Digital Cameras

Purchasing: Four things to consider: computer requirements, megapixels, storage, zoom.

Computer requirements are usually shown on the box or website. Most digital cameras require your computer to have a USB port. These are on all newer computers but you want to make sure your older computer has one before buying a camera. Normally, your computer should have a CD-Rom or DVD drive. You should have Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, or Vista (not Win95). You should have at least a 233 MHz processor and 64 mb of ram. Most cameras will have you run the installation CD first, then attach your camera to your computer with the special included USB cable, and then turn your camera on to install it. Then anytime you hook your camera to your computer and turn the camera on, it will automatically ask if you want your pictures transferred to your computer. You should normally check the option to delete the pictures on the camera when transferring. Kodak automatically puts your pictures in My Documents in the My Pictures folder.

Megapixels are the quality of the picture. Smaller are covered because new devices such as cell phones and pen cameras often have smaller megapixels. 1.3 megapixels will print 4x6 photos fair but not larger photos. 2 megapixels will print most photos up to 8x10 fair, but not poster sized. 3.2 megapixels are a minimum for a traditional camera where you might want to print a good 8x10. 6, 7, and 8 megapixels are usually available for under $100. 12 megapixels and greater are available for more money (around $200), but not necessarily the best investment at this time. Explanation below.

Storage is how many pictures can be stored on the camera without transferring them to your computer. Many cameras have a built in storage of 8-64 megabytes and allow additional small cards called Smart Cards, SD (Secured Digital) memory, SDHC (Secured Digital High Capacity), or memory sticks to be inserted in the camera for extra storage like a miniature floppy disk. You need to see your camera's manual to see which kind of card is used AND if there are card size limits. Cameras that use SD cards may or may not allow SDHC cards. As a general rule of thumb, a medium quality picture settings will allow 1 picture per 1 megabyte. Example: a 512mb memory stick will hold just over 512 good pictures. On newer cameras, the highest quality setting will average 1 picture per 2-3 megabytes. Example: a 512mb memory card will hold just over 200 good pictures and a 8gb SDHC card will hold over 3200 pictures. Normally, these additional storage disks have become so large and inexpensive that camera storage is no longer a limiting factor. You may want to purchase a larger card if you will be on an extended vacation. When on vacation, you can go to a store, like Walmart, and have them make a CD from your smaller memory card (around $3), so you can delete the files from your camera. Full memory cards larger than 512mb are difficult to make CDs from because a CD cannot hold all of your photos and you will not be sure which photos can be deleted from your camera card.

Zoom allows you to take closer pictures without being closer. Optical zoom actually brings the object closer because of the lens adjusting. Digital zoom simulates the zoom by making the object bigger in the picture without any lens adjustment. Simple terms: Optical zoom=good, digital zoom=bad, optical zoom=$30-$50 higher. When buying a camera, look for 3x-10x OPTICAL zoom. 3x optical zoom will extend the lens out of the camera about 3/4" and a 10x optical zoom will extend the lens out up to 2". The lens does not adjust with digital zoom.

Optional Equipment: You may want to consider optional equipment with your camera like a camera dock, printer dock, or battery charger. These are not necessary to use a digital camera but can be helpful. If your camera uses AA or AAA batteries, you may want to buy a digital battery charger to use with your camera. Most cameras come with batteries but may not be rechargeable. If you buy a camera dock, you normally set your camera on top of it to automatically download pictures and recharge your rechargeable batteries. If you buy a printer dock, you can charge batteries, transfer to computer, AND print quality pictures. Beware that paper and ink for printer docks are more expensive and it may be less expensive to take your memory card to a commercial service or print on your regular printer.

Video: Every year cameras improve. Over the next year or two, we should see the improvement of the still camera and video camera being combined into one device now that memory has increased in size. If you will buy a camera with the idea that it is just for one to two years use, you will buy right. Then the next camera could be the combo device of video and still. Many cameras boast a video feature but have not arrived to all the features we would want for both still and video. Most video features only allow for very short clips and take some time to figure out how to use. If you want to take the time to learn how to use video with your camera, then you may want to buy bigger storage and look for a camera that also has sound. Many do not! By next year, you will see a still camera, video camera, cell phone, mp3 player, pda, and gps all in one device.

