Ten Tips for Using a Camera Phone to Scrapbook

(ARA) - This holiday season, don’t worry about missing those everyday moments that add more of a personal touch to your scrapbook. Now you can worry about one less thing when you’re juggling bags and kids in the hustle and bustle of shopping and going to parties. Your camera phone will make it easier than ever to capture those precious moments for your holiday scrapbooks.

Camera Phones enable scrapbookers to snap impromptu photos and conveniently print them on their home printers or at local retailers, providing a unique convenience since most people already have their mobile phones with them wherever they go. So it’s easy for scrapbookers to use their camera phone to capture everyday moments that otherwise might have been missed.

“Being able to take photos at any time is especially important to scrapbook artists - we like to take more photos than the average person,” said Renee Bernhard, owner of Simply Cardstock , a monthly scrapbooking kit club. “Camera phones enable us to capture everyday events that we weren’t planning on photographing, which helps diversify and add interest to our scrapbook content.”

According to the National Survey of Scrapbooking in America (2004), sponsored by Creating Keepsakes magazine and Craftrends magazine, the scrapbooking industry is a $2.5 billion business. A whopping 55 percent of scrapbookers consider themselves addicts, 43 percent employ a variety of methods to create their personalized memory books and more than 73 percent own digital cameras. Now with camera phones, scrapbookers have all their digital technology needs in one device.

Here are Bernhard’s top 10 tips for using a camera phone to scrapbook:

1. Familiarize yourself with your camera phone and all its features. Bernhard uses the Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Phone MM-5600 by SANYO with a 1.3 megapixel lens, which takes great photos and is particularly easy to navigate.

2. Snap pictures wherever you go - images of the snow, the holiday party you forgot to bring your camera to, or carolers showing up at your door one night can add a personalized touch to an album.

3. Save or upload your picture before taking your next shot so you don’t lose one of your favorites.

4. If you plan to take a lot of pictures with your camera phone, conserve the battery life by shutting off the backlighting and refrain from using multimedia features.

5. Experiment with different lighting options. Photos taken outdoors or in natural lighting tend to turn out best.

6. Use the macro setting for close-up shots.

7. Print photos in the size that is appropriate for the lens quality. For example, if your camera phone has a VGA lens, you can make 2 x 2 prints for greeting cards, photo jewelry and mini albums. If you’re using the Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Phone MM-A800 by Samsung with a 2 megapixel lens, you can make up to 5 x 7 prints for your standard-size albums.

8. Take advantage of online storage options so you have access to your photos for future scrapbooking projects. Sprint customers using Picture Mail can manage online albums at www.sprint.com/picturemail, where they can store, edit and enhance photos, and send them to any of the 2,700 participating retailers for printing.

9. E-mail your photos to your home computer or online album before printing so you can use photo-editing software to add dramatic effects or crop your camera phone images for unique scrapbooking layouts.

10. Know your print-at-home options - some mobile phones come with removable memory cards and USB cables, making it easy to print on your home printer.

“While some scrapbooks document the bigger events in life — weddings, retirements, births — there is something very special about scrapbooking the little things we do each day,” Bernhard said.

In fact, the national survey indicates that the themes most regularly featured in scrapbooks are family life at 62 percent, followed by birthdays (47 percent), holidays (44 percent), vacations (42 percent), babies (35 percent), friends (29 percent) and seasons (28 percent).

“I never would have imagined that this technology would so complement my hobby,” said Lori Planco of Wellington, Fla., an avid scrapbooker for several years. “I’ve used my camera phone to capture some wonderful, candid images of my children at soccer practice to use in my scrapbooks to preserve these memories forever.”

Courtesy of ARA Content

NEW SAMSUNG BEHOLD T919 3G PHONE/5MP CAMERA

NEW ALLTEL PALM TREO 650 PDA CAMERA SMART CELL PHONE

LG VX9800 VERIZON VCAST MP3 BLUETOOTH CAMERA CELL PHONE

LG VX9800 VERIZON VCAST MP3 BLUETOOTH CAMERA CELL PHONE

SPRINT SAMSUNG SPH-A640 BLUETOOTH CAMERA CELL PHONE

LG AX275 275 ALLTEL Silver Cell Camera Phone NoContract

TELUS Mobility Nokia 6265i Slider Cell Phone 2MP Camera

NEW RIM BLACKBERRY PEARL 8130 VERIZON CAMERA PDA PHONE

NEW ALLTEL PALM TREO 650 PDA CAMERA SMART CELL PHONE

NEW PALM TREO 700p SPRINT PDA CAMERA SMART CELL PHONE