A digital photo frame is a logical gift or add on for anyone with a digital camera. Most consumers in the digital photography markets have made the transition to digital cameras and digital pictures. Digital cameras like all consumer electronics have reduced significantly in price, improved in things like megapixels, optical zoom, and internal storage, and virtually eliminated the need to get pictures developed. Since anyone with a digital camera is gathering a large amount of digital pictures, a digital photo frame that allows them to immediately display them makes perfect sense.
Digital cameras created a freedom in picture taking that didn’t exist with traditional film. With the ever increasing storage capacity of memory cards, most of us with a digital camera can happily take an endless number of digital pictures and not worry about running out of film or how much its going to cost to get them all developed. Digital cameras make all of us snapshot happy.
The downside to this of course is that most of us gather a tremendous amount of digital pictures. Go on a European vacation and you could come home with a couple hundred digital pictures. These usually get transferred onto a computer or laptop, where they stay forever and rarely get viewed. Sure we may print a couple (photo printers are also now much cheaper) and put them in some frames around the house, but the hundreds or thousands of others are stored away into oblivion.
That’s why digital photo frames are forecasted to be on such a steep growth trajectory. A digital frame allows you to load you digital pictures and display them in what looks like a traditional picture frame, but with an LCD display device in place of the glass. You can either easily transfer the memory card from your digital camera to the frame, or transfer photos from the camera to a memory card in the digital frame, and start displaying photos. Some digital picture frames have internal memory as well (no memory card needed) and you can download straight from your computer – very flexible.
The main difference between a Digital Frame and a regular photo frame is their dynamic nature. A digital photo frame can display many photos in a slide show type format. They also come with lots of display mode features to define how many photos to display, type of transition, multiple pictures on the screen, and can display videos and play music as well. Digital frames are consumer electronics that take picture frames to another level.
Digital photo frames are great for around the house or in an office, and also make wonderful gifts, especially if you preload with photos from your photo collection. Your gift recipient will open the frame and immediately start seeing pictures they recognize. Plus, as your digital image collection grows, you can keep fresh pictures on your screen, or a friend or family member’s frame, so that you always display new pictures on the frame. Many Digital photo frames now have wireless features that makes sending new photos from your PC to digital frame even simpler.
So if you have a digital camera (and who doesn’t these day), pay attention because a digital photo frame will likely be an accessory that makes sense for you. Its time to start showing off all those digital photos you’ve snapped, and a digital photo frame is the best way to do it.