Restoration Photos Tip (Camera)

[davepl]

I found something I'm happy with so thought I'd post it as an idea for others. This might be best moved to reviews eventually, but its more about the process than the actual specific products.

In any event, like everyone else, I'm taking a ton of photos as things come apart. I'm doing a frame-off and intend to take every nut and bolt out. So that's a lot of photos.

I bought a Pentax WG-1 "rugged" camera and a 4 gig Eye-Fy card. The Eye-Fi is like a normal SD memory card, but it has WiFi built in so it can transfer things to your computer without having to connect it with a cable or pop the card into a reader. I set it up so that every photo I take with the card is automatically uploaded to my desktop PC into a folded called (something like)

\z\cars\trucks\1970GMC\ReferencePhotos

Since I have a WiFi access point in my shop, what this basically means is that every photo I take winds up being in that folder a moment or two later, no having to remember to go and transfer the photos. You wouldn't think that's a big deal, but at the end of each day I then go through and name the photos... nothing fancy, just "Aux Battery Tray Mounting" as an example.

I think if I just accumulated a couple of hundred photos over a week I'd never get around to organizing them, but that's just me. You could certainly pop the SD card out and do it manually without all the WiFi fanciness, but its helpful for me.

The Pentax WG-1 is no super-deluxe camera, but its got three things that made it my choice for this project:

1) It's rugged, as digital camera go. It's got rubber bumpers and passes the Milspec "drop 1M onto concrete" test. Hopefully I won't verify that. It's also easy to grip with big clumsy hands, not slippery, and small enough to fit into small places.

2) It's waterproof. I don't plan on any underwater photos, but let's face it, you get pretty grimy taking apart a 40 year old truck. So it means I can actually -clean- the grease and grime off the camera. No idea what would happen if sprayed Windex into the buttons of a normal camera, but being waterproof is a bonus.

3) It's got a wide-angle macro lens, which means you can get up close enough to take detailed photos (1 cm, if you like). Most basic digital camera have such as long focal length that if you get too close it gets blurry (bear with me, I'm not a camera guy).

Here's an example...

[terry b]

That is pretty nice. I have been having my photos put on cd. Then put cd in lap top to down load. What did that set you back?

[davepl]

The camera was $199 I think and the eye-fi cards are about $50. Less than a reproduction R59 battery, and I'll need two of those :-)

[Achevytruck]

that is a really great idea and i will remeber this