We have spent the last several moths talking about how to take an image. Don’t worry if you missed any issues because I am planning on coming back to that subject. But for this column, let’s move forward a bit and talk about getting the images from the camera onto your computer. In order for digital photography to be cost effective in a busy dental practice it has to be time efficient. Most dental practices schedule patients by ten minute increments of time. Most hygiene schedules are very busy and most if not all of the time allotted during a hygiene appointment is accounted for. If patients are scheduled this tightly, then the question has to be asked as to how a busy practice can find the time to incorporate digital photography and still stay on schedule. Well, that will take more than one column to answer. But let’s get started. We have already talked about efficient methods of taking the photos in the shortest amount of time. Now let’s talk about getting the photos onto your computer in the shortest amount of time. When an image is transferred from the camera to your computer it goes through a series of devices and file transfer software. Each stop along the way is like a sprinter on a relay team. Each sprinter has to be as fast as possible or the team will be slow. In this column I will talk about how to make each step as fast as possible.
The first step is the camera’s processor. The higher the quality of the camera the camera the fast processor it will have. This means that on average the more expensive SLR digital cameras will process the image to the compact flash card faster than a point and shoot style camera.
It used to be that all you had to concern yourself with compact flash cards was the memory size. Remember when we all thought a 128mb card was awesome? Now there are compact flash cards that can store up to 12 gigs and more. Compact flash cards now come with different read/write speeds. Read/write speeds are how fast information (digital images for example) can be written (placed) to a card and how fast the image can be read (transferred from) from the card to a computer. The speeds are 4X, 8X, 12X, 40X etc. The higher the number the faster the read/write speed. But keep in mind that there is no current standard for read/write speeds. So 8X read/write speed for one brand may be just as fast as a 12X speed for another. My advice is to buy the fastest read/write speed for whatever brand of compact flash card you are buying.
The next stop is the card reader. This is the device that is connected to the computer that the compact flash card is plugged into. There are two speeds of card readers, USB I and USB II. The USB II readers are a lot faster and do not cost very much. They average on the cost of $15-$40 depending on how many types of cards it reads. Most compact flash cards on sale today are type USB II. There are also Fire Wire readers but they are not as fast as USB II. But Fire Wire is faster than USB I.
The next stop is computer port that the compact flash card reader is plugged into. These ports are either type USB I or USB II, just like the readers. USB II ports will read images from a compact flash card a lot faster than USB I. This means the fastest combination for data transfer (take images from the compact flash card and download them onto your computer) is a type USB II compact flash card reader connected to a type USB II port. Most computers on sale today have multiple USB II ports, a fire wire port and maybe USB I ports. If you plug a type USB I compact flash card reader into a type USB II port it will still read the images. But it will read them at the slowest link which is USB I. IF your computers are a few years old and are working fine but have USB I ports you can have these changed to USB II quite easily and inexpensively. This is not the case for laptops however as most ports are built into the computer and cannot be upgraded.
The last stop is the software that you are downloading the images to. This is assuming that you are not simply copying the images to your hard drive. Most editing software have the ability to remember where card readers are and a single mouse click will download the images without having to go searching for the card. But you will have to set this up the first time.
The point of this article is to make your system flow as efficiently as possible. In future problems I will talk about what to do with the images once they are on your computer.