Digital Cameras Made Easy Instructional Training DVD

Rating:
Summary: Great for mom & dad
Review: I recently purchased a copy of this DVD for my parents (now in their 60's) and it helped conquer their digital fears and made them competent digital photographers in a very short time. Now we speak the same language. Wish there was a DVD that made using computers easy - they could use that now!

I'd recommend this for anyone who has limited knowledge of digital photography and sharing photos online. It walks you through everything!

Rating:
Summary: Why a DVD? (because it's lighter than a brick)
Review: Watching a DVD did not seem like a way to learn a lot about digital cameras, but I have a lot of problems, a computer with a lot of programs that I don't totally comprehend, a scanner that might need to have its software program reloaded in the computer before I scan another picture, a small digital camera that is capable of recording ten-second videos about the size of music videos that dial-up modem computers can stream from the internet, and watching this DVD seemed like a logical way to find out how much I do know before I decided which problems I might be capable of solving.

First, the DVD says to know what use you plan before buying a camera, so the pictures the camera takes will be suitable for what you want to do. I already have a small but versatile camera, and I can transfer pictures from some of the photo programs on my computer to the e-mail messages I write, so I have often done that in the last year. One picture I took today was 640 pixels x 480 pixels, which this DVD calls just fair for making prints, but it is a size that I can send fast enough that my computer does not disconnect from the internet in the middle of the process. My computer tells me that the resolution for that image was 200 dpi. This DVD recommends having a better camera, capable of several megapixels, and setting the resolution to 300 for printing the pictures. My pictures aren't that good anyway, since I am rarely steady enough to keep the camera still while the picture is going into memory.

My camera does not use memory cards, so the information on this DVD was useful in case I ever decide that I need a camera that can take more pictures than I currently need to download whenever I reach the limit. This DVD talks about using GIFF (256 colors) files for internet pictures, jpg and jpeg files for standard picture size prints, or TIFF uncompressed files for cameras and memory cards that have extremely large capacities. Anyone who plans to get a 4 or 5 megapixel camera and take pictures for larger than 8 x 10 prints should listen very carefully to what this DVD says about memory requirements, compression, and why you are likely to get better quality prints from a professional service or even ordering prints over the internet than trying to maintain the printing equipment for doing it all yourself. I tried printing a large number of scanned images a few times. I bought a printer which should be good enough to knock the socks off of anyone who reads photocopies all day long, but printing pictures can create hassles that even this DVD does not delve into. As the DVD says, if it seems like you are spending more to get prints of your digital pictures, maybe you have more prints from your memory card than you used to get with a roll of film.

This DVD does not say anything about using digital cameras for videos. Read the manual for whatever camera you get, and start with the computer programs that come with the camera. I have never needed extra batteries for my camera, but I have a primitive viewfinder that gives me no indication where the edge of the picture will be. A camera that shows the picture will use a lot more power, and this DVD warns camera users that the batteries can run down while the would-be photographer is running through the camera's menu looking for whatever feature ought to be on.

The visual aspect of this DVD is not distracting. A little live action shows one guy talking, an assortment of cameras, then a few pictures. Changing the brightness and contrast for digital prints is one area that has rarely been helpful for me because, although I take a lot of underexposed pictures, I tend to like them that way. What this DVD calls brighter pictures look faded to me, with air replacing the deep brown tints that fill the shadows of the original pictures. I only brighten things that are too dark to see, but prone thinkers might agree with this DVD that brighter pictures look better. If you want great pictures, this DVD says you do not need a digital zoom on the camera. You can use an optical zoom to make a picture look closer, but digital zoom can't make the picture any sharper. It might take an experimental photographer a long time to discover all the things this DVD explains quickly about how weak the camera's built-in flash is likely to be, and who ought to have a camera with the external flash feature. I haven't taken any digital flash pictures yet, and I'm more likely to scan something or make movies before I do.

If you want to check this DVD's figures against information from some manufacturer, this DVD is recommending a minimum of 1.3 megapixel camera for 1280 x 960 pixels printing good at 3 inches by 4 inches, and a 2.1 megapixel camera for 1600 x 1200 pixel pictures, though a 3 megapixel camera should be used for 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 prints, and a 4 or 5 megapixel camera would produce clear larger prints or posters. I also think transferring every good set of pictures to a CD is worth doing in a format large enough to fill a computer screen, so anyone who is interested can see all the pictures one at a time. I took some pictures in the park that look like a big lawn, but if you can get close enough to anything to make it fill a computer screen, you might get a good picture.