Best prices on digital frames?

[NoDecafPlz]

Black Friday or otherwise?

I want to put a ton of pics and send to family as Christmas gifts.

Any help is most appreciated.

[TAM63]

I've been looking around as I am getting one for my friend for Christmas. Generally finding the best price on Amazon so far. I don't really have faith in Black Friday sales for this one - they aren't real high ticket items, and so far they seem to be marked up so far in the stores compared to online, if you look at the same model.

I also don't want to wait, as I want to allow myself plenty of time to get the pictures loaded how I want.

I am strongly considering this new one from Kodak - the P725 (for her desk at work, so I want small). It's for my best friend, who's not all that tech savvy, I think she whould appreciate simple. It's $74 on Amazon. I have seen one of the Kodak ones at Sams, and the color was pretty good.

The thing is, the frames say they can show 4000 pictures or some such. But, that is IF you also buy a SD card, USB stick, etc. The frame's memory doesn't hold nearly that much.

So I think I will buy a USB stick at Sams Club, and perhaps an extension cable (found on Ebay) if the stick shows off the side of the frame. I am using a USB stick instead of a card, because it is easier for me to get pictures onto a USB stick.

I have downloaded a free batch resizer from download.com "Faststone Photo Resizer" - I'll make a copy of the pics, and then resize them to maximize space to the frame's resolution (800 x 600).

Other things to consider - there are different aspect ratios. The one I am considering is 4:3 - the same as a digital camera takes. If you get the widescreen 16:9 - you might risk cutting some heads off, as the frame will generally crop the top and bottom of the pictures to display them. (or stretch them - unlikely, or show black bars at the side)

Many of the frames have a random display order. They also display by date - BUT - they generally use the date the photo was taken, recorded by the camera. Often, that isn't available on scanned pics or people have their camera date set wrong. So if the order of display is important you have to be careful. I have downloaded (free from microsoft) Windows Live Photo Gallery which allows modification of the date taken. I truly hope this will work.

Hope that isn't more than you ever wanted to know...

If anyone has any feedback on my ideas, I would appreciate it too. My only real reservation re. the Kodak frame so far is that it is very new, and I can't find any reviews. Fingers crossed...

[TAM63]

Now perhaps changing my plan slightly and just buying a little card reader and a card - if it's as easy to use as a USB stick.

[doingtimeonmyass]

Originally Posted by TAM63

I have downloaded a free batch resizer from download.com "Faststone Photo Resizer" - I'll make a copy of the pics, and then resize them to maximize space to the frame's resolution (800 x 600).

I've become a big fan of the free Google app "Picasa3” which quickly allows you to sort through pictures and export them to another location in whatever resolution you want.

[jryprt]

We have a 8" wide screen & use a sd card I tried to resize them to fit the wide screen it stretched them so I just put them on the sd card as they are & it's dark on the sides but OK.

[TAM63]

I'll take a look at that one too (picasa3) - thanks.

I've never copied pics to an SD card - is it just like copying them to a USB stick or anywhere else? (I want it to be easy for my friend to add more photos)

[brucec]

Originally Posted by NoDecafPlz

Black Friday or otherwise?

I want to put a ton of pics and send to family as Christmas gifts.

Any help is most appreciated.

I got about 6 of them last year and did the same thing, gave out as christmas presents, I found (last year) compusa.com had the best deals, about 45 bucks for the 7" ones, autocropped, etc, could set the slideshow speed for different intervals, it says it only worked with 2gig or less.
compusa also had 2 gig usb drives for 9 bucks. i got six of them also.
so i went by moms and copied all her pictures off, and copied all my pictures, came to 2.5 gigs, so i removed some of the bullshit ones and setup a directory on my hard drive, and then just did a copy of that directory to each usb drive and gave them out as a set.

only thing i didn't like was every time you turned it off and then back on, it displayed the pics in the same order everything, and of course with 4k files you never end up seeing the last ones. what i found works is set it to change pictures every hour (instead of 4sec, 10sec or 2 mins) and just leave it run all the time. and of course pull pull the usb drive out and update pics as you want.

good luck
bruce

[jryprt]

Originally Posted by TAM63

I'll take a look at that one too (picasa3) - thanks.

I've never copied pics to an SD card - is it just like copying them to a USB stick or anywhere else? (I want it to be easy for my friend to add more photos)

with a SD card you need to make a folder with the pics. in the folder if you try to put just your pics. on the SD card it will tell you not enough memory, something about only can hold so many files or folders.
But copy it is just the same as usb drive.

[TAM63]

Sorry, I got a bit confused "in the folder if you try to put just your pics" ???

Or did you mean if you try to put the pics right on the card, without putting them inside a folder?

Thanks you for the help

[jryprt]

Originally Posted by TAM63

Sorry, I got a bit confused "in the folder if you try to put just your pics" ???

Or did you mean if you try to put the pics right on the card, without putting them inside a folder?

Thanks you for the help

Just make a new folder on your desktop put your pics. in the folder then copy the folder to the SD card