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The editors at PC World magazine rank point-and-shoot and advanced cameras for monthly top 10 lists. For current features, prices and an explanation of how the magazine tests, please check its Web site. Top 10 Digital Cameras Top 10 Digital Cameras, Advanced
David Busch's 20 film cameras and dozens of lenses sit idle. He shoots only digital now.
"All my cameras are worth nothing," said Busch, a professional photographer and author who lives near Akron, Ohio. "I'll keep them for sentimental reasons."
Sentiment aside, a lot of people are doing the same thing as Busch, abandoning film and switching to digital. The transition seems to be speeding up, too.
According to research from Hewlett-Packard, many people using digital cameras two years ago would use them for everyday shots, but revert to film for special events. Now, digital rules as consumers have grown more comfortable with the cameras.
As with almost everything digital, questions arise over the technology. So we talked to a number of experts about some of the frequently asked questions about digital photography to get a few tips and tricks to ease the transition, particularly as the summer vacation season gets under way.
Perhaps the best thing to keep in mind, according to Rudy Winston, manager of Canon USA's technical information department, is fairly basic.
"Don't forget that even using a digital camera, good photography is good photography," he said, including good composition, not centering every subject and sometimes moving in close to the subject.
Life in the slow lane
It's called shutter lag, the time between pushing the button for a picture and when it gets recorded in the digital camera.
"The lag can be the difference between a shot and a blank frame," said Sally Smith Clemens, product manager for Olympus.
Without question, it's the top complaint people have about shooting digital. Push the shutter button on a film camera and it starts a mechanical process. Push the shutter button on a digital camera and it starts a computer process.
Yet even on low-end digital cameras where the problem can be most pronounced, photographers can do something about it.
Instead of pressing the shutter button in one motion, experts say, digital camera users should depress it halfway. That gives the camera time to focus and lock in settings. Then when they completely depress the button to take the picture, it's a faster process.
Preservation
Perhaps because there is no film to buy, digital photographers take more pictures. But the images can't stay on the storage card forever, and even with big hard drives on computers, people need a backup.
"As soon as you get the pictures in the computer and you get enough for a small collection, burn them onto a CD, especially before you make any editing changes," Busch said. "Save the originals. Consider that your digital negatives."
By saving the originals on discs, Busch says, it gives people a chance to improve their photo editing skills, then go back at a later date to make the pictures even better.
Karl Waldrop, Hewlett-Packard's lead product manager for digital cameras for North America, had a novel suggestion. His wife uses an old-fashioned system to keep track of everything. She prints a sheet of thumbnails of the photos they have downloaded to their computer. She writes the file name on top, punches holes in the sheet and files it in a three-ring binder.
Storage
Let's be blunt: Camera companies are pretty stingy with the storage cards that come with their cameras. Most will hold less than a roll of film, so you're going to have to buy at least one with enough room to handle your regular shooting.
But vacation is another matter. If you run out of film, you can go to a store and pick up another roll. If you run out of digital storage room, it's not as likely that you're going to pick up a new storage card because it can cost around $50 for one with a reasonable amount of space.
So before you go on vacation, make sure you have enough storage for your needs. Busch suggests that people typically take enough to store two to three times the number of shots on a trip as they take at home in a week.
"You're not going to buy just a 12 exposure roll (if you use film on vacation), so go ahead and cough up the bucks to get a high capacity card to take on vacation so don't have to take a laptop or download images," Clemens said.
Storage II
People love their megapixels. But when it comes time to shoot, they often set the resolution lower so they can get more photos on their storage cards.
That may be okay if all you're going to do is share them by e-mail or look at them on the computer. But if you want to make prints, the higher the resolution, the better.
At 3 megapixels, which is becoming the standard for low-end cameras, "the camera will give you terrific snapshots," said David Heim, deputy editor for special sections at Consumer Reports. "You can make a very good 8 by 10 within some limits. You can also crop and blow it up. Five megapixels just gives you more latitude."
At home, Busch suggests always shooting at the maximum resolution. On vacation, though, a combination approach might work best. Take some pictures at a lower resolution to preserve space on the storage card, and some at the maximum resolution for prints.
