Trying Out Macro Mode on Your New Digital Camera

Nature is at its best when you look at it close up, and there are pictures out there just begging to be taken. The closeup or macro mode (usually identified as a flower on the button) is a wonderful way to look at this miniature world!

Few amateurs realize the significance of using this technology in their photography. Think back to being a child and lying in the grass checking out all the little things you see -- each of those things is a photograph.

There is an entire world that you won't see if you don't get close up to it; a world of tiny creatures that can be quite photogenic! You probably don't want to lie on your belly in the grass nowadays, but try turning on the closeup or macro mode on your new digital camera.

Explore the world through a new angle; there are images out there that are just waiting to be photographed by you. Exciting new images like nothing you have ever seen before. Closeup or macro mode is fascinating, and the ease with a digital camera makes it all the more fun to work with.

Look for the closeup or macro mode icon, turn it on, and get as close to the object as you can. When you find something you want to photograph, use the view finder and get right where you want to be for the picture. Hold the shutter button halfway down -- this allows the camera to focus, and the confirmation light lets you know when to take your shot.

Remember that with closeup photography, your depth of field is very shallow. Focus on the part of the object you want to shoot, and allow the rest of the image to be soft; it will be a little fuzzy and out of focus.

Tips on Digital Photography

While digital cameras take excellent pictures, just point and shoot, it is the photographer who makes the shots amazing. No matter how good the camera is, if you aren't willing to put a little effort into them, you will come up with mediocre prints at best.

A little information and a few adjustments and you can create big-time quality photos with the least expensive of digital cameras. Here are a couple of suggestions to help you along your way:

* The default while balance on digital cameras is usually set a little too bright. It can tend to give your photos a cold feeling. This works on most shots, but on some it is just too bright.

Warm it up a little by changing your white balance from auto to cloudy; it is similar to putting a warming filter on the camera. What this does is increase the yellow and reds giving warmer pictures. No more ice!

It may sound funny, but try holdings a pair of sunglasses over the lens is another way to hold down on the white balance, and it is a lot less expensive than those specialty filters. Try a few test photos, and you will be surprised by the differences you can create. Try colored lenses for another effect.

* A quality polarizing filter is something every photographer should have, but if your camera doesn't accommodate filters, try the old sunglasses trick again.
 
Use a quality pair of sunglasses and hold them as close to the camera as you can (without getting the frames in the picture). For landscapes and most outdoor shooting, this reduces the glare and unwanted reflections; your shots have richer color and no glare.

Take a look at scenery with and without your sunglasses, especially the sky, and you will see a big difference; then do the same for your photos. Position yourself with the sun over your shoulder, this give the best polarizing effect.

The Social Impact of Digital Photography

With the outsourcing of compact 35mm cameras to countries such as China, the price of these cameras has dropped. Several companies have eliminated all but the low-end and the very high-end line of 35mm cameras. One well-known company has gotten completely out of the business of creating cameras.

The increasing offers of secondhand cameras that have been refurbished, and the low price of 35mm and APS compact cameras, has further reduced the market for new 35 mm cameras. One company stopped production of a new film camera even though it would later in the year receive an award for "camera of the year."

The last four years in a row, digital cameras have outsold all other types of cameras, but the use of 35mm cameras is increasing in the developing countries. Along with the decline in film cameras is, of course, the lowered sale of film for these cameras.

One of the larger companies will end the production of color film and paper by this March. These decreases have reduced the number of people employed by 1/3 over 20 years earlier. Whether these job losses have been compensated for by the digital industry are unknown.

Technological advances in cameras have, of course, changed the way people view photography. Prior to the 1970s, most people in the US viewed their photos on a slide projector. Color prints followed that, with the simultaneous increase of Internet and email use shortly after. Lower-cost computers and digital photography have dramatically increased the number of digitally formatted photographs.

A dramatic decrease in the sales and production of film and film cameras has followed the increase of viewing images on computers and cell phones. People do, however, still make and look at prints of the photos they take.

In addition to lowered sales of film and film cameras has been the decreased use of film processing, and many department stores are switching to the development of digital film as a means to keep up with the trends. Sales of film, film cameras, and the development of film has seen a dramatic decrease, and many stores that used to sell these items no longer offer them.

The Loss of Image Quality

Fading and loss of image quality has always been a problem with photographs. These losses are usually due to exposure to the sun or inadequate storage of negative, prints, and slides.

This problem has been all but eliminated with digital photography because the data is stored on a computer; the images never lose their quality, fidelity, or detail.  The only way to damage digital images is to rewrite the data, delete the file, corrupt the file's data, or destroy the storage media completely.

Making backups and storing them away from the original source is still the best means of protecting these images and guarantees that the data can always be retrieved.

One concern of those who store digital data professionally, both archivists and historians, is the ever increasing technologies that render today's digital methods obsolete in only a short period of time. Imagine the concern that we are creating a void in which information is being held and will be lost during a decade or era, due to changes in technology that will make this media inaccessible.

