Advantages and Drawbacks of Digital Cameras

by: Jeremy Maddock

Whether you’re professional photographer or a tourist looking to record a few good memories, the first step to great photographs is a finding a decent camera.

One of the first decisions you need to make is whether to go with a quick and convenient digital camera, or stick with trusty old film.

The main benefit of going digital include the ability to see pictures instantly on an LCD screen, saving the ones you like and erasing the ones you don’t. Another advantage is the versatility of being able to edit and perfect your photos on a computer, using a program like PhotoShop.

There are also immense economic advantages to using a digital camera. Being able to review each picture you take, and print only the ones you really like saves a lot of money that would have gone into buying film and developing poor-quality pictures.

Despite these tempting benefits, however, there is still a case for sticking with good old fashioned film photography.

The image resolution, for example, is generally better with a cheap traditional camera than a mid-range digital camera. In order to achieve true film-quality resolution on a digital camera, one must pay several hundred dollars for a 7+ megapixel device.

Another advantage of film is its distance from the world of computing technology; even a person who is totally computer-illiterate should be able to use a traditional camera to its full potential with no problems whatsoever. Furthermore, many photographers prefer the simple challenge of taking a good picture on film to the much less artistic process of “cheating,” and editing pictures on a computer.

Overall, the right type of camera depends almost entirely upon the photographer. Each person must choose for themselves which kind of photography they like better.

Another option, of course, is to buy both digital and film cameras, and alternate depending on situation. This is often the best choice for a serious photographer who can afford the additional expense.

About The Author

Jeremy Maddock is a well-known technology blogger, and owner of http://www.camerareviews.ca

Digital SLR Camera versus a Compact Digital Camera

by: Virginia Wong

Digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras are excellent cameras that produce clearer, sharper and more colourful images than most point and shoot digital cameras available. With prices falling rapidly, they are now more affordable then ever. With the price gap between an entry model digital SLR camera and the most expensive compact digital camera narrowing; the question is… do I spend the extra money and get a Digital SLR camera? or save a few hundred dollars and purchase the best digital compact camera.

Well, it really depends on your budget; however if you do spend the extra money, here's what you get:

In addition to the price falls in the Digital SLR models, the performance on these cameras has increased year on year with the latest Digital SLR cameras being quicker and faster than ever before. They have improved to such an extent that power up or start-up time is near instantaneous with virtually no lag time. “Lag time is the time between you pressing the shutter release button and the camera actually taking the shot”. This delay can vary quite a bit between different camera models and it is one of the biggest drawbacks compared to a compact digital camera. The latest digital SLR cameras have virtually no lag times and react in the same way as conventional film cameras, even in burst mode. Compact digital cameras are catching up; however the difference is still significant. A lag time of ~0.5 seconds can result in you missing the heartbeat of the moment and hence that potential great picture.

Digital SLR camera also has a larger sensor versus a smaller sensor in a compact digital camera.
This equates to higher sensitivity and less noise and results in the camera taking clearer pictures in low light. (They also have better autofocus speed in low light as well). A measure of sensitivity in a digital camera is ISO and a typical ISO range for a Digital SLR camera varies from ISO 100 – 1600 with the latter being more sensitive. The ISO range for a compact digital camera varies from ISO 50 – 400. In summary, the higher the ISO rating, the greater the sensitivity and the better the photo can be taken in low light.

The Digital SLR cameras have a much longer battery life due to the limited use of the LCD screen. Please note, that as the LCD screen is only used for viewing the image, the battery life of a digital SLR can allow up to 2000 shots per charge in some cameras compared to 500 for a good point and shoot digital camera.

Digital SLR cameras also allow you to interchange lens such as adding a zoom or macro lens when required.

On the negative side of a Digital SLR camera; they are usually larger and heavier than compact digital cameras, the image cannot be previewed on the LCD screen prior taking the picture. If you really require the image to be viewed on the LCD prior to taking the picture, there are third party manufacturers that produce LCD screens that attaches to the viewfinder and allow the scene to be view just like a compact digital camera. The other drawback is the inability to take videos and finally, lenses are expensive with the majority costing more than the camera itself.

