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Digital Camera Tips
With the price of digital cameras steadily reducing, they are
becoming more common and more popular amongst SeniorNet members.
Digital cameras allow you to take numerous photos cheaply, and
to see the results instantly. You can simply discard any pictures
you don't wish to keep, and use the freed memory space for more
pictures. This is like having a roll of film you can just wipe
clean and use over and over again. If you have a digital camera,
here are a few thoughts which might be useful:-
1). Make sure you have plenty of capacity so you can take as
many photos as you wish. Extra memory cards are getting cheaper
by the day, so consider buying more memory to carry with you when
you're out and about.
The same applies to batteries. Make sure you have at least one
spare set of batteries.
With many cameras you can switch off the LCD display and use the
eyepiece viewfinder instead. Normally you may find it's more convenient
to look through the eyepiece anyway. If so, switch off the LCD
display and your battery power will go further.
2) Transfer your pictures regularly to your computer, and set
up a folder filing system so that it will be easy in future to
find the pictures you want. You may find it interesting to set
up a small database to keep a record of all your pictures with
details of the contents of each picture, the date it was taken,
it's folder location etc.
The nice thing about having database records is that you can search
through them very quickly (for example, search through the database
to find all picture records containing the word Taupo, to identify
the snaps you have taken in the past of lake Taupo)
3) Use the cheap and fast features of digital pictures to do things
you wouldn't normally do with a film camera. For example, you
could go round the house taking dozens of photos of your household
possessions, including the contents of cupboards, drawers etc.
for the purpose of providing an inventory of what you have. This
may be very handy if you need to make a future claim on your house
contents insurance. Your camera may be able to take closeup shots
of serial numbers on some of your equipment too (if not, why not
include this kind of information in a database file)?
Once you have these pictures you could transfer them to a CD ROM
(if you have a CD writer) or put them on floppy disks, and store
them with a friend or relative in case of fire.
4) Another unusual use for digital pictures is to record the step
by step progress of a project. For example, I recently dismantled
a fax machine to clean the mirror system buried deep inside the
works. Usually when doing something like this I draw little diagrams
along the way so I can remember how to put things back, and in
the right order. However, having a digital camera handy allows
pictures to be used instead of diagrams. Once the job is done
the pictures can just be deleted.
5) Try having some of your better pictures printed out at a photographic
shop. You may be pleasantly surprised at the quality, and it's
always nice to have printed photos to look at and to show people
- much more convenient than having to set up the computer.
You don't need to leave your camera's memory card at the processing
shop - you could transfer the pictures you want to floppy disks,
or even send them to the shop by email.
Talk to the people at your local photo shop about what they can
do.
6) If you are interested in manipulating your pictures with photo
editing software, the creative possibilities are endless. Why
not start experimenting, maybe designing a Christmas card based
on a family photo with, say, a fancy border and a greeting.
Check out the cost of getting something like this professionally
printed. In quantity the cost may be much less than single prints
and make for an affordable personal card.
7) When experimenting with editing your photos, always keep the
original picture file in its unmodified form so that you don't
lose any original detail. Save the edited version with a different
name. Most picture formats involve compressing the picture data
to save file space, so every time you change a picture there may
be some distortion of the original detail. For example, if you
take a jpeg format picture, halve its size, then double it again
to get back to the original size, much of the original detail
will be lost and the quality will be inferior to that of the original
picture.
8) Make friends with the camera's instruction book. Find time
to keep going back to it and refreshing your memory on how to
use the camera's features. Many people use only a fraction of
the capabilities of their camera and miss out on opportunities
to be creative. Feel free to experiment - it doesn't cost anything
and you can just delete the results if you don't like them.
Happy snapping,
John Selby.
First Printed in the July 2003 SNN Newsletter
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