As you can see, the Axim's display is much larger and much clearer, giving you a very good view of how your camera's image will look. By the way, if you want to see exactly how a 640x480 image looks, click the thumbnail above. The image that's displayed as the full-sized image is exactly 640x480 pixels.

My personal digital camera is the Canon Digital Rebel, an SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera. SLRs are much more suitable for the sorts of professional work I need to do, and the above picture was taken with my Rebel. However, I also wanted to show you how the screen of my Rebel compares to the Axim's screen, as shown in Figure B. Obviously, I couldn't do this using the Rebel, so I made use of the previously mentioned Exilim camera.

FIGURE B

The Axim's display is much larger than the Digital Rebel's. Click picture for a larger image.

While Figure B does show the difference in size between the Rebel's display and the Dell Axim X50v's display, it's also a good way to see the difference in macro photography quality between a digital SLR and a normal point and shoot camera. I had to tweak this second image in Photoshop, and yet there's still quite a bit of digital noise on the left side of the image. It's adequate, but if I was going to take a lot of close-up pictures (I do), I'd want my SLR rather than the point and shoot.

Without a doubt, photos look far better when viewed on the Axim X50v's screen than on either camera. This will be universally true for virtually all digital cameras.

Getting the pictures into the Axim X50v
As with every other media format since the beginning of time, different digital cameras use different storage formats. Most of the smaller point and shoot cameras (like the Casio Exilim) use SD cards while many of the larger, digital SLRs (like my Digital Rebel) use the larger Compact Flash cards. Unfortunately, most modern PDAs (including all the current Palm OS models) only support the SD card format. This is a bummer, because if you happen to be using more professional digital photography gear, the typical PDA can't handle your storage cards.

Ah, but the Axim X50v can. One of the most unique features of the Dell Axim X50v is its support of both Compact Flash and SD memory card formats. As you can see in Figure C, the Axim X50v can actually hold both cards at the same time.

FIGURE C

The Dell Axim X50v can read both SD and Compact Flash cards. Click picture for a larger image.

This is indescribably slick. First, because you can stick both card formats into the handheld at once, you can move files from one card to the other. This allows you to, for example, backup your pictures to another flash card, without taking a chance on losing your data. It also provides you with a great deal of versatility when it comes to using multiple cameras (as I had to, for this article's little shoot).

Editing your photos
Imagine you're on the road, just you, your camera, and your Axim X50v. You've taken a few pictures and you've decided to preview them on your Axim. You generally like the images, but you wish you could adjust the contrast on one, the brightness on another, and you'd like to crop a third to see if it's really what you want. For that, you'd need a laptop and a photo editing program, right?