Although compact digital cameras cannot compete on features with a Digital SLR camera, they are great value, have the ability to take videos and are portable. If you have decided to purchase a Digital SLR camera I recommend you visit other websites which has Information on Digital Camera and compare the features. If you are still undecided, purchase both.

About The Author
Virginia Wong is an IT consultant and has a passion for digital photography. Her research into digital camera resulted in the development of her own digital camera website. http://infodigitalcamera.com/. This article is free to use, distribute and copy as long as the link remains in place.

5 Things You Can Do With Flash Memory

by: Lynn Chan

Got flash memory cards? They aren’t only for your digital camera. Probably the coolest yet overlooked ways to use your flash memory card is as floppy drive replacement. Think about it, a flash memory card is really a form of storage disk.

Most notebook computers today don’t come with a floppy drive anymore. I’ve personally been in situations where I needed to share a file with someone and haven’t been able to because they handed me a floppy disk.

If you already own a card or a digital camera, chances are you already have the necessary equipment to read the card and transfer files to and from them. If you don’t it’s easy. Get yourself a flash memory card reader – they are so inexpensive these days you can even pick one up free after rebate if you watch the deals. Hookup it up to your computer and pop in the card. It will show up on your computer as a new drive. When you’re ready to save data to it, just drag and drop. It’s no different than a regular floppy or hard drive. Once you see in this light there is a whole bunch of things you can use your flash memory card for and here are 5 ideas for you.

1. Use as a greeting card. Hey there’s always an occasion around the corner. If you’re already thinking of sending a CD greeting card – use your flash memory card instead. With the large storage sizes you can afford to have multimedia in your ecards too and when that person gets tired of it, the card itself is a gift for their computing convenience. As if that wasn’t enough, you can probably get by with less postage too.

2. Use as media storage. One of the best things about flash memory cards is how much its small physical size can pack in. With memory sizes up to several Gigabytes, you could use it to store your media like video clips, picture clips, audio files and just about any downloadable content. Its small size also makes it highly portable without taking up valuable space on your notebook computer hard drive.

3. Sharing files or transferring files from one computer to another. If you need to do this often, here’s a quick tip. Carry with you a USB card reader. Many of them are very compact and no heavier than your cell phone. Doing this has advantages over carrying a flash memory drive. Flash memory cards are smaller and a tiny catalog of cards can offer you much more memory than a flash drive. Better carry two things than a bunch of drives.

4. Build yourself an ebook library. Are you a book worm? One tiny flash memory card can store a lot of ebooks since most text based files are smaller than media files. You can store whole libraries of ebooks in various topics either on one card or dedicate one for each topic you are interested in. Again, they are easy to share and very portable – you’ll never run out of reading material again even when on the road.

5. Run small software from it. Yes, there are tiny software that don’t need to be installed and can run from the card itself. This is particularly helpful when you’re using someone else’s computer. Now you can carry your software with you too.

Now that you know – gather up those flash memory cards and start using them. Just because your new camera isn’t compatible with it doesn’t mean you should let it go to waste and the best part is, you won’t have to worry about obsolete cards anymore.

About The Author
Lynn Chan simplifies computing and computer care issues for new notebook computer owners. Start protecting your investment, with a free tutorial available at http://www.notebook-computer-infocenter.com/5days-to-a-healthier-notebook.html.

Create Your Own Digital Library

by: Jelaine Macaraeg

The moment you got your first digital camera, your view of the world has totally changed. You always seem to see something beautiful or artistic in your surroundings, worthy of being captured in pixels. You experiment quite a lot and keep on loading your pictures in your computer. Until one day, you thought of working on a project. You’re sure you have the kind of picture you need – you knew you have it somewhere in your hard disk… in one of those folders… You can’t run a search for it though because you pretty much use generic filenames like Flower1, Flower2, Flower 3 and so on. Uh-oh! Looks like it’s high time for you to organize your digital photos!