Recommendation: 8 megapixel cameras can be purchased for about $100. 12 megapixel cameras can be purchased for about $200. I really like having a camera that uses rechargeable AA batteries because I can buy regular AA batteries anywhere in a pinch when my batteries are low. I personally like Kodak CX cameras for ease of use. Kodak is one company that usually uses AA batteries, has a good program to e-mail pictures, has optical zoom, and start at $79. Click HERE to look at the $79-99 Kodak cameras with optical zoom (which is a good 1st digital camera and works good for website work). Or click HERE for a good 12 megapixel with 5x optical zoom for $199. Click HERE for good prices on camera memory. (2gb for $8 and 8gb for $32).

How to use your pictures: E-mail, printing, screensavers, and making cd albums.

Email: A medium quality setting on your camera will make photo files from 800 kilobytes to over 1000 kilobytes (also called 1 megabyte). Newer cameras (8 megapixels and larger) set on the highest quality can make photo files from 2-5 megabytes in size. If you send this size of picture through e-mail, Grandma is not going to like those sweet little pictures! She probably isn't interested in counting your nose hairs in the huge picture on her screen (she can only see a tiny portion of the photo at one time) and will forget what the eye looked like by the time she scrolls down to the chin! Many people have webmail with mailbox limits as small as 100 megabytes. 50 pictures = full mailbox and Grandma gets nasty messages from her e-mail service and cannot receive any more mail. Also, Grandma can bake cookies during the time it takes to download these big files! You may want to consider changing your camera setting to a lower quality if you will only be printing 4x6 photos. An additional solution is to use quality camera software that usually comes with your camera to e-mail your pictures. Make sure to check the "Best for E-Mail" feature. It will automatically reduce the file size of these pictures down to only 50-100 kilobytes which will still look great on the monitor (won't print the best though). If for some reason, you don't have camera software that e-mails, you can download Kodak's free program HERE. Many people are now using services such as online photo folders through Kodak, Snapfish, and other services where you can send an invitation or link so Grandma can just go to a website to see your photos without having to be a rocket scientist.

Printing pictures: Paper! Paper! Paper! Paper makes all the difference in how your prints come out. High quality photo paper will make your printer look great. Cheap photo paper fades after only one year! Make sure to tell your printer that you are using matte or glossy photo paper and change the quality to Best or highest dpi number. Once again, if you try to print a photo someone has e-mailed you, it probably will not be a very good photo. You may want to ask them to e-mail the original larger file. Beware of using remanufactured color ink cartridges due to color variations. Often remanufactured black cartridges work though. Commercial Printing: You can take the smart card or stick out of the camera and take to a store to print. Many of them are self service. You insert the card or stick into the proper sized slot and your pictures on the card or stick appear on the screen. You just touch the picture you want to deal with. Crop, brighten, red-eye adjust, and tell the machine what size to print.

Screensaver: I recommend downloading the gPhotoshow software from HERE. When downloading, click Open instead of Save, install it where ever it suggests. After it is finished installing, rightclick your wallpaper on your monitor, click Properties, click Screensaver, click the down arrow to choose which screensaver, click gPhotoshow, click Setting, click the dotted box (New) and then click the button with 3 dots to tell the program where your pictures are. You may want to adjust the time between pictures to as low as 4 seconds.

Photo CD's: Photos will fill up the largest of hard drives eventually. Put your photos on CDs (at least for backup reasons). You can put up to a 700 pictures on 1 cd or 4000 on a dvd. Make sure you make at least 2 cd/dvd copies of your pictures. Send one of them to Grandma to keep for you in case of fire. If you don't have a cd drive that burns cd's, get one! If you don't know how to use it, learn or have someone come over and help you! Blank CD-R discs are the easiest for a novice if you have XP or Vista on your computer. You just put a blank CD-R disc in the drive, go to My Documents and find your photo files, draw a box with your mouse around about 300 files to highlight them, right-click anywhere in the highlighted area, left-click Send To, choose your CD drive, click the little box that says you have files waiting, Edit/Select All, click the Write Files link on the left, Next, and wait for the CD tray to open, use a permanent marker on the non-shiny side, be careful not to scratch the disc.