I have zero experience with digital cameras and want to start taking pictures. How should I start shopping before buying.

I don't want to much more then I need.

I'm ok with normal photography. Not with digital photography.

-- Curd EVERTSZ (curdevertsz@curinfo.an), December 06, 1998

Answers

Hi!

You need to ask yourself some questions.

1. Realistically, what's the biggest print you'll want to ever output and will it be inkjet output, to a film recorder to make a new negative so you can make bigger traditional prints, or are you looking for just web output (monitor resolution @ 72dpi)

2. Do you have a good understanding of proper exposure and how to judge lighting. In other words, can you recognize lighting that will fool most automatic cameras.

3. Do you have the capability of taking traditional cameras and using slide film and getting good exposures from slides? On digital cameras, if you over expose, you can't 'burn' in the pixels and make an acceptable print. You must expose for the highlights and let the shadows go where they may or use auxilliary lighting and/or reflectors to bring up the shadow detail.

4. What's your budget. Digital cameras tend to be 4-7 times more expensive than a traditional camera.

After you answer these questions, I can get a little more specific. Next week I'm getting the new Sony DSC D700 digital camera and it's around $1,600, but it's totally automatic, or I can go in and make manual adjustments as I see fit. Most amateur digital cameras don't allow this

-- Phil Pool (pep44@excite.com), December 06, 1998.