Microsoft has something that can help you do that. It’s called the Microsoft Digital Image Suite 9, which actually consists of two imaging applications – MS Digital Image Library 9, which serves as your database of digital images and MS Digital Image Pro 9, which is a photo manipulation program.

A lot of people may like it’s familiar Explorer-like interface – the left pane being the folder pane, while the right side of the window is the image browser, showing thumbnails of your images.
The good thing about Digital Image Library 9 is that you wouldn’t have to transfer your photos from their current location. Instead, it scans your hard disk and locates folders it considers photo folders, afterwhich you may deselect folders that are not appropriate. The images may then be sorted according to date or keywords. From here, you may double-click on a photo to bring it up in a full-screen view and use the basic controls for zoom, fit to screen, rotate and print. You may also select multiple photos for slideshow, the speed of which range from 1 second to 1 minute.

Oftentimes, pictures taken with a digital camera contains metadata. These are information about the photo, such as shutter speed and the date and time the photo was taken. Digital Image Library 9 allows you to add these metadata with captions and keywords to easily categorize and later on identify images. Another nifty feature of this application is that it even allows you to rate your photos! From the preview pane, simply click on how many stars, the highest being five, you wish to assign each photo.

If you wish to do some retouches on an image, simply click the edit button and Digital Image Pro 9 launches and opens the selected image. This application has a lot of quick-fix features such as the Red Eye tool and the Smart Erase, which caters to novice retouchers and home users who don’t want anything complicated.

Being the all-in-one application that it is, Microsoft Digital Image Suite 9 comes with tons of mats, frames and templates for creating professional photo projects such as scrapbooks, photo albums, calendars and postcards. You may also get Microsoft Photo Story, an add-on to the suite that lets you turn your photos into video. Simply choose which photos to include then add some narration if you have a microphone and add music and zooming effects.

About The Author
Jelaine Macaraeg
I like to read anything that contains words in the old English form, though I can’t understand it. You know, the King James Version of the Bible with words like thou, thy, thine, wilst, etc. The words used are different. The construction of the sentence is different, too, which makes sentences sound artistic. I also like gothic metal, a music genre, because most of the lyrics contain such words. It is not only the words that fascinate me; it’s the hidden meaning it contains. It’s like an abstract painting; you don’t get the real picture until you see through it.
For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.ucreative.com
artciles@ucreative.com

Catch the Holiday Spirit with Digital Cameras

by: Viojieley Gurroba

It’s the time of the year when your family and friends spend their time together at home. It’s also the best time to get memories in print. But oftentimes people are frustrated to find out that the pictures they have taken don’t look too good when they get printed. So the best way you could perhaps do to minimize excessive outflow of money and effort is by using digital cameras.

Digital photography has opened up a lot of new and valuable opportunities to all. Here are a few reasons for you to go digital. First, you can always make sure that the shot you took is the one you like before leaving the scene and if it does not meet your expectation, you can always delete it and take another shot. Second, digital cameras allow you to easily and quickly retrieve images. You also have the option of having your photos printed at home at your own convenience. Digital cameras can also mount filters, auxiliary lenses and polarizers allowing you to meet any photographic challenge you might come across with.

These are just a few reasons to make you cross over the fence to digital photography. When you do decide to use digital camera there are a few things to consider in choosing the right one as there are a lot of choices when it comes to digital camera today. Most of these cameras only differ in use and price. If you are thinking of only using your camera to exchange snapshots with your friends, you do not need to spend a lot for the camera. Don’t forget to ask the seller if the camera you are buying can accept external power supply. Remember that cameras use power fast so you do not want to spend most of your time buying batteries and miss the opportunity of getting the shot that you want.

Buying your digital camera need not be a difficult task. To make things simple, just try to remember these factors when shopping for your camera – number of megapixels, user controls, battery life, zoom lens and exposure control. So get started with your shopping for the right digital camera today. After all, you would not want to miss grandpa crying beside the Christmas tree because of the gift you gave him or miss little Annie getting frantic because she finally got the Barbie doll she likes. Happy Holidays everyone!

