By Inspiringly
We all have cameras on our mobile phones and tablets these days but taking pictures the good old way is still a widespread practice. You can still find disposable cameras that sell for between $5 and $25 and which are a perfect choice for making pictures at events such a friend’s birthday party or a live concert.
The problem with disposal cameras is not the quality of the pictures you take but the increasing practice to share photos over social media and on personal websites, often using one’s phone as a medium. People are so used to their smart mobile devices that a growing number of users wonder if getting camera pictures on their phone is even possible.
The short answer is “yes” and we’ll show you how to transfer photos from a disposal camera to your phone without much hassle. But first we should define what a “disposable camera” means, as there are two types of cameras for one-time or limited use – digital and film cameras. Let’s start with methods for transferring pictures from a disposable digital camera.
Getting Phone Photos from a Digital Disposable Camera
You can purchase a disposable digital camera for as much as $30 or $40, and in fact you can use it more than once. These cameras operate two ways – your camera will either have internal memory to store photos or it you’ll have an external memory card on which to save your pictures.
Transferring photos from a camera with internal memory is quite easy as it comes with USB interface to connect to a computer or even directly to a smartphone:
- Take a picture
- Connect your camera to a PC or phone using USB cable
- Copy or move the selected pictures.
In this case, you are transferring your photos in the very same way you are transferring other documents to your phone. The only difference is that for some phones you may need to copy the photos to a computer or tablet first and only then transfer them to your phone.
If you are using a disposable camera featuring external memory card only, the steps are quite similar:
- Take a picture (It saves on the memory card)
- Remove the memory card
- Insert it to a PC or phone
- Copy or move the selected pictures from the card.
The downside of this method is that your disposable camera might use a memory card that you cannot connect directly to your phone due to memory cards having different sizes.
What you can do is to first transfer the photos to a computer or tablet and then connect your phone to get the pictures.
Once you have your pictures stored on a computer or tablet, you can connect your phone by either plugging it directly to the computing device or connecting through a Bluetooth connection. If you are using Bluetooth, follow these steps:
- Turn Bluetooth on both devices
- Make Bluetooth on your computing device discoverable
- Allow other Bluetooth devices to connect
- Connect your phone using the Bluetooth connection
- Copy or move the selected pictures.
Evidently, these steps will not work in the case of a disposable camera that works with a film inside. But there are still ways to take pictures on a film and then have your photos on your phone.
Getting Phone Photos from Disposable Camera with Film
If you love taking pictures with a camera that uses film, you will need to put a little more effort in moving your photos to your phone.
Obviously, you should first develop your film to produce negatives or paper photos. Developing your film yourself is an option but it requires specific equipment and skills.
So, we will stick to a scenario where you take your photos and then send your disposable camera with the film (or the film only) to a film processor near you. You can pay them a personal visit, of course, and wait a few minutes for them to process and develop your film, which is required to make the print copies of your photos.
With your print photos in hand, you now need a scanner to make your print copies digital. There are also scanners for negatives but these are professional equipment that is both expensive and requires advanced skills to operate.
What the average user needs is an off-the-shelf multi-functional office machine such as the low-budget copiers available from all established manufacturers. Once you have such a scanner near you, follow these steps:
- Connect your scanner or multi-functional device to a computer
- Follow the instructions to scan your print photos
- Save the pictures on the computer
- Copy or move the selected photos using one of the methods above.
You can actually save the scanned pictures directly on your phone, if it is connected to your computer during the scanning process.
Another method is to take pictures of your print photos using your phone but your end up with lower quality photos if you use this method.
Thus, you will have your photos ready for posting on websites and sharing on social media.
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