A world away from film Print E-mail
Written by Woman's World, 2004   
It has a lens, a viewfinder and a shutter button, but there the digital camera's resemblance to your trusty SLR ends! This article will help you get acquainted.

Making the step into the new world of digital photography can be a rewarding experience. In addition to seeing instant results, you can do so much more than look at your digital pictures on a computer screen. Taking pictures with your new digital camera can produce sparkling colour prints, which look as good as - even better than - those taken with your trusty old 35mm camera.

Digital choices

Before finding out how digital cameras work, it's worth bearing in mind a few helpful hints and tips about choosing a digital camera and taking pictures with your new acquisition.

The price you pay for a digital camera will, of course, be controlled by your budget. But remember: by starting with a really good-quality camera, your pictures are more likely to make fine, sharp and colourful prints. Over the past few years, great advances have been made in the picture quality available from digital cameras and most of this is due to the cameras themselves.

When you go to purchase a digital camera the first question to ask is: "How many pixels does it have?" - a pixel is an abbreviation of 'picture element', the smallest unit of 'information' within a digital picture. It is a minute piece of electronic information, the equivalent to a particle of light passing through the lens of your old film camera. So, the rule of thumb for pixels recordable with a digital camera is 'more is better'. At least, as many as you can afford!

The sensor, a piece of electronic wizardry roughly the size of one picture on a piece of 35mm film, receives and 'digitises' those particles of light. It records your picture to the camera's 'memory card', a miniaturised version of a compact disk from which you or your local camera shop or High Street photo shop can make the prints you have chosen.

The very latest zoom compact-style digital cameras can have five or six million pixels and, as a rule of thumb, that level of resolution will give you a print sized 21x16cm (81⁄2x61⁄2in), which is indistinguishable from one made from a 35mm colour negative.
A three million pixel camera will give you a print 17x12cm (7x5in) of similar quality.

So, looking at the number of pixels is the simplest way to gauge the quality of the print.

Optical zoom

Many digital cameras you look at will have a zoom lens. It's better to choose one with an 'optical zoom', rather than a 'digital zoom'. A digital zoom simply enlarges the centre portion of the picture and in doing so, reduces the resolution (the clarity) of the resulting picture. When you go for a camera with an optical zoom lens, you'll record the original resolution on the camera's memory card every time.

The quality of the lens itself can also have an influence on the final print quality, so choose a brand with a lens pedigree. Make sure it shows little sign of distortion. The best way to do that is to check that lines in the picture at the edge of the frame look straight and not curved.

Digital cameras are sophisticated not only in terms of lens technology, but also in their metering (light measuring) systems, which are extremely advanced. Look for a digital camera with metering that checks a number of different parts of the picture and the result will be a well-exposed picture just about every time.

A well-exposed picture also exhibits better colour clarity and sharpness. If the camera offers some control over the exposure, or even the facility of choosing different aperture and shutter combinations like a traditional SLR, then a high-quality print is even more likely.

Taking pictures

It is always a good idea to take care when composing your picture. Digital cameras do not record contrasting light and shadow as well as colour print film does, so if your camera allows you to make adjustments, use them to reduce the contrast. Washed-out highlights are a common complaint when taking pictures that include sky. Try recomposing the picture to take into account contrasting lighting and always avoid shooting towards the sun.

Always be aware of how the available light affects your picture. To improve the composition, it may simply be a case of waiting for the sun to come out from behind a cloud, or for you to return to the scene at a better time of day.

For example, the warm afternoon sun can make a striking improvement to a landscape. Reds and oranges appear much more dramatic and when the sun comes from low in the sky, it gives texture to buildings.

While it is always a good idea to compose your picture carefully, with a digital camera you have another advantage: if the picture you have taken is not to your liking, you can simply delete it and start again. Try a different viewpoint, move your position slightly up, down or to the side. Try to lead the eye into the picture and create perspective by careful placement of foreground objects, so that the viewer's eye moves naturally to the main subject.

Printing the pictures

Your new digital camera produces picture 'files', which can be printed either on photographic or inkjet paper. In order to be sure of getting colour prints that look and feel like good old 35mm prints, you can take your camera or just its memory card to your local High Street photo shop or camera store. These are all geared up to digital 'processing' now and offer services at a similar cost to developing and printing from film (around £5 for 50 prints).

They will make prints on photographic paper, just like those you previously had printed from your colour films. In major chemists, supermarkets and even railway stations you will find clever units called photo kiosks, where you can transfer your images and order up prints yourself.

Alternatively, you can copy the pictures you select for printing through your computer onto a CD and hand it to the photo shop for printing. The great advantage of getting prints made in that way is the quality (you will have chosen the best to have printed) and the convenience.

The other option would be to use your home computer to produce the colour prints, but this requires some expertise and a good inkjet printer. The ink and special paper isn't too expensive, but be warned - making your own prints can be addictive. Upgrading your computer and buying the latest 'must have' additions can burn a hole in your pocket!

Fine-tuning

One of the huge benefits of digital photography is the facility to fine-tune your pictures on your computer. Slight tweaks and fine adjustments are best. Clumsy bold adjustments can ruin any attempt to improve the picture. Remember, if the picture is properly exposed, well-composed and good quality to start with, dramatic adjustments to colour, brightness and contrast should not really be necessary.

Having chosen the right digital camera, with the necessary features to allow creativity and ease of use, all you need to do is bear in mind the tips outlined here and you're well on the way to getting the best out of digital photography.

Visit www.pic.uk.net/realphotos/ the website of PIC, the Photo Imaging Council, for more advice on digital photography.

What is dpi?

Here at Woman's World we receive a great many electronic pictures - i.e. either taken with a digital camera or ordinary pictures that have been scanned on a home or office scanner. It is frustrating to find that these pictures are often too 'low resolution' for us to use.

The letters dpi stand for 'dots per inch' (also, and more correctly, referred to as ppi - pixels per inch). For a website picture, only 72dpi (very low resolution) is required because the images will be used very small, but for a glossy publication such as Woman's World, possibly using photographs as big as A5 or even A4 size, the dots per inch size must be many times higher than that, with appropriate dimensions, or the image reproduces poorly. Most publications require 300dpi and a file size of several megabytes if the photograph is going to be reproduced at a decent size.

There should be a setting on your camera that will allow you to alter the quality of the pictures you take so that they are a higher resolution.

The higher the quality setting, the fewer photos you will be able to hold on the memory card.
 
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