What's New At The Quill.

by Dessa Rodeffer

Quill Editor/Publisher

17 February 1999

    My last week's editorial picture got quite a few laughs from readers and I had several tell me they knew how to keep the mice out of the basement now.
     I thought the photo went quite well with the title, "Beware Of The Wolves, Valentines."
     Actually, I had taken the photo with our new digital camera which has been responsible for most of the photos at The Quill since the snow pictures I took with it in January.
     I looked in the mirror, held the camera at arms length, and snapped a photo of myself. That's why it turned out so strange.
     Not only was I glancing from the side, but because the photo was taken through a mirror, everything was in reverse.
     The new digital camera has finally improved enough that we felt it would save us time and money in film processing, as well as money in film.
     All the photos are saved on a 40 mg. disk. I can take up to 62 fine quality photos at one time, download them on the computer, clear off the disk and then reload the disk into the camera and start all over again.
     The photos are not only good enough for newspaper publication, but also for sending photos by e-mail to family and friends.
     What is nice about this Kodak 260 Digital camera, is that I can take pictures at anytime and place them right into the newspaper space. I can also clear up some problems in a picture by using my Photo Shop program. I can remove unsightly objects not wanted in the picture, or switch the photo to black and white, or lighten or darken or even sharpen it up.
     The digital camera performs best at close-up range and on still shots, but I have been taking basketball pictures with it and have been able to get the action shots you have been seeing in the Quill for the past month.
     The computer age has changed a lot of things at The Quill for the better, but it takes a constant effort to keep up-to-date in all the new technology.
     It is nice to know that there are now digital cameras at Southern, Union, and La Harpe. Some produce better quality photographs than others because of the higher resolution.
     Schools can now send us photos my email and we can use them if they have been sent in a way we can open them..... for instance, as a JPEG or TIFF file.
     Another nice option about our new digital is, it will let you delete a photo right away (or later) if you don't like it.
     Another purchase we made before Christmas was a new iMac computer which is faster than our other computers. Already, a newer, faster iMac has come out, and surprising enough, prices are slowly dropping.
     As for my picture, it might change more often than it has in the past, so don't be surprised if I come up with some unusual looks.
     It just might be the thing we need to keep our readers on their toes, or the mice out of the basement.