A Guide to Disposable Digital Cameras

A Guide to Disposable Digital Cameras

Disposable Cameras (also called single-use cameras) first came on the market as film cameras.  You would take the entire camera back where you bought it and they would crack it open, take out the film and process it, resulting in photos that were virtually indistinguishable from photos taken with a more conventional camera.  Now, following the trends in conventional cameras, there is a choice between using film or digital disposable cameras. 

Some people think digital cameras are too hard to use; the disposable digital cameras offer a solution.  Disposable digital cameras still have all of the great features that attract people to digital cameras such viewing your pictures before printing and photo manipulation. With a disposable digital camera, you get a flash, a timer, and a viewing monitor (depending on the model you buy).  This means that you can see whether you want to take the picture over or not, as you also have the ability to delete an unwanted photo, and retake it if you have the opportunity.  Additionally, a free picture CD is usually included with your prints in a disposable digital camera package.

Does a disposable digital camera offer the same features as a regular digital camera? It does offer the most frequently used features, but you will not get zoom or night shots, or most of the other bells and whistles that come with a $400.00 camera. But disposable digital cameras do not cost anywhere near $400, and they do allow you to leave your valuable cameras safe at home and still have the technology that you may crave in a camera for between $10.00 and $20.00, and sometimes even cheaper.

However, you cannot connect your disposable digital camera to your PC or Mac. The photos must be developed at a retailer that provides the proper equipment for your particular brand of disposable digital camera.  This may actually be a plus for the technologically challenged, though, since you don't have to hook up the wire, crop, fix the color -- no need to waste hours in front of a computer, as it's all done for you.  Your time is valuable

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A Guide To Buying A Digital Camera Equipment

A Guide To Buying A Digital Camera Equipment

How to Buy Digital Camera Equipment

There are so many digital cameras that it can be confusing trying to buy digital camera equipment. Here are some tips to help you decide which the best choice is for you and buy digital camera equipment that you will get the best results with:

• The first step before you buy digital camera equipment is to set a basic budget on how much money you want to spend. You do need to be realistic about the fact you won't be able to get the best of every feature, as you may have to make tradeoffs when you actually buy digital camera equipment.

• Your experience level has to have a big influence in your decision to buy digital camera equipment. There is no point in buying too much buy digital camera equipment than you can actually use. For a novice you should buy digital camera equipment that is point and shoot so that you don’t have to worry about manually changing any settings. Digital zoom is not as important a part in the process of choosing to buy digital camera equipment as you may first think. Basically it just means that the camera crops the picture and gives you the center piece of it. You do not need to buy digital camera equipment that does this as you can do it better yourself after you take the picture. You can usually move closer to the subject anyway and to buy digital camera equipment that includes an optical zoom can add a lot of unnecessary cost and weight to the camera. Of course, expert photographers will want to buy digital camera equipment that gives them more manual control over the exposure process.

• Next you need to consider what you will use your camera to capture before you set out to buy digital camera equipment. A fast shutter speed is necessary for moving subjects. You can also buy digital camera equipment that has special features to enable you to take multiple pictures in quick succession for high-action pictures.

• There are a number of helpful websites that give reviews on photographic products to help you decide on the best camera for your needs before you buy digital camera equipment. Of course, you can also ask friends and family about their digital camera choices. Price comparison websites are also essential to help you to buy digital camera equipment at the best possible prices. Remember that when you buy digital camera equipment there are often a list of extras that you may want to purchase, including batteries and memory cards.

Don't be tempted to go for a trendy-looking, colorful camera if you really want to buy a less cool looking one that does more of what you want. Make sure that you have got as many of the features that you wanted to have in the first place and haven't compromised too much on them for the sake of a few extra dollars. It is important to ensure that you buy digital camera equipment that you are happy with and enables you to take the photographs that you want.

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A Custom Photo Purse: A Great Gift for New Moms

A Custom Photo Purse: A Great Gift for New Moms

When a woman becomes a mother, whether it be for the first time or not, life changes at that very moment in time. When a mother has a child there is pride that is associated with that child.  The pride associated with having a healthy baby boy or girl is amazing, but it is hard to put into words.  As much as a mother would love to spend every minute with their child there are many who are unable to.  When life starts calling there are many parents who are required to place their infants into childcare.  Leaving a child behind, even only for a little while, can be heartbreaking, but what if there was a way to reduce that heartbreak even just a little bit?

