I guess your file is in a subdir of your root, subdir named 'zoomOutImage'. Or even a file called like that in the root. I remember putting a function call in the upload to string. That function creates a path and filename, using os.join and the filename from the instance. Doing this by head, no example code available right now. But must be able to google this.
Look here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1190697/django-filefield-with-upload-to-determined-at-runtime
And by the way, I totally disagree with your answer, you should NEVER use absolute paths in your settings! See this answer use css in django 1.4 development for how to use the correct settings and refer to your Project PATH
EDIT (after reading your own answer)
Guess you are missing this first step:
this is the path to your settings.py file:
SETTINGS_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
and than this is the path to your project dir: (I Am using buildout, so call it buildout, but it's the root of your project):
BUILDOUT_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(SETTINGS_DIR, '..'))
and from there on you can define everything you want:
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BUILDOUT_DIR, 'var', 'static')
STATIC_URL = '/static_media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BUILDOUT_DIR, 'var', 'media')
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
and in your template file refer to the image like:
<a href="{{MEDIA_URL}}{{ case.zoomOutImage }}"><img src="{{MEDIA_URL}}{{ case.zoomOutImage }}" width="100%"></a>
when your object given to the template is called case
about your question of the urls. you should add this:
if settings.DEBUG:
urlpatterns += patterns('',
(r'', include('staticfiles.urls')),
)
and see the link above to the question about using css, it's the same problem, but there for finding the css files during development. It's all about the static file places.