Computers are advancing much faster than any of use realizes, and what can be accessed on today's computer may not be accessible on tomorrow's computers. Think back to the different programs on your first PC -- which cannot be accessed with the computer you have today -- and you will get an idea of the concerns they have.

But film will never completely disappear; it will remain available to the enthusiasts, and it will still be in use in the future. In the early 19th century, many felt that photography would take the place of paintings, both portraits and landscapes. However, this never happened.

It is important to remember, however, that there is quite a bit of difference between painting and film, with a small difference between film and digital photography.  One solution would be to transfer your digital photographs each time you purchase new hardware; however, this may not be feasible if you take a great many photographs.

The Importance of Resolution and Compression

You can print a beautiful 8 x 10 quality print from and image recorded at 1127 x 1704 (4 megapixels) or larger. These photos are quite suitable for framing and display, or even for the cover of a well-known magazine. Being close to the action will even allow you to crop the image and still have quality resolution for a good-sized print.

However, if you want a picture the size of a credit card, use 640 x 480 resolutions, no posters, and not what you want on display at your first showing, but great for camera phones!

If you have a massive enough memory card, there is no reason to shoot at low resolution and chance missing a really great shot!  It also allows you to show off your work in a very big way, which should always be a consideration.

When buying your camera, don't fall into the notion that more megapixels are necessarily better; all pixels are not created equal. When items go digital, everyone believes that smaller is better.

But think about this -- pixels used in digital camera sensors are used to record the light in your photos, so doesn't it make sense that larger pixels will record better light?

Carrying this on to its final conclusion, they would also create a better quality digital image. The ability to miniaturize items has led to scientists squeezing more pixels onto an imaging sensor, so they are smaller. What this means is that the sensor is smaller, but the number of pixels stays the same.

The small sensor may be more efficient due to the smaller size; this does not mean it will produce better photos, than larger pixels on a larger sensor.  Check the size of the sensor when you are thinking about purchasing a new digital camera.

Storage on Digital Cameras

The higher-end professional cameras may have microdrives; these are hard drives that are built in the form of a compact flash.  With the use of an adapter, you can use SD cards in a compact flash device. Digital cameras may use a memory card or a flash memory card, which are solid-state electronic storage devices.

In October 1998, Sony introduced the removable flash memory card called the Memory Stick; this term is used to describe the entire family of memory sticks. While the original stored up to 128 MB of data, an 8 GB card is now available that holds two 128 MB banks. There is also a card specifically designed for high-definition stills and video cameras called the Memory Stick Pro-HG.

This form of storage has outlived all other types of digital storage devices, and it isn't known if this is due to the manufacturers continued support of the device, or because of the technology it contains as a storage format.

Gradually taking the place of the memory stick is the flash memory card SD/MMC. Originally they were limited to 2 GB of storage, but are now being replaced with 4 GB cards. A revision was made to the SD standard, which means that all cameras don't recognize the larger storage capacity of the 4 GB cards.

In addition, these cards are formatted in the FAT32 file format, and the older digital cameras use FAT16 format, which contains a 2 GB limit. Camera phones use a MiniSD Card, which is about half the size of the standard memory cards used by digital cameras.

Also available in camera phones is the MicroSD Card, which is about ¼ the size of those in digital cameras.  An even smaller format was the XD-Picture Card developed in 2002. Smart Media, containing 128 MB of memory, at one time competed with the Compact Flash; it is now obsolete and was replaced by the xD picture card.

Storage and Digital Photography

Most of the digital cameras now use flash memory, which is a type of computer memory that can be erased electrically and then reprogrammed. Memory cards are the most frequent type of storage for this technology.

Flash memory is erased and reprogrammed in blocks. When first created, the entire chip had to be erased before it could be reprogrammed. Costing far less than other types of technology, flash memory has become the main technology when large amounts of storage are necessary. Digital cameras, digital audio players and mobile phones all use flash memory technology. However, the early digital cameras like the Sony Mavica used floppy disks as their means of storage.

Digital cameras are data storage devices because they not only record information -- your photos -- but they also process information when connected to your computer or printer. They are considered nonvolatile storage because the date will remain on them even if the power is disconnected from the camera.

Digital photography uses electronic sources to record images as binary data; this makes storage and editing on personal computers much easier. This also allows the photographer to view, edit, and delete photographs immediately, directly on the camera, thus eliminating the necessity of using numerous rolls of film to get one good shot.

Features available in digital cameras are not available in film cameras, causing digital cameras to outsell film cameras. Some of these features include the ability to shoot video and record audio at the same time. Many other devices now include digital photography; the most common of these is the mobile phone.

Digital photography has become popular with many people as it has become easier to use. Schools now teach digital photography as one of the selected courses in most high schools.

Due to their ease of use, digital cameras have become the preferred means of photography among many people who appreciate the ability to take and store hundreds of photos on one small memory card.