A. There are two approaches to digital photography, one way is to take photos on a digital camera and transfer them straight to your computer and is totally digital from taking the picture to printing it out. This gives the best quality at reasonable cost.
The other way is to use a scanner and a conventional film camera. This can give very high quality results when using a proffesional film scanner and a high qaulity camera. The main drawback is the high cost of buying the equipment.
Flatbed scanners present a cheaper alternative but cannot achieve the same quality because the print you are scanning is already a copy of the negative and therefore lower quality. Also the scans cannot be enlarged without serious loss of image qualoity because there is not enough detail in the print.
This method can only be recommended for scanning snapshots for emailing or where the original negative is not available.

Q. What equipment do I need?
A. If you take the completely digital approach all you need is a digital camera, plus an inkjet printer if you want to print out your photos.

Q. Which camera would you recommend for a beginner?
A. The make I usually recommend is Kodak, because they are designed to be easy to use by anyone. The base model in the range is the CX4210. This is an excellent camera for the beginner, capable of taking very good quality picture and represents excellent value for money.
For someone wanting a bit more control over the picture taking process one of the cameras from the Canon range would be more suitable, such as the Canon A70. Wheras the Kodak CX4210 will produce excellent prints up to about 7" x 5", the photos from the Canon A70 can be printed at A4 or even larger at very good quality.

Q. What about a printer?
A. I would reccommend an Epson inkjet printer. Epson have been making photo quality printers for longer than anyone else and their printers are first class.
Other manufacturers such as Lexmark and Hewlett Packard also make good photo quality printers but tend to be more expensive to run.

Q. What is a megapixel?
A. A pixel is the smallest element of a digital picture, resembling a small dot. A megapixel is one million pixels, so the more megapixels a camera can produce the more detail will be present in the resulting photos.

Q. How many megapixels do I really need?
A. It all depends on what you want to do with your photos. For snapshots and prints up to about 7" x 5" a 2 megapixel cxamera will be quite sufficient. If you regularly need to make larger prints a 3 megapixel camera can produse enough detail for a realistic looking photo at up to A4 size. For even larger prints than this you need at least 4 megapixels to capture enough detail.

Q. Do I need any special software?
A. You may be lucky and have suitable image editing software on your computer already, or else your new digital camera may come bundled with a basic program. If not I would recommend looking at Adobe Photoshop Elements 2. This is a superb program, capable of very advanced image editing and is very good value for money.

Q. So how much is this all going to cost me?
A. The basic system I have described above comes in at under £350. This includes a digital camera, inkjet printer and image editing softare. Just a few years ago a decent digital camera on it's own would have cost more than this, so this represents extremely good value for money. Don't forget that a system like this will actually save you money in the long run, with no more film and processing costs to worry about, it's also very good fun!

Kodak CX4210
Kodak Easyshare Camera Dock
Epson C82 Inkjet Printer
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2
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