Iomega's FotoShow? - Product Review - Evaluation

Digital picture frames (e.g., Digi-frame[TM] and Ceiva's Picture Frame) allow you to download digital images from a computer or a digital camera memory card to a picture frame-like device where the images can be viewed one at a time, or as a continuous slide show. I had been considering buying one to use at my camera club before a meeting and during intermission when refreshments are served. I had in mind two possibilities for its use: first, as a recruitment tool for visitors (photos would be interspersed with text slides explaining the activities of the club and the advantages of membership), and secondly, as a short showcase for members' photographs.

There are a number of problems with digital picture frames, however:

1. The viewing size is small (no larger than 4" x 6");

2. Because of the LCD screen in these devices, they must be viewed at an optimal angle and in a dim light to obtain a satisfactory image;

3. The images must be either all verticals or all horizontals, since a vertical in the horizontal format at this size would be much too small to be effective;

4. They tend to be pricey.

Consequently, I went in an entirely different direction and obtained an Iomega FotoShow. It is a device that connects to a TV set and overcomes all of the disadvantages noted above.

The hardware -- its dimensions are 9-1/4" x 5-3/8" x 2" -- is an augmented, USB 250 MB Zip[R] drive, but it will also read and write 100 MB Zip disks. My computer has two USB ports with a 4-port USB hub connected to one of the ports. Although the hub came with a power module, I use it unpowered and all the USB devices connected to it, including the FotoShow Zip drive, work fine.

The rear of the drive unit has RCA connections for both video and audio output, but since sound was not a consideration (the FotoShow manual makes little mention of audio), I simply connected the video to a 13" television set that has A/V inputs. Although the video and audio connections can remain at all times, the USB cable to the unit must be disconnected when using the FotoShow program, located in firmware in the unit. This posed little inconvenience since it was easy to connect and disconnect the USB cable even when the computer was running.

If you don't have a TV with A/V inputs, you must buy an RF Modulator. Although Iomega sells these modulators, the identical unit is sold by Radio Shack (No. 15-1244).

The interface to the FotoShow program is via a remote and although it is fairly ergonomic, it is too bad that Iomega did not opt to allow access to the program via the computer keyboard or mouse. For example, when naming albums (which are simply folders on the Zip disk containing the images) or creating image captions, you are presented with a matrix of letters or numbers. One moves around the matrix using the up, down, right, and left arrow buttons on the remote, and selecting the letter or number by pressing another button. If one could use the computer keyboard, this information could be entered much faster and with far fewer mistakes.

FotoShow requires the baseline (or "standard") JPEG format for your digital images. A compressed file size of about 200KB seems to work best in FotoShow. If you want to fill the TV screen with your image, you should crop it using the 1.33 aspect ratio used by TV sets (and most, but not all, digital cameras), which differs from the 1.5 of slides.

There is a problem, however, in that all television sets crop images that fill the screen. Each manufacturer's TV screen has different specifications, so it is impossible to say how much each image will be cropped on any given TV set. FotoShow provides subframes (called "themes") that will display the entire image, but they do not necessarily utilize the entire TV screen. Therefore, before I compress an image I add a 10% black border around it. An 853 x 1134 pixel image, for example, becomes 896 x 1191 pixels. This fills the entire TV screen with hardly any image loss, and any edges not entirely occupied by the image are made inconspicuous to the viewer by virtue of the black border.

The first step in creating a continuous slide show is to create an album on the Zip disk. The second step is to create a slide show, which basically involves providing a name and selecting the images to be included from any album or albums. A nice touch is that if you name it "Auto," the slide show will start automatically when you start FotoShow. Both of these steps are fairly easy and fast, and voila! -- I have a continuous slide show! Since my A/V TV has audio input, I connected them to a diminutive Radio Shack tape player (SCT-86) that I use for my two-projector slide dissolve programs, providing some nice background music to go along with the slide show.

A really valuable feature -- although Iomega doesn't talk about it -- is that you can connect the unit to a VCR and tape a program (a continuous program, for example, can be taped for one cycle or for as many cycles as the tape will record). The VCR tape then can be played on any TV connected to a VCR without the need for carting the unit around. I did this for a program featuring 27 slides of butterflies, then took the tape over to my son's house at a family gathering and played it on his 37-inch TV set.

FotoShow provides 24 different transition styles to go from slide to slide. The "random" option, as its name suggests, randomly picks one of the 24 styles for each image. This imparts considerable interest and drama to the slide show. The user has the following choices for the time each image stays on the screen in continuous mode: none (the image is on for just as long as the transition takes place, somewhat like a fast cut), 3, 5, 10, 15 or 30 seconds, and 1, 2, or 5 minutes.

Although one doesn't need a digital camera to use this equipment, the drive comes with slots for both SmartMedia[TM] and CompactFlash[TM]/IBM Microdrives[TM]. In addition to the "Eject" button found on normal Zip drives, this one has a "Copy" button. Insert a flash card or IBM Microdrive, push the Copy button, and all files (not just the JPEG files) will be copied to the Zip disk. This means that the unit can be used to download images from flash cards, freeing them up to receive more images. When you get home, connect the unit to a computer, move the desired files to your hard drive, and erase the Zip disk or use it to store the original files.

Since this is a 250MB drive, quite a few images can be stored. Iomega calculates that, on a 250MB disk, 115 "High Quality" 3.1 Megapixel images and 295 "Good Quality" images can be stored. I compressed a 3 Megapixel RGB color image in Photoshop using the highest quality (10) and it resulted in a JPEG file size of 665KB, so Iomega's estimates, if anything, are conservative. Since 250 MB Zip disks cost about $14 each, a tremendous number of files can be stored at a very low cost for the media.

In conclusion, the Iomega FotoShow delivers the following at a relatively low cost:

1. A way to provide a continuous slide show;

2. A 250MB Zip drive for your computer; and

3. A way to download and store thousands of images from your digital camera while on the road.

Hopefully, in the future, Iomega will modify the device so that the FotoShow software can accept input from the computer keyboard and mouse, and operate with the USB cable connected to the computer.

Postscript:

After this article was written, Microsoft[R] introduced their "TV Photo Viewer," differing in hardware from Iomega's Fotoshow in that it uses a floppy disk drive rather than a ZIP drive to connect to the TV. Since your computer can write to a floppy disk using its own drive, no cables are necessary. Except for a small remote that controls the signals between the device and the TV, all of the programming is done using your computer keyboard and/or mouse, thus removing both of the major reservations I have with the Fotoshow unit. Furthermore, if you have friends or relatives who don't have a TV Photo Viewer, you can send them your photo albums via e-mail. They in turn can download the TV Photo Viewer software from Microsoft for free and view your albums on their computer screens. The downside is that, because of the limited capacity of a floppy disk, only about 10 high quality images (of about 200 KB size) can be accommodated. The competition between TV Photo Viewer and FotoShow has helped reduce the prices for these devices.

Albert J. Klee
Milford, OH

COPYRIGHT 2002 Photographic Society of America, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group