Digital Camera Master

No two digital cameras are the same. Each camera maker is known to some greater or lesser extent for implement-specific kinds of features—like interchangeable lenses, swivel bodies, and movie recording features. If you cut through all those goodies, though, you’ll find that most cameras share many of the same fundamentals. Let’s start at the top and cover your camera’s fundamentals.

A. The Optical System
At the heart of every camera, no matter how it stores its images, is an optical system. Most digital cameras have two distinct viewfinders—an optical one and a digital one. In most cases, the optical viewfinder is composed of a glass or plastic lens that shows you your subject directly—it’s just a plain window that lets you see through the camera to the other side. The digital viewfinder is an LCD display that reproduces what the camera’s CCDs are actually seeing.

Which one should you use? Whichever one you like. You’ll get better results, though, if you understand the difference between the two. The majority of digital cameras are point-and-shoot designs. With a point and shoot, you do not actually see what the camera sees when you look through the optical viewfinder. The optical viewfinder is a parallax-inducing viewfinder, a popular low-cost mechanism that dates back almost all the way to the invention of the camera itself. No doubt you have a point-and-shoot camera lying around the house with just such a viewfinder.

When taking pictures from a distance, the optical viewfinder and lens see essentially the same thing. Close up to your subject, though, they clearly see two different things.

Some higher-priced digital cameras use a through-the-lens optical viewfinder hat shows you exactly what the camera lens sees, just like the LCD viewfinder.

The digital viewfinder, on the other hand, shows you exactly what the camera sees, and thus is the most accurate gauge of your potential photograph. You won’t want to use your digital viewfinder all the time, though. For starters, it uses a lot of power, and you can get a lot more mileage out of your camera’s batteries by using the optical viewfinder instead. In addition, the LCD display can be very difficult to see in certain lighting conditions, like outside in mid-afternoon.

Some cameras allow you to turn off the LCD display to conserve power. Leave the display off most of the time to get more battery life.

B. Power Systems
It shouldn’t surprise you terribly to learn that your digital camera takes batteries. Most—but not all—digital cameras rely on four AA batteries, just like the ones in the Epson camera seen here. Some cameras, like the Olympus D-490, also accept a special single-use Lithium battery or some other kind of power, like rechargeables.

Here are some advice about Digital Camera Power management:

• Insert batteries according to the diagram on the camera body—make sure you align the battery’s positive and negative ends correctly.
• Don’t leave batteries in the camera for an extended period of time. Some kinds of batteries can leak, and if that happens, your camera can be ruined.
• Don’t mix and match fresh and used batteries, or batteries of different kinds.
• When you can, run your camera using AC power.

That last bullet is particularly important. Some digital cameras come with their own AC adapters, while for others it’s an optional accessory. Check the camera body for an AC adapter connector. If you can connect the camera to a wall outlet, especially during image transfers to the PC, you can significantly extend the length of your battery’s life.

C. Memory Storage
Think of the memory in your camera like film. Memory cards store your digital images for you. The more memory your camera has, the more images it can store. Your camera includes a memory card with some memory capacity (such as 8MB or 16MB) that, when inserted in the camera, stores images. When it’s full, you can remove this card and insert another card for additional storage. You can use the connection cable that came with your camera to transfer images to the PC, or use a memory cardto insert the memory into your PC as if it were a floppy disk.

The four kinds of memory cards in use today are
- Smart Media
- Compact Flash
- Memory Stick
- Secure Digital

How many images you can fit on a memory card has nothing to do with the kind of memory card. All that matters is the resolution of the images and the memory card capacity.

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