lot of memory and fails for some really big prints.
• Beau Software - Photo loader and librarian.
• BR's Photo Archiver
• Reudo Corporation - IrTran-P software for PC and Macintosh computers.
• Guido's Tech' Corner has a downloadable program called Jpegtran. This software will perform lossless JPEG rotations, while preserving and updating the EXIF photo information. I've combined it with two batch files in my "Send To" folder on Windows called Rotate Clockwise.bat and Rotate Anticlockwise.bat (the contents of the batch files being: @jpegtran -rotate [90|270] -copy all %1 %1).
• AVI Editor - can be used to rotate your movies among many other things.

Newsgroups

• rec.photo.digital (and it's FAQ)
• sci.chem.electrochem.battery

Technical Information

File Storage

The Photographic & Imaging Manufacturers Association has some technical documentation:

• DCF - Design rule for Camera Filesystem
• EXIF Image Format

EXIF Related

• EXIF utilities to read, edit and write EXIF data
• EXIF Image Viewer for Windows (Freeware)
• ExifView - Add an "EXIF Tags" tab to the Windows Explorer Properties dialog for JPEG files.
• Exifer for Windows - Lets you edit JPEG comments, EXIF data, and IPTC data.
• Opanda PowerExif - Very nice looking Window GUI editor. Can edit all fields.
• EXIF Image Viewer and EXIF InfoTip - EXIF Image Viewer shows image thumbnails and EXIF information. EXIF InfoTip displays EXIF information in a tool tip when you mouse over image files in Windows Explorer.
• Photo Comment - Just lets you edit the EXIF comment field, but lets you do it by right-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer!
• MaPiVi - A package written in Perl (doesn't look very easy to setup under Windows) that can read and store thumbnails, EXIF and IPTC information in a database. That database can be searched without needing the original files.
• Amok EXIF Sorter - Rule-based sorting and renaming of photos.
• ExifFarm - Windows Explorer integrated EXIF field editor.

Infra-Red

The IrDA organisation has some documents on the IrTran-P protocol used by the camera's infra-red port. Note that IrTran-P is actually built on top of several layers: IrComm, LM-IAS/TinyTP, IrLMP, IrLAP, SerialIR. Documentation on these can be found at the IrDA web site on their Standards and Specifications pages.

• IrTran-P Standard ( 240k)

Power Consumption

Someone measured the power consumption of the camera while powered via the external DC input. The table below shows the power consumption for various tasks. All figures are in mA.

QV-3000 Power Consumption

Rec Mode	LCD On	LCD Off
Idle	550	150
Focus/AE Lock	554	375
Zooming	850	450
Menus	360	n/a
Movie rec.	660	n/a

Play Mode was a constant 380mA.