About The Author
Viojieley Gurrobat loves readings books in her spare time. She writes stories and poems about anything under the sun. For comments and suggestions kindly visit http://www.digitalroom.com/Digital-Printing.html

Digital Cameras: Do You Know Your Megapixels?

by: Frederic Madore

Until recently, were you to ask someone if they knew how to operate a digital camera, they would react as though you had grown another head. A digital camera? Whoever heard of such a thing. Now, in less than 5 years, they’re the only kind of camera to buy. With digital photography there’s no need for endless rolls of film. You just focus, click, and presto, a digital image. Don’t like the picture you just took? That’s no problem, either. You can simply delete the image.

Now, with all this available technology, why should we ever worry about pictures again? Well, the plain truth of the matter is this, if you don’t have a computer, it’s still expensive and quite time consuming to download your pictures at the local Wal-mart (or Wal-greens), instruct the computer there to copy the pictures to a disk, and then pay for the actual printing. See, it’s at this point that most consumers realize it’s just downright easier to buy an old fashioned, film loaded, camera.

Let’s assume, however, that you do have a computer, and you do want to purchase a digital camera. What kind of camera do you need? Where do you begin to check out your options and see how they relate to your needs? Well, the first part of the process would be to visit an electronics store in your area. The stores that specialize in electronics will generally have a sales person on hand that can explain all the available features of a digital camera and help you decide what you need and what you can live without.

One of the big questions concerns the “megapixel” feature of the camera. The larger the megapixel number, the better the quality of the picture. You see, megapixel determines how the camera reads color combinations in order to produce the best photo possible. Now this might be a matter of great concern if you are a professional photographer, but to the everyday consumer, three or four mega pixel strength is all you need.

Next you’ll want to examine what types of subjects you will photograph and under what kind of conditions. Do you need a camera that makes pictures of moving objects? Are you making your pictures at night, or during daylight hours? Up close and personal, or over on the next block? All of these questions are valid and will affect the quality of the picture you get if not correctly addressed.

There is one final option that you might want to check: some of the digital cameras also do video. The cameras tape the audio and video of the moment as well, or better, than some of your larger video cameras, just not as expensively.

Last but not least, you need to understand your storage options, and determine how much storage space you need. Going to the family reunion, room for maybe 10 pictures will be enough; But now the class reunion, well you’re going to need room for at least 500 photos. Alright, that brings this topic to a close and moves us on to the subject of “memory stix”…….
About The Author

Frederic Madore is the founder of the http://digital-camera-information.info website. Get the best information about Digital Cameras.
(c)Copywrith 2005

Find the Best Digital Camera for Your Needs and Maximum Enjoyment

by: Dave Saunders

Digital Cameras have become a common site wherever you go. If you're getting ready to purchase your first digital camera, or maybe you're looking to replace one you already have, it is best to familiarize yourself with the knowledge of what makes one digital camera different from another and choose the one that is right for you. In this article we'll cover one of the most significant factors in picture quality. This is the “digital film.”

Just like with a film camera, the digital camera has a lens which brings light into focus on a bed of light sensitive material. In the digital camera, that light sensitive material is a circuit bed called a “CCD.” The CCD plays the same role as film in a film camera and the lens allows light to fall onto the CCD which is then converted into a digital image. The quality of the lens can make a significant difference in the clarity of that image. Very cheap digital cameras may even use a piece of plastic as the lens, which will usually have an uneven surface and light transmission. This will be noticeable in the picture but may not be an issue for a security camera or a web cam. Better quality digital cameras will have ground-glass lens and high-end digital cameras will even have interchangeable lenses as do high-end film cameras. The lens still plays the important role of bringing light clearly to the CCD surface for a distortion free picture.

A CCD also provides an interesting advantage to the digital camera. It is possible to automatically adjust light sensitivity to improve contrast, shoot in dim light, or even take black and white, sepia or infrared and ultraviolet light pictures with the touch of a button. Because any of these images are stored as the same data on the memory card, a digital camera can offer unsurpassed versatility without the need to change film types. Not all digital cameras have these features built in, but they are options you may see in some cameras. While the possibilities are cool, ask yourself if you that is a feature you need in a digital camera.