When a mother returns to work for the first time after having a child it is likely that she will take a number of photographs with her.  Photographs are a great way for mothers to always keep their child in their thoughts, but there is a newer more modern way.  A custom photo purse is one of the newest ways to bring photographs alive and they can literally be carried everywhere you go.

A custom photo purse is created by using a special purse that is able to have a photograph constructed on a portion of it.  The purses used to create a custom photo purse often come in a wide variety of different styles and sizes.  It is possible for color or black and white photos to be constructed on a purse.  There are only a small number of limitations; therefore, creating a custom photo purse is great way to help brighten up any mother’s day.

If you are a new mother yourself or know a new mother you are encourage to consider purchasing them a custom photo purse. For a reasonable price it is possible to turn a baby photo or a family photo into a custom photo purse. There are a wide number of companies or individuals who specialize in making custom photo purses.  This means that different individuals may have different purse styles or design options. While it may not always occur, it is often possible to select not only the style of the purse, but the interior and exterior border colors as well.  This feature truly makes a photo purse a custom photo purse.

Going back to work after having a child is one of the hardest and most painful things for a mother to do.  Almost always the child is being cared for and it is the mother that is suffering the most. With a custom photo purse you can help a friend or family member cope with their return to work.

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A Brief History Of Photography

A Brief History Of Photography

For centuries images have been projected onto surfaces. The camera obscura and the camera lucida were used by artists to trace scenes as early as the 16th century. These early cameras did not fix an image in time; they only projected what passed through an opening in the wall of a darkened room onto a surface. In effect, the entire room was turned into a large pinhole camera. Indeed, the phrase camera obscura literally means "darkened room," and it is after these darkened rooms that all modern cameras have been named.

The first photograph is considered to be an image produced in 1826 by the French inventor Nic้phore Ni้pce on a polished pewter plate covered with a petroleum derivative called bitumen of Judea. It was produced with a camera, and required an eight hour exposure in bright sunshine. However this process turned out to be a dead end and Ni้pce began experimenting with silver compounds based on a Johann Heinrich Schultz discovery in 1724 that a silver and chalk mixture darkens when exposed to light.

Ni้pce, in Chalon-sur-Sa๔ne, and the artist Louis Daguerre, in Paris, refined the existing silver process in a partnership. In 1833 Ni้pce died of a stroke, leaving his notes to Daguerre. While he had no scientific background, Daguerre made two pivotal contributions to the process.

He discovered that by exposing the silver first to iodine vapour, before exposure to light, and then to mercury fumes after the photograph was taken, a latent image could be formed and made visible. By then bathing the plate in a salt bath the image could be fixed.

In 1839 Daguerre announced that he had invented a process using silver on a copper plate called the Daguerreotype. A similar process is still used today for Polaroids. The French government bought the patent and immediately made it public domain.

Across the English Channel, William Fox Talbot had earlier discovered another means to fix a silver process image but had kept it secret. After reading about Daguerre's invention Talbot refined his process, so that it might be fast enough to take photographs of people as Daguerre had done and by 1840 he had invented the calotype process.

He coated paper sheets with silver chloride to create an intermediate negative image. Unlike a daguerreotype a calotype negative could be used to reproduce positive prints, like most chemical films do today. Talbot patented this process which greatly limited its adoption.

He spent the rest of his life in lawsuits defending the patent until he gave up on photography altogether. But later this process was refined by George Eastman and is today the basic technology used by chemical film cameras. Hippolyte Bayard also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so was not recognized as its inventor.

In the darkroomIn 1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process. It was the process used by Lewis Carroll.

Slovene Janez Puhar invented the technical procedure for making photographs on glass in 1841. The invention was recognized on July 17th 1852 in Paris by the Acad้mie Nationale Agricole, Manufacturi่re et Commerciale.

The Daguerreotype proved popular in responding to the demand for portraiture emerging from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution. This demand, that could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, may well have been the push for the development of photography.

