Get the picture?

Home Office Computing, Jan, 1998 by Charles Pappas

If image is everything, you can have it all with the help of a digital camera.

The latest crop on the market (see this issue's Hardware Buyer's Guide for hands-on reviews of nine top models) lets you snap a shot, instantly load it into your computer, and touch it up with a variety of image editing programs. Once your picture is perfect, just print it on a page or post it online. Then sit back and see how your business develops.

To show you how easily you can incorporate digital photography into your line of work, we zoom in on eight entrepreneurs who've found diverse uses for their now indispensable digital cameras. See for yourself how they've enhanced their company images, increased productivity, improved customer service, and expanded their markets.

PLAYTIME PICS

NAME: Mike Leon, president COMPANY: Venture Games, manufacturer of paintball games LOCATION: Clayton, CA ANNUAL REVENUES: $195,000 (1997 projected) DIGITAL CAMERA: Kodak DC50 WAR IS HELL: Leon first started using his digital camera last January after almost 11 years in business. He uses it to shoot people hard at play at paintball, a game with a simple objective: Run around outdoors tracking down your opponent and splatter the other guy with a washable dye-filled projectile before he splatters you. A POWERFUL MARKETING WEAPON: Originally, Leon thought he'd use his camera to help build Web pages, but he ended up using it for a different purpose: promoting his paintball events. "I take some pictures of paintball players in the field and drop them into Adobe Photoshop to fix them up a bit," he explains. "Then, I save them as electronic files or print them out on a 600dpi printer and photocopy them -- all in half the time it used to take me with a regular camera." Leon gives the pictures away for free to satisfied -- if temporarily tie-dyed -- customers. Some clients turn the photos into screensavers for their PCs; others send them to friends and relatives for a laugh. Does the tactic work? The photos generate a ton of word-of-mouth advertising and Leon guesstimates that about 15 percent of his customers find out about him through the 2,000-plus pictures he's taken. THE FIGHT'S JUST BEGUN: Paintball pictures aren't his only passion. A collector of G.I. Joe paraphernalia, Leon may now branch out into starting an enthusiasts' Web site about the legendary action figure. "I can go to the conventions, take shots of all the many ways people customize him, and put out a Web zine," says Leon. "With this camera, I have just begun to fight for more business."

LOOK AND LEARN

NAMES: Timothy Fallon, president, and Diane Braatz, performance consultant COMPANY: Training Strategies, specialists in job training and performance improvement LOCATION: Kalamazoo, MI REVENUES: $1 million (1997 projected) DIGITAL CAMERA: Ricoh RDC-2 MANUAL LABOR: This nine-person company now uses a digital camera to help create their TrainSmart program manuals. Geared to people in manufacturing jobs, TrainSmart manuals show pictures of highly skilled individuals doing their jobs, movement by precise movement. The images are then compiled into manuals that may run 10 or 20 pages. A BETTER WAY: "In the old days, we used to have to take the photo, develop it, slide it into a sheet protector, and tape it to the page," says Braatz. "We moved to scanning the photos into the computer, but we still had to wait to develop them." Since going digital last June, the company can create the manuals much more quickly. "As soon as we take a photo, we can see in the camera's LCD screen if the shot is good. If not, we reshoot right then and there," she says. Training Strategies has produced 13 manuals with the camera as of September 1997 and may have 10 more out by the end of the year. INSTANT UPDATES: "We do the updates for clients electronically," says Braatz. "That way the pictures and information don't get dated. We send the files by computer and our clients get them immediately -- a far cry from when we would send them a binder of negatives, and they would have to get copies made themselves."

MICKEY MAKEOVERS

NAME: Ron Stark, director COMPANY: S/R Laboratories Animation Art Conservation Center, restorers of damaged celluloid animation art LOCATION: Westlake Village, CA REVENUES: $1 million DIGITAL CAMERA: Minolta RD-175 THE CARTOON HEALER: Stark's work is Mickey Mouse. It's also Donald Duck, the Tasmanian Devil, and Cruelle de Vil. Conducting "search and rescue operations for animation art," as he puts it, Stark carefully restores worn or damaged cels (the transparent celluloid sheets each bit of action is drawn on). Stark photographs the cels in their before and after conditions, so that collectors can appreciate both the fragility and beauty of such classic works as Gertie the Dinosaur, one of the first animated cartoons drawn on rice paper. With the help of his digital camera, Stark can post the result of his toils on his Web site (www.srlabs.com) for animation fans and collectors to see. GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE, SOLD: In addition to using the camera to create a color catalog for the telephone cel auctions he holds twice a year, Stark also posts pictures of previously sold cels on his Web site, which draws about 50 people a day. A bidder for Gertie, in fact, won her for $4,240. A DIGITAL WORKHORSE: "This camera starts doing its pushups early in the morning, "jokes Stark, who counts meeting a nonanimated Lassie among his Hollywood career highpoints. "I've taken thousands of photos with it. Without it, I could barely afford to do my catalog and wouldn't want to do my Web page. It almost makes the scanner obsolete and cuts my work costs and time dramatically."