A Brief Guide To Digital Photography

Digital photography has changed the way we take photographs, and, moreover, what happens to our images once we have actually taken a photograph. No longer do we need to shoot a whole roll, of 24, or 36, exposures, and then wait, with bated breath, to see what comes back – often disappointingly – from the developers. Instead, we can take control of our images, immediately viewing our results, deleting any that are unsatisfactory, editing, cropping and manipulating them, and, almost instantaneously, sharing them with our friends and relatives, via the Internet and email.

Digital Cameras

The Canon EOS 400D Digital Camera, for example, is compact and lightweight, although sturdily built, from polycarbonate plastic over a stainless steel chassis. It features a large, sharp 2.5-inch, 230,000 pixel LCD monitor – complete with a proximity sensor, which turns the monitor off when the camera is held to the eye – and a 10.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, complete with automatic cleaning system.

The Fujifilm FinePix F40 fd (“fd”, for “face detection”) Digital Camera, as another example, is an affordable model, aimed at the casual, or recreational, photographer. It includes, nevertheless, a standard “3x” optical zoom lens, a 2.5-inch LCD display, and an expansion slot compatible with SD (“Secure Digital”) memory cards, and features very fast start-up, focus, and shot-to-shot times.

The Pentax K100D Digital Camera, as a further alternative, is the first digital SLR (“Single Lens Reflex”) camera to feature SR (“Shake Reduction”) by mechanically adjusting the position of the CCD(“Charge Coupled Device”) image sensor, to make allowances for any shaking of the camera. Again, this is a lightweight camera, with SD card compatibility.

Accessories

If you want to share your digital photographs with your loved ones who do not own a computer, or you just want to display them more prominently, in your home, or office, you may like to consider a digital photo frame. Digital photo frames are available in a variety of colours and styles, amongst them the Dynamode DIGI-FR7, a versatile, 7-inch, frame, capable of displaying a single image, or multiple images, in the form of a slideshow, at a resolution of up to 12 megapixels. Other useful accessories include a mini tripod, such as the Hama Mini Tripod Kit, which folds away to a height of just 5 inches, and memory expansion cards, such as the Sandisk Extreme III, a 2 GB CF (“Compact Flash”) card.

Taking Better Digital Photographs

Camera shake is a major contributor to blurred, unsatisfactory images; a camera with shake reduction, in one form or another, and/or a tripod, is a good investment if you are going to take photographs on a regular basis. Lighting, too, is critical, to a good photograph, and you may find, for example, that photographs taken in bright sunlight are spoilt by intrusive shadows – including yours – and that the colours are “washed out”. Generally speaking, the closer you can approach your subject, the better, so look for a camera with a high “optical” – as opposed to “digital” – zoom..