Megan,

The March 1995 issue of Digital Imaging Magazine has an article written by
Peter Siegal of the American Museum of Natural History.  He reviewed several
digital cameras and gives very specific information on their ability to
capture details and color from several types of artifacts.  The cameras he
reviewed are the professional quality cameras.  I believe that the least
expensive camera reviewed cost $6,000+

You could probably contact him directly or the magazine is published by
Telecom Library Inc. (800) 999-0345  Volume 4, Number 3, March 1995.

I recently finished a project where images and the information from the
collections database were made available to the public via touch screen
computer system.  An all-volunteer force was used to photograph over 2,400
objects in the exhibition.  A Kodak DC-50 was used.  There was no money in the
budget for a $10,000 camera.  If you are shooting pictures to be displayed on
a computer monitor, one of the retail cameras might work well as you are only
shooting for 72DPI.

You had specifically asked for a camera that would download directly into a
database "without the annoying process of scanning and downloading."  Do you
remember what type of database?  A specific database program might have the
function to interface to a camera.  Most of the cameras I have heard of
download the images via software supplied by the camera manufacturer onto the
hard drive.  You could then just go into your database program and load them.
Even if your database allows direct downloads, you would still have to set up
the database and specify which field contains the picture.

In my experience with Access, I have found that if you make images part of the
database, you will loading the db and searching it to a crawl.  You are better
off placing the location of the image file in the db (c:\images\image01.bmp).

There are several companies that write software specifically for collections
databases.  You may wish to contact them and see if their software can
download directly from a digital camera.  If they haven't done that yet, they
should get started.  Kodak provides a set of developers tools for programmers
which allows them to write software which can talk to their cameras and I
imagine that many of the other camera companies offer this service as well.
The Kodak Web site is www.kodak.com.  You could e-mail them with your question
as well.

Of couse, it goes without saying that I would love to develop your database
for you.  You could have the information including pictures on workstations
for your staff as wall as touch screen kiosks for your visitors to use to
obtain detailed information on objects in your collection.

Mark C. Vang
Freya Ventures
2100 Mediterranean Ave. Suite 15
Virginia Beach, VA 23451
(757) 340-0099
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* Interactive touch-screen exhibit computer systems and software. *