Digi-Frame Model DF-560 - Digital Picture Frame

You have a digital camera. You take pictures. Now what?
The majority of us transfer them to our computers and e-mail them to friends, post them on web sites, or print them on not-so-photo-quality printers and paper. Then to view them, you have to either start your computer, log on to the net, or flip through lame printouts.

Enter the Digital Picture Frame
Here's the deal. You take your pictures on your digital camera. Pop out the memory cartridge and plug it into the digital picture frame sitting on your desk. Immediately you are viewing your entire collection of photos on a high-quality LCD screen. You can manually flip through them, or have them automatically advance in a customized slideshow with fancy transitions.

The digital picture frame is the next logical step in digital photography. Face it, if you want high quality prints, use a film camera. The Digi-Frame picture frame is one of the best of breed in a line of these new innovations. The screen is high quality, backlit and measures 5.6" diagonal. It comes with 3 different, snap-on, frames in wood grain, brushed aluminum, and gel blue. Others are also available. It is powered via an included A/C power supply. Also included is a serial cable and software to transfer pictures to and from a computer.

Thanks for the Memories (not)
The only thing not included is a memory card to hold the pictures. Presumably, you would use the one in your camera. However, at the price of this frame, they should have included at least a small capacity card. The frame can accept both a CompactFlash and SmartMedia card at the same time. The number of pictures is limited only by the size of your memory cards.

Features
Once you have inserted your memory card with pictures and turn the unit on, you are really ready to go. There is a brightness control, forward, reverse buttons, and a control wheel for menus and selections.

When I first took the frame out of the box, I heard a slight rattle that I thought was a loose part. It turns out that it is an orientation detector which allows you to situate the frame in either a portrait or landscape orientation. The frame detects the position and rotates the images accordingly. The on-screen menu system also allows you to rotate pictures that you may have taken sideways with your camera.

Slideshows can be customized to include selected pictures and transition effects including fades, wipes, mosaic and others. You can set the order and duration pictures are displayed.

Bottom Line
There are other frames out there that you plug in to a phone line and the frame must dial-in and download the images that you have uploaded. The Digi-Frame is costly, but worth it. It is self-contained, high quality, easy to use, and very impressive. I have it on my desk at work. On the weekends I just take my memory cartridge and add pictures to it with my weekend activities. If you have a digital camera with a memory card, get a Digi-Frame.