DIGITAL FILM READER

Res. 9/22/01

(Transferring Digital Film to Your Computer (Lexar)

byTed Peterson
NOTE - This article is for the photographer that has more then one digital camera or would like to be able to input different media into their computer. If you will only need to input one type of chip or media into your computer read "Single Recorder for One Type of Digital Media" on this web site.
Almost every person that has a digital camera would like to be able to transfer their pictures fast from their camera to their computer so that they can either print out the pictures or take more pictures. If you use the serial port of your computer or the Floppy disk adapter you know that it take time. You may have dificulty transferring pictures one at a time, because of the times it takes.
There is a way to get around this. You can use "Digital Film Readers". I will now tell you about one on them, why I think it is the best, and how they work. The one that I am talking about is the Lexar Digital Film Reader #GS-UFD-20SA-TP".
This model is one of the lowest priced one costing from $59.99 to $69.99 depending where you pick it up, and it is the easiest one on the market to use. You should read and save these instructions to avoid having to play with it for a time. The instructions that come with it are incomplete and the instructions you can get from their 800 number are no better. After 3 different calls to them I gave up and worked it out.
This model is made to work with Compact Flash, Smart Media, and PC Cards. As you can see it covers almost all the different cards used in Digital Cameras. It works as fast with one or the others. You will only have to use one reader to cover your and your friends cameras. There are 2 models, one USB and one parallel port.
How it works is this. There is a short program that comes with it which you load on your computer. It will set two new drives on your computer. They will be the highest letters on your computer.
One of the places that the instruction falls down is on how to insert the card. The Smart Media goes in back side on top. The PC Card goes in with the front on top and the Compact Flash only goes in one way. The Smart Media goes in the bottom slot and the other two goes in the top slot. There is one drawback with Smart Media and that is that it will not work with any Smart Media chip over 32 meg. I have had 2 64 meg ones ant it would not read them. You will have to use 8,16 or 32 meg copies. With the price of 32 megs down to under $20.00 each it works OK. I have 4 of them.
After inserting the card in your adapter. Go to your computer and click on MY Computer. Go to the two additional drives and first click on one and see if it has the listing. If not go to the other and you will see a listing of all the pictures (probably in "jpg" format). At that point you can drag and drop one or all the files over to your hard drive or disk. You can copy or move depending on how you do it. If you move the files your camera card will be clear so that you can then take new pictures. If you copy them you will have to reformat the card after transfering them. You can click on them and go to file and delete them.
Using this reader I can unload 31 one meg pictures in less then 2 minutes.
I hope that this clears up how Ditigal Images Readers works. . Good Luck
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