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has a fixed (non-removable) lens like a point and shoot
(Continued from page 4)
camera. My camera takes JPEG (Joint Photographic Ex-
perts Group) photos (.JPG file extension), which is a lossy
(However, before making the leap to Xfinity, take a file compression format and is probably the most popular
look at the ratings for the Xfinity hotspot app that photo image format. It takes MPEG-4 (Moving Picture Ex-
pert Group-4) videos (.MP4 file extension), which is proba-
you must install on your phone to access this ser- bly the most widely-used video compression format. My
vice. For the Android version, almost every recent Samsung Android smartphone takes photos and videos in
rating was 1-star with lots of frustration about us- these same formats. My small off-brand action camera also
takes MP4 videos. All in all, they are pretty standard and
ers’ inability to connect to hotspots and difficulty in universally compatible.
reaching customer service.)

My wife has the fancy (or at least more expensive) hard-
If you have found a good low-cost smartphone ware – a Canon premium DSLR and an iPhone. She has
provider, please share your experiences with your the Canon set to save photos as both JPG and raw (.CR2
fellow members via our Google Group email net- file extension). The raw file format consists of the unpro-
cessed or minimally-processed camera sensor data (“raw”
work. Thanks! data) and is a much larger file. It is the highest quality for-
mat and is the best to use if photo editing will be done. I
Phil copied only her JPG files from our trip, as that’s all I wanted.
Though I didn’t use them, I was impressed that the Win-
dows 10 photo viewer (Microsoft Photos) could view
(Continued from page 1) them.CR2 files she had taken, as I’d never been able to see
them on my Windows 7 laptop.

unfortunately, there are quite a few that are not.
The iPhone proved to be the biggest challenge and the
most incompatible with my computing infrastructure. My first
My wife and I recently went on a one-week driving vaca- difficulty was in getting the photo and video files off of the
tion to a cabin in Idaho. Though we were kind of isolated iPhone and onto my Win10 computer. You can’t just con-
from technology (off the power grid with solar/battery and nect the two devices, and I would not know how to find the
no cell coverage), we brought along a lot of our tech de- files I wanted on the iPhone if I could. Fortunately, I already
vices. These included five image/video-capturing devices: had a solution to this problem. A few years ago I’d pur-
a camera and smartphone each, plus my action cam. chased a SanDisk iXpand 32GB Flash drive, which can act
When we returned, I collected all the photo and video as an intermediary between the Apple and Windows worlds.
files on one USB Flash drive and sorted them chronologi- This is a special Flash drive with both a USB type A con-
cally. This was a bit of a task, as it amounted to 23GB of nector and an Apple Lightning connector. It also contains an
data in over 2000 files. The fact that there were different internal battery; this may be necessary because, unlike
file formats and different hardware platforms involved USB, Lightning peripheral devices can only provide power,
didn’t help. and not receive it. Through the SanDisk app downloaded
from the Apple Store, photo and video files can be located
on the phone and then copied to the Flash drive from the
Being on vacation, my wife and I both took a lot of pho- iPhone, through the Lightning connector. The Flash drive
tos, but I took the majority – over 90% of them. She has can then be plugged into a Windows PC through the USB
fancier equipment but takes fewer shots, often looking interface so that the files from the iPhone can be accessed
mostly at artistry and composition. I have more modest and copied.
equipment, and I’ve always taken lots of photos. I am
concerned about good composition, but also tend to think
of my photography as an augmentation of my memory. I Even with the iPhone files on my Win10 computer, the com-
take a lot of photos and videos of trips and family events patibility battle was not over. The iPhone video files
simply to help me remember them. are .MOV (Apple QuickTime) compressed video files, which
are compatible with Windows. The photo files, however,
are.HEIC extensions, not immediately recognized by Win-
My photos and videos were dows. These are High-Efficiency Image Format files, a new
pretty easy to compile and MPEG format that Apple has adopted. Microsoft did provide
view. I have Panasonic Lu- an ac solution, however. Double-clicking on one of these
mix “bridge” camera; this files on my Win10 PC brought up a message to download
type of camera has the an app from the Microsoft Store. Once I had downloaded
large body and lens of a and installed the HEVC Video Extensions app ($0.99), my
DSLR (Digital Single-Lens computer could view these photos.
Reflex) but with the smaller
sensor (and lower price) of a point and shoot camera (it is
a bridge between the point and shoot and DSLR). It also
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