By Suzann Dodd, ContributorONE OF the most marvellous peripherals is the digital camera. Although somewhat unsung at the moment, its future is more than bright.
Digital cameras are rated by pixel. When you see colour on your computer screen, you are seeing tiny dots of colour. The more tiny dots, the clearer the picture.
When you buy a digital camera, put your hand in your pocket and go for megapixels, not the crummy kind that is advertised all over the place.
WHY ARE DIGITAL CAMERAS SO GREAT?
Firstly, you never need film and you can reuse whatever method is adopted for saving the photos; whether they are held within the camera's memory or on separate memory sticks.
You can view them on your computer, send them as e-mail and print them out with a good colour printer. A crummy colour printer will give you splotchy stuff but you can get the gist.
For practice, you can start with a cheap camera. Largan makes a really good one for under US$50 but the price is dropping.
At epinions.com you can read reviews of products posted by purchasers. There's reviews of just about everything. Cut through the hype and get to the real. People will post things such as, "This camera is the biggest piece of garbage I've ever wasted money on", as well as, "I couldn't believe the clarity I got with that camera".
So you will get hints of what to avoid and what to buy. Ensure that the camera comes with a USB connection. USBs are the skinny sliver in the back of your computer most of you cannot find. Just about everything is going USB. Nine pin connections are pass.
You won't find many new computers, especially notebooks, with them.
Most digital cameras, good ones, have features previously found on professional jobbies as standard. I've taken pictures of the moon at night with no special lenses, for example.
The days of buying a camera, buying film, having to develop film are over.
Suzann Dodd is a writer and an attorney.
