Digital Photography is a different way of taking
pictures
- High quality camera and
printer hardware are relatively inexpensive.
- The digital photography
process is liberating.
- Your electronic photo
library requires some management.
- You can scan old film
negatives to add them to your electronic library.
I can help you manage
your electronic picture library and convert your film negatives.
The Hardware
Camera technology is
changing faster than computer technology. At a minimum seek a 3 Mega
pixel (3 million dots) camera. Look for a camera that includes at
least a 64MB FlashRAM card (or plan on buying one), which is where your pictures are stored as you snap them.
This will give you enough room to take about 60 high quality pictures before
you need to move them to your computer hard drive. Also strongly
consider true optical zoom to help you better frame your subjects without
having to move them or yourself. Cameras of this type can be had in
the $300 range.
Good inkjet printers can be
had for $150. As you pay more the printers typically print faster, not
necessarily at a higher quality.
Printing on good quality
glossy photo paper can cost about $1.00 a print, so you will probably only
print special shots. You can also take your electronic pictures to a
traditional photo processing lab for printing.
The photography experience
When you shoot your
first digital photos it is liberating. You feel free to snap more
photos since you are not paying for film and film processing services with
each shot. You simply delete the bad photos. As a result you can
take more photos of the same situation, throw out the ones where someone's
eyes are closed, and as a result you end up with more shots that are
keepers.
You won't print every
picture and store them in a drawer somewhere. Instead you will be able
to have your computer display them as a slideshow when you aren't using it.
This is the coolest part of electronic photography, putting your computer to
work displaying your photo album instead of rarely seeing the prints.
You can easily share your
pictures through email or even post them onto a website like
www.ofoto.com.
Your photo library
Instead of driving to and from
the photo processing shop, you take some time to organize your photos on
your computer.
You unload your photos from
your camera onto your computer, then empty the camera so you can snap more
shots. I typically put each download set into a separate directory
file folder under MyPhotos, and name it with the date and an added word or
two like: MyPhotos\2003.11.1.halloween
You can then uses software
to review your photos, delete the poor shots, rotate any that are sideways,
and even print a few of your favorites.
There is plenty of free
software on the web to help manage your photos. You can crop your
photos, brighten or darken those with a slightly incorrect exposure, and
even eliminate red-eye.
You want to have a good
backup system in place so you don't lose your electronic photo library.
Check out my thoughts on backing up your computer.
Converting your old negatives
Once you start viewing photos on your system,
you might be motivated to convert your old pile of negatives into electronic
form. The process for this is to feed the negatives into a specialized
film scanner. The optical quality and speed of film scanners varies,
and prices range from $300 to $1500+.
I have a film scanner and
can help convert your library of negatives. |
