what good is a camera-phone if the pictures are trapped there?

[cellio]

Dear Lazyweb,

My new cell phone comes with a camera. That's not why I bought it (I'm indifferent to cameras), but, well, so long as it's there... But -- how do I get the photos off the phone and to someplace where they can do some good (i.e. my computer)? Asking Google suggests that I buy a cable and some software, assuming I can find some that's compatable with my phone, which so far isn't working out for me.

I know it's possible to post photos to LJ, so I went down that path, but I got blocked on "enter your cell phone's email address in the authorization list" (my cell phone's what? How would I know?), and side-effects of my Google searches suggest that Verizon is going to charge me for that anyway. Is that the case? For those of you who post pictures, what are you doing?

Comments

[geekosaur]

Verizon is horrible about that. Even when phones support ways to get photos off them that don't coat airtime, Verizon disables that functionality. And generally they get the phone manufacturers to make them pre-disabled phones anyway, so they can make sure they can charge airtime to transfer stuff.

Your phone's email address: see http://www.livejournal.com/tools/textmessage.bml?mode=details.

[cellio]

Thanks for the help!

It occurred to me to try to look this up under "calling plans" on their web site, and that took me to a FAQ that says I can email photos for 25 cents a message (plus air time, which doesn't tend to matter). I just tried this and the email came from number@vzwpix.com, which is not the address LJ lists. (But hey, if I can email photos to myself, that's good enough; LJ was the means, not the end, here.)

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

Some phones have SD cards; you can get the pictures off of that (I know my daughter's Audiovox (Verizon) does). But other than that, it's all a trap to get you to get a data plan.

[cellio]

An SD card would have been easy, yes. I didn't know to look for that. It's probably only an option on the phones where the camera is a first-class feature, priced accordingly. Oh well.

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

No, because I wouldn't buy a first class phone for a 12-year old. The audiovox is a "free if you renew" phone.

[cellio]

Oh, good point.

[giddysinger.livejournal.com]

Typically, the memory card slot is included on phones that have a built-in MP3 player in order to allow greater memory. Using the card to transfer pictures is a side benefit.

I must have gotten here too late, because it seems you already figured out how to do this. All major providers (not just Verizon) would like you to send the pictures to your computer via an email. I couldn't really give you the justification for this, other than that's the way it's been since the first camera phones came out 4 years ago.

[jeannegrrl.livejournal.com]

I use my cellphone to email my photos to Flickr which has a setting to auto post pictures to a specified journal.

If you have an account, you can find out your personalized email upload link here: http://www.flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail/ I send my phone pics to the email given to me under the area that says "Upload to blog?"

Hope this helps.

[cellio]

Thanks. I realized that if I can email photos at all, I can send them to myself (and then I can decide separately whether to post them).

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

I text them to an email account.

[cellio]

Thanks. That makes sense.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Many/most phones will let you create a multi-media text message to get the photo off there. Make sure that you won't be charged way too much for those photo transfers.

[cellio]

Thanks. Apparently I can send them for 25 cents per message (plus air time, which I don't care about).

Having spent, probably, two minutes typing in my email address (which is not very long), I do wonder how people get used to sending text from cell phones. Ugh. (Fortunately, I will not need to type in that email address ever again. And anyway, I don't expect to be making a habit of this.)

[grouchyoldcoot.livejournal.com]

Best way to send text from cell phones is to set them to 'T9' mode. I only learned this recently, but it's a huge win. The phone contains a dictionary of words, and when you type keys (one push per key no matter which letter you want) it picks the most likely word which corresponds to the given keys. Sometimes there are a few options, and you can just pick between them using the arrows key.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I spent a year thumbing URL into phones at a job. You get quite fast at it, but it is an acquired skill.

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

I got the cable. It wasn't the genuine Nokia cable, but an after-market one that was about 1/3 the price and did the same job. The software was one that came with Linux, Kamera I think it's called, although there are other bits of software that can do it. Most phones have a USB cable that can plug into a PC, and when it does that the phone will ask you whether you want to use it in "data storage mode". If you say yes to that then the phone works like a USB disk, you can just use your favourite file manager to drag and drop the photos off the phone onto whatever directory on your PC you want them on.

[cellio]

Cool! Thanks.

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

I checked the specs but I can't tell if your phone uses Bluetooth. With my new phone (old one had no camera) I turn on the Bluetooth on it and my laptop, then just grab the photos off of the phone. How you do that with a Windows machine, I don't know.
Sorry, this hasn't ended up being particularly informative, has it? But if it works for you, it'll be free instead of a text message.

[cellio]

No Bluetooth, but thanks for the clue! (The guy was trying to sell me a Bluetooth phone so I could talk more conveniently; I said a headset is fine and I couldn't see myself wearing that thing on my ear all the time.)

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to provide another data point as somebody who uses Bluetooth to transmit photos from cell phone to computer. At this point, I wouldn't want to go back to not having Bluetooth (or equivalent functionality)!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I'm able to email my photos to my email account, download them from there into my computer, then upload them to LJ's Scrapbook.