How to Explore Your $LR Digital Camera - Its Options

Now why do I say that?

To me the real reason is obvious, there are a whole hell of a lot of SLR camera, from never taken out of the box, to used once or twice, which have all ended up in somebodies estate or being turfed out for the next seasons, expensive paperweight.

Well if that is what you want I can give my home address and you can send them to me as I can certainly find a whole lot of use for them, as would any serious shutterbug who loves photography.

It burns me, to see top range equipment used on one overseas holiday to be replaced upon return by a newer model becouse of a couple of features that will not even be used.

Having got that off my chest, if you enjoy photography, have been taking photos, putting together some sort of theme, or just shooting as if there is no tomorrow, you probably have started your journey into digital with point and shoots. Now Ready For the The Big Guns

Nothing wrong with that.

Yor Digital camera takes a memory chip, that retains the details in pixels of what has been registed on frame. The frame size and quality you control, all this is covered in your manual, suffice to say the larger the size and the finer the quality, will result in a higher resolution final output.

This would also have a direct infuence on the number of pictures you would be able to fit on one "Film"' or CF/SD Card.
What types of "film" is it that your digital camera takes. However this is dictated to you by the Camera itself, so therefore, you do not have any choice in that department. Note again THIS DOES NOT COME WITH THE CAMERA. Hopefully your sales assistant would also have said something, before you had left the Camera Store. Oops, unless that is of course you have not bought it from your Hyper type of store, a big noNo when buying a SLR for the 1st time, unless , you have a fundi with you. SO CHECK THIS TINY DETAIL BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE STORE.

The only choice on the film that you have there is the size, this is not the physical dimensionsion of the memory card, but rather the Gigabytes or (GB) of storage your card can hold.

Try and get a couple of big ones around 16GB+ do not choose the cheapest make, so go for what the pros use, read up a couple magazines and like a couple of Socialpages regulars, especially those whose photos attract you.

The message that I am trying to put across here is do a bit of homework before you go in and lay out this on type of investment.

Speak, read, if possible even get someone to lend you his camera for a day or so,

There you would have less chance than borrowing his wife or current girfriend, however, you definitely would not get the camera, maybe the other!

If I was asked to put together my wish list to really upgrade my equipement to meet my needs.

It would be quite simple, and relatively small, as my needs are fairly modest by a lot of other photographers that I know.

A paid full time resident photographer for a National Restaurant, involved with the Interior Decorators as well as Menu Planner, right down to the food assembly manual. Or something similar in the Hospitality Industry.

I would like another camera body, same make and model.

A 2x converter

1 of 70mm-400mm zoom lens

1 of 70mm-300mm zoom

A Dell Laptop

4 batteries

10 x 63GB Mem cards

At least 8 TG of storage

Somebody to drive me around to all the places I would like to go too to do the shoots I need to do.

My Total Equipement, comprises of:-

Bag, (I call it my Camara bag), which is actually a travel cosmetic bag bag, well padded, adequate number of pockets for bits and pieces of parephanalia.

The reason for this is, when you are carrying a camera bag while traveling it is like carrying a red flag flg in a bull ring. In one of my former places of work, one of my reponsibilities was to enlighten our overseas counterparts, on what and what not to do in our fare country and cities, this was one of the tips I raised, the other was loose the branded neck strap and either go with a no name or the cheapest type.

I noticed that this has beome a discussion point in several of the photo sites.

I have very mini tripod,

A bean bag (Hey if snipers can use it to steady theier shot, dont see why not, I am only working at a heck of lot slower speeds.

A Point and shoot camara. some times you do not always have the time to catch two things happwning. A quick grab shot, hey it does happen. If you read my hub on Perimeters and Parameters, 99,9% of my photography requires a tripod,so as to reduce my shake, so sometimes, i do need that extra light weight quick camera. Sometimes it gives me a quick colour reference point in post shoot editing as these are very much like you old poloriod film.

SLR Camara with 70mm - 300mm attached. As Majority of my work is fairly distanced or very close up, a great macro fascility on this lens.

Fully charged battery in camera

My Battery charger

2GB Memory Card

18mm - 55mm lens for the SLR

4GB Data Traveler, There are always digital photo shops around.

My light weight tripod in the car.