With digital cameras, CCD is a grid of light sensitive points which capture the image for conversion into a digital image. The number of points on the CCD is measured in terms of “mega pixels.” The mega pixel rating is a completely new bit of terminology and is unique to the digital camera. The mega pixel rating is a measure of the resolution of the camera, or its ability to store details of am image. For example, a digital camera with a maximum resolution of 1280 by 768 pixels (dots) comes out to a total of 983,040 pixels with which to describe the digital image. As each mega pixel represents one million pixels, we can see this isn't even one mega pixel. Some digital cameras have mega pixel ratings at 5.1 and even 7.1 mega pixels. What does this mean to you? The more pixels the more detail stored. If the image is going to be viewed on a screen or a TV, this isn't very meaningful because video displays have resolutions which are usually well below one mega pixel. However, when printing on a high quality photo printer, the difference between a 3 mega pixel digital camera and a 5 mega pixel digital camera can be very obvious.

Some people will try to evaluate a mega pixel rating by how large a print can be made from the digital camera's image. The truth is that any digital image can be printed to any size. The real issue is what it looks like. Most people print their film to 4x6 prints and many are now doing the same with their digital cameras. Ask to see printed samples of pictures which are like the type you would normally take and compare the same prints between different cameras. Many stores will try to dazzle you with colorful still life images of piles of multi-colored fruits and hot air balloons. Do you take pictures like that? Probably not, so perhaps they're not the best images to be scrutinizing. If you take pictures of friends standing around, use each camera to take pictures of people standing around. Then use a demonstration printer at the store to make prints and look at the results. Do you see little dots in the middle of solid colors? Does the image look like it was taken with a poor quality film camera? Don't seek out the digital camera that happens to take perfect pictures in a perfect setting, contrived by the marketing department of the digital camera's manufacturer. Look for the digital camera that takes pictures you like in the settings in which you most commonly find yourself.

Another issue to consider is that some digital cameras are designed for “point and click” use while other cameras are designed with lots of settings which must be manipulated for optimal results. In my personal experience, I have found that Kodak makes digital cameras which are ideally suited for simple “point and click” use and consistently take great looking pictures in a wide variety of settings. I have also personally found that digital cameras from Nikon work best when you set them to “manual” and do not rely on the automatic settings. This seems to be true of their film cameras as well. Does this make one digital camera better than another? Only if one fits your needs and skills, and the other does not.

There are many magazines available on digital cameras today. Most recognize these differences in digital camera quality, based on needs and intended use of the owner. Before buying your new digital camera, pick up a few of these magazines and familiarize yourself with the latest reviews. Remember that the pros and cons are still written “through the lens” of the reviewer. If you see a negative about a digital camera that you otherwise like, ask yourself if that negative is meaningful to your needs. Next ask yourself if that negative might be meaningful to your needs as you become more experienced. If the answer is yes, ask yourself if you would still be using that camera as a more experienced photographer in the future or would you perhaps sell it and buy an entirely new digital camera? It's unlikely that the digital camera you buy today is going to be the only one you'll ever have. Buy the digital camera that most reasonably meets your needs and how you normally plan to take pictures.

Memory cards and battery life are also consideration factors which will be covered in other articles. For now, I hope this information has taught you more about the workings of a digital camera and some of the factors to consider when choosing one. Take your time and learn a bit about digital cameras before your purchase. Sure, it's not like buying a car, but photography is a very personal experience and the right digital camera will truly make a difference in your enjoyment of capturing the moment with digital photography.


About The Author
Dave Saunders is a certified nutritional educator and lifelong technologist. He lives in the Washington, DC area with his wife, Irene and writes about his many passions. While pursuing his own enjoyments in broadly experiencing life, Dave enjoys creating interconnections through his writings and lectures to help others create context and see new discoveries and technologies in more a practical light. You can find other news and articles on digital cameras at www.aboutdigitalcameras.net