Learn Digital Photography ..first Time With Your Digital Camera
Everyone knows the name Kodak and can identify it as the company that took cameras out of the hands of professionals and into the hands of everyday users. What you may not know is that Kodak is in financial trouble. Why? Because those everyday users are now turning to digital cameras, leaving film-based cameras gathering dust in the closet. As the largest producer of film-based cameras, and photographic film, Kodak finds itself losing great gobs of money.
But a digital camera won't save you any money if you don't know how to use it. So here are some pointers on how to use your camera, and take advantage of your Mac, too.
You need a computer
While some cameras will allow you to view your pictures on a TV, in practice a digital camera is pretty useless without a computer. The best computer to have, of course, is a Macintosh with a USB port, which pretty much covers everything Apple has introduced since the iMac.
It will also help if the camera comes bundled with Macintosh-compatible photo editing/viewing software. Mac OS X 10.1 comes with software capable of downloading pictures directly from some cameras; you may not need to load a thing.
Learn the basics
Yes, you will probably need to read the manual. Be warned however that some of the cameras don't come with a printed manual; you'll have to read an Acrobat file from the CD-ROM that came with the camera. Take your time and play with the controls and learn how to use them. Make sure you know how to load batteries, plug it into your computer, and turn it on and off.
Take particular note of buttons you don't want to push. (I recently watched someone wonder aloud what one button did, so they pushed it -- and watched their rechargeable battery fall into the Pacific Ocean.)
Generally speaking, the better the camera, the harder it is to operate the camera. Inexpensive digital cameras rarely support more than "point and shoot:" you point it, you push the button, it takes a picture. The camera will try to auto-focus the image and adjust the exposure according to available light.
You will find that more expensive digital cameras will enable you to manually adjust focus, focal length, lighting, and countless other settings which will help you turn a good picture into a really bad picture -- if you don't read the manual.