However daguerreotypes, while beautiful, were fragile and difficult to copy. A single photograph taken in a portrait studio could cost US$1000 in 2006 dollars. Photographers also encouraged chemists to refine the process of making many copies cheaply, which eventually led them back to Talbot's process. Ultimately, the modern photographic process came about from a series of refinements and improvements in the first 20 years.

In 1884 George Eastman, of Rochester, New York, developed dry gel on paper, or film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July of 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others. Photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of Kodak Brownie.

Since then color film has become standard, as well as automatic focus and automatic exposure. Digital recording of images is becoming increasingly common, as digital cameras allow instant previews on LCD screens and the resolution of top of the range models has exceeded high quality 35mm film while lower resolution models have become affordable. For the enthusiast photographer processing black and white film, little has changed since the introduction of the 35mm film Leica camera in 1925.

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8 Tips For Better Digital Photos

8 Tips For Better Digital Photos

Whether you consider yourself an amateur photographer, or you just want to create better family photos, there are many things you can do to get better photos. Here are some easy tips to use the next time you head out with your digital camera.

Even a beginner can take professional-looking photos - suitable for framing.

Be Prepared

Keep all your photography equipment ready for use. Collect everything you’ll need into one place. A camera bag is ideal, because it keeps all your stuff together and lets you carry it all with you. Everything in its place. A good camera bag will let you organize a miniature tripod, extra battereis, memory cards, etc. - even a plastic bag or waterproof housing to protect your camera in wet weather.

Hold your Camera Steady

Blurry photos are almost always the result of camera movement. Just your own unsteadiness, causes your camera to shake enough to blur your pictures.

So steady yourself and your camera before you take the shot.

Plant your feet firmly on the ground and tuck your elbows in close to your sides. Instead of using the LCD viewer, steady your camera against your forehead and frame the shot using your camera’s viewfinder. You can also steady your upper body by leaning against a wall or a tree. Or totally eliminate any camera movement by using a tripod.

Once you’re all set, gently press the shutter release in one motion. Pressing the shutter release too hard could jerk the camera downward.

Get Closer

One difference in “snapshots” and really great photos is the composition of the shot. Unless you’re shooting an outdoor landscape, you can improve most photos just by getting closer to your subject. Depending on the situation, you can physically move closer to your subject, or use the zoom feature on your camera for the same effect. Try to get within a few feet of your subject so you eliminate most of the background. You’ll like the results.

Take more Pictures

Even professionals take loads of shots of the same subject - to get just a few that they will use. With a digital camera, you can delete the images you don’t like, and only print the winners - so don’t hesitate to take several shots of the same subject. Change the angle of the shot. Get a little closer. Adjust the lighting.

Why not fill the entire memory card with pictures of your kid at the pool, or your daughter in her cap and gown? The more pictures you take, the better the odds that you’ll get a few shots that will really thrill you.

Vary the Lighting

Using natural light will give better skin tones when photographing people, so try not to use the flash if you don’t have to. Outdoor daylight shots are easy, but you’ll have to be a little more creative when shooting indoors. Try using the light coming in from a window for warmer tones than you would get using the flash.

Experiment with natural lighting. You can get stronger shadows by moving your subject closer to a window, and turning your subject can create more dramatic shadows.

Eliminate Red-Eye

Red-eye is the result of light passing through your subject’s eye and reflecting back. You’ll get it more often when using your flash, just because the light from the flash isn’t as diffused as natural light. So the first tip for eliminating red-eye is simply to avoid using your flash when you don’t absolutely have to.

Another way to reduce red-eye is to have your subject look anywhere but at the camera. This reduces red-eye because any reflection isn’t directed back at your camera lens.

If you have to use the flash, some digital cameras have a built-in feature to automatically remove red-eye. Use it.

Go for Candid

Instead of posing two (or more) people looking directly at the camera, get a shot of them interacting with one another. Even two people having a conversation is more interesting than having them stand next to each other facing the camera. Some of the best professional portraits have the subject captured deep in thought, with their attention focused inward, rather than on the camera lens.

It makes a more interesting shot. Your portrait will look more natural - less posed.