Test run
You've bought the camera, have enough storage cards and an extra battery or two, so you're ready to head out on vacation. Not quite.
"Some of these cameras have so many different features buried in menus," Canon's Winston said. "Experimenting doesn't cost any money, no film, no processing. Learn what some of the additional features are."
Shoot some pictures in the back yard, he says. Test features, and understand things such as how the camera focuses and what the histogram is. "The histogram gives you an idea if something is going to be grossly over- or under-exposed," said Winston, adding that even image-editing software can't salvage all mistakes made on a shot.
With film, you didn't know that you had cut off Aunt Edith's head or the picture was too dark until it was too late to retake it. That's not the case with digital, which lets you see the results immediately.
"Don't accept what the camera does on the first round is the final be-all and end-all system," Winston said. "It's a starting point."
Listen to the camera
Well, the cameras won't really talk to you. But more models have features that make it easier to shoot photos, edit the photos in the camera and, in some cases, even analyze what you've shot to give tips on how to improve the shot.
On the LCD, some cameras provide circles to help make sure the subject's head is correctly positioned, or a line for the horizon. More automated shooting modes have been added so there's less fiddling with settings.
HP calls its system Real Life. It can do things such as automatically adjust the contrast to lighten dark areas and keep the detail in lighter areas, edit out red eye in the camera and suggest ways to shoot a photo better, from lighting to using a tripod to changing settings.
"It just makes it easier for the consumer," Waldrop said. "Not all consumers want to manipulate the image once they get it on to a PC or Mac."
Buying advice
The first question most people ask is, "Which camera should I buy?"
And the answer they invariably get is, "It depends."
A good starting point is to quiz yourself: What's your budget? What kind of pictures do you take? Do you want big prints, or just 4 by 6? How much control do you want on settings? Or do you want it all automatic? What about the lens?
"If they haven't already bought a camera, I strongly recommend that they try out the camera (at a store), not just go by what friends say or what they read on the Web," said Busch, whose latest book will be released in July as part of the HP Books series.
Which leads to a couple of other questions: Is it a camera or a computer? "A digital camera is really a computer with a lens," HP's Waldrop said.
And whose opinion should get more consideration: a geek who understands computers or a photographer who understands pictures? Busch gives the edge, naturally, to people such as himself, a photographer who understands the technology.
"I see a lot of books and reviews and articles by people," Busch said. "Some are written by technology people who know nothing about photography, some by photographers who know nothing about technology."
We recommend checking multiple sources, and have found several Web sites useful. The Consumer Reports Web site, for example, has a feature called "Match your camera to your photography." It has sections for Casual, Serious and Advanced shooters, including specific recommendations on models for each level.
Other good sites to check include Steve's Digicams, Digital Photography Review, PC World magazine and CNet (see box for addresses).
Batteries
Battery life has improved substantially with digital cameras. But backups are still crucial.
"The higher the resolution, the more energy the electronic sensors need to collect the light data, the more energy it takes to process the data to save onto a memory card," Olympus' Clemens said.
A general observation is that lower-end cameras use AA batteries and higher-end models often use a manufacturer's proprietary batteries.
The AA batteries are inexpensive, and it's easy to carry extras. The manufacturers say their batteries can handle hundreds of pictures between charges and are a good way to go.
But at Consumer Reports, "in most cases we favor cameras that use AA," Heim said.
If you forgot spare batteries, turning off the LCD screen will help preserve the power you have, whichever battery your camera uses.
Extras
A few more things to lug around may make you shudder, but here are a couple of things to consider.
A tripod is "clunky and you don't always need it," Heim said. But "you don't want to ruin a once in a lifetime shot because you couldn't hold the camera steady."
Another accessory that's becoming more common is an underwater housing, even for point-and-shoot models. But they're not just for underwater photography.
It helps protect the camera at the beach from blowing sand or saltwater spray, Clemens says. And boaters use them onboard for similar protection.
Readers can submit questions about digital photography for Times personal technology editor Dave Gussow and deputy photo director Boyzell Hosey at the Times Talkback site (www.sptimes.com/talkback) The questions and answers will be in a special online column to be posted in June.
