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Digital Photography - Getting Started (Part 1)
by Jim Bond
Making pixel choices
If you are contemplating getting into digital photography, either as a hobby or
just to take pictures of family events and such, then you have to decide what it is that you want to accomplish with your
photographs.
Do you want to just take snap shots to be printed as 4x6 prints to later
be put into a photo album? Or perhaps you just want images that you can post on your web-site. On the other hand you may want
to enlarge your images to 16x20 for hanging on the wall. These are all things you need to decide that will eventually help
you to determine what type of camera to buy and how much you need to spend.
The digital camera is one of the most exciting technological
developments of the past ten years or so and is rapidly gaining more and more popularity with novice and pro photographer
alike.
The idea of being able to go out and take as many pictures as you like, and not have it cost you one thin dime, (until
you commit them to prints) is absolutely fantastic. On top of that, you can also easily see the results of your efforts immediately
on your computer screen, and then edit out the ones you don't like, and then to top it all off, it's just down right fun.
It literally puts a tremendous amount of creative potential into the hands of anyone who wants to be creative, very affordably.
There are some things a person should know before commencing on this venture however, and in following months I will
attempt to share with you some bits of information that will help you to enjoy this technology without spending more than
necessary, and assist you to make informed decisions about purchasing the equipment that you will need.
The first thing you need to understand is that all digital images are made up of pixels.
As you can see from the image to the left, pixels are small square pieces
of color information of various shades and tones, that collectively form the image in the photograph.
The size and number of these pixels determine the resolution or sharpness
of the image captured with the camera.
These pixels become more obvious and more noticeable when the image is
enlarged as illustrated in the example below. The camera with more mega-pixels will yield a higher resolution image and be
more acceptable for enlargement.
 As you can see from the insets in the example above, at their normal
size, there is very little difference in the appearance of two images. However, once you start enlarging the images, the differences
become quite obvious.
As I said at the on-set of this article, this is an important point to
consider when deciding which camera to buy. If the snapshots you take are most likely never going to be any larger than 4x6
or 5x7 prints, then a camera with a 1 to 2 mega-pixel rating should be quite adequate.
However, if you intend to enlarge your images to 8x10, 11x14, 16x20 and
so on, then my personal recommendation would be that you invest in a camera with a 2 to 3 or more mega-pixel rating.
These cameras are generally a little more expensive, but the results
are much more satisfactory.
You can find a very good selection of reasonably priced consumer level
digital cameras at Royal Image in the Northumberland Mall. Personally, I have purchased most of my Digital Photographic
equipment at Carsand and Mosher. They not only have cameras at the consumer level, but also cater to the professional level
photographer, and likewise have a broad selection of models and makes to choose from.
In my next months article, I'll be discussing the ZOOM issue. What type
of zoom features you should and shouldn't buy and the reasons.
JIm Bond - JIM'S Digital Image Processing
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