Create a Scene

Putting your subject in the center of a photo is just boring. You’ll get a much more pleasing result if you place your subject off center when you frame the shot.

This is a truly professional technique. Place your subject so that they occupy 1/3 to 1/2 of the total composition, but NOT at the exact center of the frame. Capture an interesting background object in the rest of the frame.

Anybody can practice these techniques. They’re easy and you’ll get better, more professional photos.

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7 Attributes of a Successful Fashion Model

7 Attributes of a Successful Fashion Model

Have you ever looked at a successful model and said, "I am just as beautiful as this girl so I think I'll become a supermodel."

I would like to clarify one thing and please listen carefully ...

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A NATURAL-BORN MODEL!!!

Yes, some people have a natural beauty and some learn more quickly than others. I'll agree that these attributes are important. But, I'll say it again - There is no such thing as a natural-born model.

If you believe this, let me ask you a question. Do you believe there is such a thing as a natural-born surgeon? Do you think that the most famous surgeon in the medical profession was born to be a doctor? I guess when he was delivered the doctor who brought him into this world said, "Look!!! It's a surgeon!!" I don't think so.

For this man to become this famous surgeon, it took many years of education, internship, and watching other doctors before he was even considered to do actual surgery. I'm really glad he did, aren't you?

And, even after all these grueling years this doctor still was not guaranteed to become well-known in the medical industry.

The point I'm trying to make is that, modeling can be a rewarding profession but it does require some effort on your part.

The following are some of the attributes of successful models ..

Learning ability and intelligence
Self confidence
Willingness to travel and leave friends and family behind
Good organization skills
A healthy body and lots of get-up-and-go!
A model who is comfortable in setting goals and not afraid to go after them with a dogged determination
Resistance to peer pressure - Stay drug and alcohol free
Don't just read these attributes. Study them, learn them, and make them a part of your own personality traits. If you don't have them at first, pretend that you do.

Remember, you will become what you think and the way that you act. You're not lying when you say, "I am in the process of writing down my goals for modeling and on my way to becoming successful." You're just telling the truth in advance!!

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5 Ways To Earn Money With Digital Cameras & Photo Printers

5 Ways To Earn Money With Digital Cameras & Photo Printers

When it comes to the internet and the advancements of modern technology, the revenue generating options are truly unlimited. One way that many people are finding great success as entrepreneurs is through the use of their digital cameras and photo printers. Whether you use your digital knowledge to enter photo contests using images taken with your digital camera or choose to start an online auction business, the use of a both camera and photo printer are essential.

With entrepreneurship in mind, the following five tips may help to get you started on the road to success using nothing more than your digital camera and photo printer.

$Start an eBay business and use your digital camera to take pictures for inclusion in your auctions. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much money will it be worth for your auction? After all, would you buy something without seeing it?

$Become an amateur photographer using your digital camera and print out the images using a realistic photo printer, which can use either black or color ink.

$Create personalized calendars by taking a photo with your digital camera, incorporating it into a calendar creation program and print them out using a photo printer. These are extremely popular at craft shows and flea markets.

$Take photos using your digital camera and incorporate them into a program that manipulates photos. You can even take two photos and merge them together. For instance, take a photo of two sunflowers and another of your two best friends. Download the images from your digital camera onto the computer and manipulate them so that the faces of your two best friends are inside of the sunflowers. Print this photo using your photo printer and use it as an example of your new digital imagery business. These, too, are extremely popular at craft shows.

$Using nothing more than a digital camera and quality photo printer, you can work in the publishing industry. Several years ago, a national magazine cover featuring a well-known celebrity was created with nothing more than a personal photo printer. The magazine office was unable to make an e-mailed image work, so they enlisted the help of a writer who enlarged the photo and printed it out using a color photo printer. The print was then mailed to the magazine’s office, who then used the image as their full-color cover picture.

When purchasing any type of electronics, including digital cameras and photo printers, always pay close attention to the warranty and make sure that you are buying a quality name in technology. Depending on your intended use, you may want to select a digital camera with a high pixel count and a photo printer capable of producing high DPI (dots per inch) images. Both will allow for better quality and more realistic photo creations.

