The Digital Insider

It has been about 2 months now that I have been working on posts for The Digital Insider. I am constantly scouring the internet for new and interesting topics and asking the team here at ScanDigital what they think our customers and readers would be interested in reading about. More often than not it is someone here on the team that has an interesting idea that lead to my posts, so I thought it was time to bring in other contributors and authors.

Our staff here is a group of highly trained individuals, with a diverse background within a variety of niches in the photography and digital photography field. For most of these people working with digital photos and technology is not just a job, its something they love. Outside of the office they are generally keeping up with the latest and greatest innovations which makes them ideal contributors to our blog. I’m excited for them to share their thoughts with you.

For a number years now cameras have had the ability to time and date stamp photos, soon another dimension will be added to your digital photos - geography. The practice of stamping images with a geographic location is known as “geotagging”. This is currently available to those who wish to do it manually through sites such as Flickr; however, the integration of digital photography technologies, online photo sharing systems and GPS tracking technologies are rapidly making it more feasible for the average shutterbug to geotag his/her images.

“Every photo was taken somewhere. That’s almost always part of the story of the photo,” said Stewart Butterfield, general manager and co-founder of Flickr, which now houses 36 million geotagged photos–roughly 3 percent of its total archive.

As the cost of integrating GPS chips with digital cameras decreases, more and more people will begin to not only have a chronological record of their images, but also a geographic record. Before the advent of digital photography people often invited guests to view their slideshows, but today in the era of photo sharing online many viewers lack an in-person guide. Geotagging is just one more way to provide a comprehensive story about someone’s photos. Imagine touring through the Alps or Italy and upon returning being able to pinpoint the exact location of a particular favorite restaurant or hotel and then recommend it to friends. Geotagging simply is an additional enhancement that increases the usefulness of your digital photos.

It is estimated that on a scale of 1 to 10, geotagging is only a 4 in terms of maturity. Clearly there are future advancements that are being developed to make geotagging a user friendly, simple experience. It will be very interesting to watch this new technology develop.

The image below demonstrates a set of geotagged images and their appearance on a map.

Sources: Flickr, CNET

Early in the planning stages of ScanDigital we knew that we wanted our entire operation to be run out of one central facility. As I have mentioned before, we place our customers and their experience at the center of every decision we make…and this was no different when it came to facility and its location. A well-located central facility is a key part of our business for a number of reasons. First, having all work take place under one roof means your materials are shipped to one location, processed and shipped back. Not only do they not leave the country, but they never even leave our facility. Secondly, from a management perspective, it allows us to keep our processing time down and provide the fastest turnaround time in the industry which is very highly valued by our customers. Finally, one well located facility allows us to draw from the most highly trained and talented professionals in the world of digital photography. I could not be more proud of the team and the high quality work they do on a day to day basis.

So a little about our facility…After looking at a number of locations with in the Los Angeles area, we all agreed that Downtown El Segundo was the ideal place to launch ScanDigital. Despite the fact that El Segundo is centrally located within the largest metropolitan area, many of the locals refer to the area as “Mayberry by the Sea” as it is truly a hidden gem within LA and has a nice, quaint small town feeling. Downtown El Segundo is easily accessible from many parts of LA. On a daily basis we have employees commuting in from Santa Monica to the North, Manhattan and Redondo Beach to the South and Hollywood, Downtown Los Angeles and Central LA to the East. This has allowed us to attract and retain a highly qualified and well-trained team, without our well-located facility (and easy access from the 105 Freeway) this task would have been much more difficult. For our facility, we selected a fantastic historic brick building that has been entirely modernized to handle our high-end scanning and computer equipment while maintaining the historic charm. The building sits next to the original city hall site and was the third building ever constructed in El Segundo. Our physical location in many ways mirrors the service we provide: taking materials from generations past and modernizing them while preserving their original appeal.

