Digital Camera Guide
Digital cameras are everywhere these days, but how many times have you snapped away on holiday or a night out and never done a thing with the images?
Well check out PC Site®’s guide to making the most of your photos and either impress or embarrass friends with all those photos they thought were forgotten.
The first step is uploading your snaps onto social media sites. Facebook and Myspace for example allow you to upload photo albums.
You can ‘tag’ your friends and family in the photographs, which links their profile to the photo. You can also leave comments and captions.
If you’ve got images you want the world to see then try Flickr, an image and video hosting site and a community of photo enthusiasts.
Once you have uploaded your photos you tag them with words that describe the photo like “Venice”, “Canal”, “Gondola” for example. When people go to search for an image of Venice, gondolas or canals, yours (and thousands of others) will come up.
Other people can comment on your work, which is often a great way to pick up tips from other photographers.
Bloggers love Flickr for embedding content and if you set your work to “creative commons” anyone can use it, it is polite for them to leave you a photo credit which links to your Flickr page.
Picasa is Google’s photo software that gives you some basic edit functions, reducing red-eye or making slideshows for example, along with the ability to share photos with friends and family.
Photobucket is another image hosting and sharing site, and you can also create slideshows with it.
If you’re really keen on taking your digital photography skills up a level then check out our separate guide to editing your photos.
Digital Photo Frames are basically LCD screens with flash memory, which will display your photos. You upload your photos via USB from your computer, and can often add extra memory cards or USB sticks.
Most frames have a range of settings that allow you to play slideshows of your photos at certain speeds or just display one photo.
You can now pick up 7-inch frames with 2Gb memory for around £50. Remember to check what extra media they take so you can get as many photos as possible up there.
It’s worth paying the extra for the styling too, after all this is going to be on display in your room.
Don’t forget you can always just print your photos off; most high street photo shops will print your pictures from CD, memory card or even straight from your camera.
If you’re really committed to photography then you might want to get your own printer. The first thing to check the maximum print size they offer, which will be measured in inches.
The print resolution, measured in dpi (dots per inch), will determine image quality. You can now get a 9600 x 2400 dpi printer for around £100.
Another factor that will determine the quality of your own prints is the paper you use; it will either be in glossy or matte finish. It will be rated by weight in g/m2 or gsm, which stands for grams per square meter.
175 g/m2 is probably the minimum you want to use, and professional quality starts at around 260 g/m2; generally the heavier the paper the higher the quality.
Written by Tom Mowlam
Tom is a young technology journalist based in London. Though a diehard Windows user, if pressed he will admit to quite liking Apple products – he just doesn’t get on with touchscreens.
Thu, Dec 10, 2009