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5 Tips To Help You Master Digital Photography

5 Tips To Help You Master Digital Photography

Have you already mastered the art of taking photos without ‘red-eye’ syndrome? Are there some pictures that you know you should have turned out a lot better than they did? It happens to all of us – even the expert photographers.

Here are five tips to help you move from beginner to master of digital photography, whether you’re using your cell phone or a point-and-shoot camera to snap shots.

Compose Carefully

One of the most basic digital photography tips is to pay attention to what’s in the frame of the viewfinder. Fill the frame. Nothing but blue sky, for instance, behind a single subject throws off the proportions of the photo and decreases interest. You can also turn the camera sideways to see if a vertical photo might have more impact than a horizontal shot of the same subject.

You can also try positioning your subject off to the side, rather than in the center of the photograph.

Take Great Close up Photos

Your digital camera has a “macro mode” – think of it as a super magnifying glass. An extreme close up of something like flower petals can bring out textures that you never knew existed, and will add excitement to your photos. Play with this feature, you will find dozens of ways to use it to enhance your pictures.

Buy a Tripod

Digital cameras are prone to blurry photographs if your hands shake even a little bit. Several companies manufacture light, portable, inexpensive versions. Digital photography tips like this can save you hours of frustration and preserve otherwise perfect shots.

Get Active

Take your shot from the top of a teeter-totter, off the side of the boat, or standing on your head. Thinking outside the box can really pay off in unexpected ways. You will truly get once in a lifetime shots by adding a bit of creativity to your thinking.

Take a Class

Are you still hungry for digital photography tips? There’s nothing like practice to improve your photography – except practice plus experience gained by learning from a pro. You can find photography classes online, at your local recreation centers, and community colleges.

Becoming an expert at digital photography takes time; you won’t become a professional photographer in your first week. Just keep trying new methods each time you use your camera, and before long, your friends and family will be admiring your newfound skills.

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5 Tips For Shooting Winter Landscapes.

5 Tips For Shooting Winter Landscapes.

Winter brings out the toughest elements in our climate, with many people putting away their camera bags ‘till early spring. But, if you do put away your camera you are missing out on the raw beauty that this magical season brings.

Here are a few tips to make the trip more enjoyable.

1. Wear the right clothes: It’s very important to wrap up warm when out shooting winter images. The winter season brings the toughest elements, so if you are planning to spend a few days out and about always be well prepared.

2. Watch the weather: It’s very important to know what the weather is going to be like. You don’t want to travel for a couple of hours and then hear a weather report that tells you that: the weather is wet for the next few days.  During the winter months the weather can dramatically change in a matter of hours.

It’s always advisable to let someone know where you are going and which route you’re planning to take. If you do get injured or ever caught in a storm someone may be able to help.


3. Carry only what you need: Carry only the essentials. You don’t need to upload your camera bag with every piece of equipment you own. If you are going to be out taking pictures all day you are much better off going as light as possible.  Carrying a light load will also help preserve energy.  You could be climbing icy rocks or crossing snow filled hills; a warm flask would serve you a lot better than a third camera.


4. Look for detail: Snow, ice and frost bring out texture and atmosphere in most subjects.  The early frosty morning is an ideal time for close-up photography. The frosty morning also brings out patterns in our landscapes. 

Take care where you place your camera: if you are taking pictures early in the morning try placing it at oblique angles to the sun - this will give your images strong shadows. This will also add mood to your landscape images.  Once you have found the perfect spot pay extra attention to foreground interest as this will  add depth to your image.

5. Expose carefully: Snow and ice are extremely difficult to expose properly. Snow usually confuses your cameras metering system or your hand held light meter. When you take a light reading from snow you will automatically get an underexposed image. The meter will record the snow as grey.

Now is the time to start bracketing your shots.   If you bracket your shots add 1 - 2 stops of light to compensate for your light meter reading. Using an 18% grey card, which I described in a previous article, should also give you a perfect light reading.

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4 Great Camera Tips for Enhanced Digital Photos!!

4 Great Camera Tips for Enhanced Digital Photos!!

Just bought a new camera ?? And very excited to start taking photos with your new gadget??

But Alas, why does the picture not look as good as you wanted to !! Fret no more, stay tuned below for 4 new tricks to taking more interesting and memorable photos.


