With Digital Cameras so cheap now, low cost high resolution photography is well and truly here. The cameras are small enough to fit in your pocket, there is no film to buy and process, and the photos can be easily shared by email. Camera

So what do you need? I recommend a 4 Mpixel camera with a 3 times optical zoom. The optical zoom allows you to frame the shot nicely without loosing any resolution. Digtial zoom will also allow you to frame the shot but at the expense of resolution and hence clarity.

Downloading and Managing the photos

Most cameras just plug into the USB port and become another volume (e.g. e:\) on your computer. If this is the case you can copy your files suing windows explorer (or from 'my computer') You can do this the same way that you manipulate files between any computer volumes, if you know how to do this. If you do not know how to do this I recommend you learn how. Alternatively there are automated methods of transferring photos to your computer, but these often do not give you the option to sort and file your photos in a structured manner.

Emailing photos

Windows XP makes it easy to send your photos by email. By right clicking on the photo you can select send to mail recipient and your picture will be reduced in size to email and attached to a newly created email. It is important that you reduce the resolution of you photos for emailing, otherwise you will be sending very large emails that may cause problems at the mail box of the recipient - mail box overflow!.

Saving and Backing up your photos

Soon you will have lots of photos on your hard drive. After all film is cheap right!

The pictures on your hard drive are only as secure as your hard drive, so should be backed up onto other media for safe keeping. Because picture files tend to be large, CDROMs ar a good way of backing up those valuable photos. You will need a CDROM burner and also to know how to use it. Again windows XP comes to the rescue, because it has a very easy to use CDROM writing function. You can simply place a blank CD in the burner, a volume windows opens for the unburnt CD and you simply drop the files into the CD and press the burn button. Easy! You can store up to 600 MB on a CD - that's about 400 photos!

Recommended parts

SONY DSCS40 4.1M PIXEL DIGTAL CAMERA DSCS4 $370 + GST

CDROM burner $100 + GST

Windows XP home (upgrade) $200 + GST

CDROM media 0.50 each

So have fun - take heaps of photos...