HP Calculator Applications in the Workplace

[DavidM]

I started college in the late 70s with thoughts of getting an electrical engineering degree, and got my first hp (33C) to help me on the journey. I think it was the second semester of my first year when I took an elective computer science class that my plans started to change, and I ultimately switched to that program instead.

I've always managed to use a variety of calculator-based programs for work over the years, mostly small utility routines that had something specific to do with the place I was working at the time. Truthfully, though, the most I've ever used my calculator in a working capacity was a few years ago when I was doing some product photography for an international "natural products" firm. The shots I did were mostly for catalogs/brochures and a few point-of-sale applications. Consistency and color accuracy are very, very important for those types of shots.

So how did a calculator come into play? I used a handful of very specific routines I created that helped in two areas: calculating lighting adjustments, and determining specific eV and gamma adjustments while processing the digital shots. At the heart of several of the routines was a series of polynomials that matched to my specific camera/software combination, and it was actually easier for me to punch in a couple figures and press a menu key on the calc than to switch to another PC application while shooting or editing.

Working with the numbers was usually far simpler than translating the creative and marketing groups' instructions into a final picture.