Trick #1 - Try out different camera exposure settings
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By exploring the exposure settings of your camera, you could have pictures looking more brilliant with 0.5 to 2 stops underexposed in bright surroundings, and scenes appearing more clear with some overexposure. Just by simple tuning of the exposure level, you can create

pictures which can bring out different moods from people viewing it. Thats why the quote "A Picture Says A Thousand Words" is very true indeed ! For newbies, try out bracketing (i.e: Take the same photos with different exposure levels) and take your favorite pick from them.


Trick #2 - Bring out some creative blur in photos
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By introducing some well-planned blur in photos, you can bring across certain important features, while using the rest as good complement, providing an overall nice touch. This can be done in 2 basic types.

First type is depth-of-field blur. Varying the lens aperture between 0.4 to 1.4 can create a lovely, soft background blur which bring sharp focus to the subject in the foreground.

Second type is movement blur. Done by setting the camera exposure on shutter priority, and keep it slow so as to capture interesting streaks as the subject moves in front of the camera.


Trick #3 - Create something out of nothing !!
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What does it means? This exercise encourages you to take a step back and rethink how you can take wonderful pictures with things you already encountered on a daily basis.

One approach is to create your shot around the common elements around you such as lines, space and patterns. This can mean anything from the roads to the bridges, the trees, the railings, etc.. You start to see more possibilities and room for creativity.


Trick #4 - Take Unique Photos !!
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Try to avoid taking photos from already popular places where everyone else has taken before, it will not be fresh, and the excitement is also much diminished. Try out new extreme photography (for example: underwater photography), or it could be as easy as shooting through thick glasses for that extra 3D feel, or shooting reflections of objects in water or other reflective objects.

Hope you enjoy this article

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10 Tips In Better Photography

10 Tips In Better Photography

Taking a good photo isn’t as hard as you may think. You don’t need the most expensive camera or years of experience, just 10 simple tips.

Enjoy!

Tip 1 - Use All Your Available Space

Don't be afraid to use all the space in your photo. If you want to take a picture of something, it's ok for it to take up the whole shot with no or very little background showing. Keep distractions out of your shot


Tip 2 - Study Forms

This is a vital aspect to photography. Understanding forms in your photos. Don't see an object, she its shape and its form and find the best angle to photograph it from. Form is all around us and I highly suggest you read as many books on it as possible.


Tip 3 - Motion In Your Photos

Never have motion in your photos if you are photographing a still object. If there is something moving while you are trying to photograph a stationery object, your photo won't turn out anywhere near as well. Also never put a horizon line in the center of your frame.


Tip 4 - Learn To Use Contrasts Between Colors.

Some of the best photos have shades of white, gray and black. You can take great shots with just one color on your subject, but the contrasts between colors in a shot is what makes you a great photographer.


Tip 5 - Get Closer To Your Subject

This is one of the biggest mistakes most photographers make, not getting close enough to their subject. Get up and personal and close the distance gap. You can always reshape and resize a good shot but you can't continue to blowup a distant object.


Tip 6 - Shutter Lag

Shooting action shots with digital camera's can be tricky due to shutter lags. What this means is, when you press the button to take the photo, it can take up to a second for the shutter to take a photo, by that time what you were photographing would have moved or changed somehow.  This means you have to compensate for shutter lag by predicting what your subject is going to do and taking the photo just before it takes the action you want. More expensive digital cameras don't have this problem.


Tip 7 - Pan

If you are taking an action shot and your shutter speed is slow, pan with the object. Follow through with the subject, from start to finish and one of those shots will be a winner. You have more chance of getting a good shot if you take more then one photo.


Tip 8 - Continuous Shots

To pan like I suggested above you will need a camera that does continuous shots and doesn’t need to stop and process after every shot.


Tip 9 - How To Take Fantastic Night Time Shots

Night time shots can be spectacular, almost magical.... if done right! If not they can look horrible. Really horrible. Without adequate lighting, even good camera's can turn out crappy photos if the photographer doesn't know what he or she is doing.


Tip 10 - Study Your Manual

If your digital camera has a special night time mode, read the manual and follow their instructions on how to use it properly.

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