Digital Photography Guide
Introduction
Digital photographs represent the the most important advance in photographic technology of the last century. They can be stored forever wih no degradation in image quality. They can be edited, retouched and modified by anyone with a home computer in ways that that even the most sophisticated photo processing lab was unable to achieve with film media only 20 years ago.
There are two ways to produce digital photos. One is to use a scanner to digitize an existing photographic print. Some die hard photographers still insist on doing it that way, but this is like cutting down a tree with an axe. Old fashioned and inefficient. By far the better way is to use a digital camera. Below is a brief tutorial on photography in general and the use of digital cameras in particular. Throughout the tutorial terms highlighted in blue are linked to their definitions.
The best camera choice for you depends on how much money you are willing to spend, what the camera will be used for, and how serious you are about photography. If you will be taking outdoor landscape shots like what a tourist typically would take on vacation, then a relatively inexpensive, easy to use, "point and shoot" camera may be adequate for your needs. If however, you will be shooting indoors in dim light, at night, or with other difficult lighting conditions, or doing portrait or sports photograpy or special types of shots, then you will probably need to buy a more expensive camera and spend more time learning to use it.
The important differences between digital cameras are, lense quality and interchangeability, image sensor size, and control over camera functions.
Lenses
The image that your camera records can never be any better than what it "sees" through the lens. If you buy a "point and shoot" camera, you are stuck with the lens that comes with the camera. Get the camera with the best lens.
More expensive SLR "Single Lens Reflex" cameras use interchangeable lenses. You can buy just the lens that you need for whatever type of photography you will be doing.
Image Sensor
Camera manufacturers take advantage of the "more is better" consumer mentality to sell more cameras. Each new camera model has more megapixels of image sensor resolution than the previous model while the cameras themselves are even smaller. The problem with this is that in order to fit more megapixels in the same size image sensor, it is necessary to either make the pixels smaller, or closer together, both of which introduce a form of distortion called "noise". People have reported that an older model camera with fewer megapixels in some cases takes better photos than a newer version with more megapixels.
Three megapixels is plenty for most purposes, including ordinary size prints and computer screensavers. This author had a two megapixel "point and shoot" camera that was in the upper half of the price range at the time, that took photos that are far superior to some newer cameras with double the megapixels. Other factors such as the lens quality are more important if you do not need billboard or poster size images.
Camera Controls
If you do not anticipate taking any special shots or shots under difficult conditions, you may not need or even want a camera with a lot of manual controls. The adjustments made automatically by many "point and shoot" cameras are adequate for most photos. Generally, the more you pay for a camera, the more manually adjustable controls you will get. It takes time to learn to use a camera with many manual adjustments. You may not want to spend that much effort when the automatic mode will do.