Starting this weekend, we are now open 7 days a week, providing local customers the ability to drop off orders when it is most convenient to them. For any readers located within the LA area, I would invite you to come visit our facility sometime, we would be more than happy to give you a tour.

Yesterday marked anniversary of the original patent for the first roll-film camera and the registration of the name “Kodak”. The patent was awarded to George Eastman in 1888.

I was facinated to learn of Eastman’s story and what lead to the patent.

In his early 20s, Eastman was working as a bank clerk and purchased some photographic equipment for a vacation , but never made the vacation. He was instantly enamored with photography, though he was less enthusiastic about the cumbersome and limiting nature of wet-plate technology. So he set out to find a better solution. Eastman continued working at the bank while devoting his evenings to experimentation. By 1880 he had devised his own dry-plate formula and went into the photographic business full time. As he ran a young company struggling to survive, Eastman began looking for new exposure methods that could bring photography to the masses. Eastman kept experimenting until he hit on the solution: cellulose. It produced a clean image and was easily spooled onto a film roller, making it compact. As we know now, this was the birth of modern camera film. By 1888, he was ready to patent the first camera using that film.Another bit of interesting trivia is the background of the word Kodak, which has become one of the most recognizable brand names ever, there is no special meaning attached to it. Eastman explained its origin: “I devised the name myself. The letter ‘K’ had been a favorite with me — it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with ‘K.’ The word ‘Kodak’ is the result.”

Source: kodak.com, Wired.com

About a week or so after the highly anticipated release of Apple’s iPhone, I had a chance to really sit down and test the device. I must admit, while Apple has a track record of developing phenomenal and revolutionary products and personal devices, I thought this latest jump into the cell phone/PDA/all-in-one device market was going to take at least a few rounds before Apple really nailed it. Overall on the first try they created something that truly takes an all-in-one device to the next level. The entire design is focused on the user and the Apple design team was able to remove itself from the mindset of what is perceived as required for one of these devices (i.e. an actual button keyboard) which lead to a product that truly maximizes its usefulness and adapts for each individual function.

One of the areas I was most impressed by a was the iPhones Digital Photo functionality. For this function the iPhone uses the entire screen and images can be viewed both from a horizontal or vertical orientation (something that can change on the fly due to a built in gyroscope). With the flick of your finger you can scroll through photo after photo or with a pinch in you can zoom in on any photo. Photos can be easily uploaded to the device from you computer or from the web. Its amazing to think that for the first time ever it is totally reasonable to think someone’s entire life long photo collection could be loaded on one device and go with you wherever you want.

The video below gives a great, quick overview of the iPhones photo functions. Have a quick look, its a pretty amazing device!

Well…here we go. This is my first official post on the Digital Insider. The idea for this blog has been in the works for some time and I have finally found time to organize things and get the blog off the ground. The purpose of this blog is to provide information on interesting things happening in the world of digital photography. But before I dive into that, let me introduce myself.

My name is Anderson Schoenrock. I am the President of a relatively young company called ScanDigital. ScanDigital is a project that I have been working on in partnership with my close friend and colleague Michael Mothner, since January 2007. It is a web-based company headquartered in the Los Angeles area. We released our site to the public on June 6th and since then it has been a fun, exciting and wild ride. I am moving rapidly to build the company and develop the best possible service for our customers. Our focus is our customers and providing the highest quality service. As many of you may already know, ScanDigital provides a service to convert our customers old photos, negatives, slides and photo albums in to digital format. I am excited about the services we provide and the Company that is currently being built.

This blog is meant to be my personal extension of ScanDigital. A place where I can provide our customers and readers information on the latest in digital photography and the latest on our Company. A place where I can share my insights on the industry and have open discussions with customers and those who are interested in the world of digital photography.

In the coming weeks and months, I look forward to discussing a number of exciting topics. If you have ideas feel free to leave a comment and let me know your thoughts. I’m excited to have this blog off the ground and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Looking forward to my new venture in the world of blogging,

Anderson