ACALANES HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS - 2001-02


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Digital Photography Introduction

Are you interested in digital photography?  I have been taking digital pictures for about 18 months and there are many benefits over traditional film photography as follows:

  1. After the initial investment in a camera and photo quality printer the ongoing cost is less than traditional photography.  You only print the good pictures in a variety of sizes and can delete ones that aren't as good.  These images can be stored on your computer's hard drive and copied to a CD for permanent storage.

  2. After taking pictures the Images can be immediately uploaded to a computer (preferably through a USB port which is much faster than a serial port) and using many types of file management software the images can be emailed, set as windows wallpaper, set as a screensaver, and/or printed in many print formats.

  3. With a photo quality printer you can get excellent results that rival 35mm photography.  

  4. Having done a lot of traditional dark room work over the years I've found that the digital darkroom allows the photographer much more creativity.  

  5. Since there is no additional cost to taking pictures and the newer digital cameras are so light you will find you will take many more pictures than with your old 35mm or point and shoot camera.

If you want to take the leap into digital photography the following are what I recommend to give you excellent results.

File Management & Printing Software - Image Expert 2000 is incredible.  You can download this software for about $50.00.  This software is great for keeping track of your digital images in albums, enhancing/cropping your images, and printing the images in a variety of formats.  This software is essential.  Check it out at http://www.sierraimaging.com.

Image Manipulation Software - Adobe Photoshop Limited Edition costs about $100.00. This software is simpler to use than the the expensive Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and does most of what the full fledged version does.  I use this software to do more sophisticated image enhancement that Image Expert is not able to do.   Another product called Adobe Photo Elements has just come out that that is similar to what Adobe Photoshop LE does and it might be a good choice. 

Photo Quality Printers - Epson 1280 ($499) or Epson 890 ($299).  The Epson 1280 allows printing of up to 13x19 inch photographs.  The 890 prints up to 8x10 inch photographs.  These printers may come with software included so be sure to check before purchasing either of the recommended software listed above.   Both these printers use archival ink and paper which will preserve the images for about 25 years.  Check out the printers at  http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/index.jsp.

Digital Cameras - At around $600-800 you can purchase a 3 megapixel digital camera that will allow you to print outstanding quality 8x10 inch photographs.  At $1200-1400 you can purchase a state of the art 4 megapixel camera that will print excellent images up to 12x16 inches.  If you want a poster size image you can use Photoshop LE to increase the image to 100 megabytes or more, copy the image to a CD rom and have Kinkos or a professional photo lab print it on a large photo quality printer.   Check out the following site which contains excellent of cameras at the 3 and 4 megapixel range:   http://www.megapixel.net/html/issueindex.html.  Reed's Cameras in Walnut Creek and Best Buy in Pleasant Hill both have an excellent selection of digital cameras.  Check out Reed's web site at http://www.reedscameras.com/.

Photo Scanner - For about $100 I purchased a Canon N650U scanner which I like very much.  If you don't want to purchase a digital camera yet you can scan your best 35 mm photographs and use the software indicated above to manipulate the digital images.  I have recently scanned an 8x10 inch black and white photograph, cropped out a 4x6 inch section and enlarged the image in Photoshop to 12x16 inches and got excellent results. 

Some of My Favorite Sites -

http://www.imaging-resource.com/DIGCAM01.HTM Excellent digital camera review site.
http://www.robgalbraith.com/ A good web site for digital photojournalists.
 http://www.luminous-landscape.com/index.htmlExcellent digital photography site.

If you want to order anything over the internet the following are two very reputable on-line retailers:

http://www.cameraworld.com/
http://www02.bhphotovideo.com/default.sph/FrameWork.class?FNC=StartLink__Aindex_html

Peter and The Wolf

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