How to turn snapshots into cold, hard cash.
It seems that there's something glamorous about being a professional photographer. For me, National Geographic's wildlife photographers were like rock stars; I was a camera groupie even before I was a teenager.
If you, too, have been seduced by the idea of getting paid for your photos, I have some good news for you: Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier to sell your work. In the old days, photographers had to negotiate with stock photo agencies and send negatives through the mail. These days, you can just upload your digital files to online agencies, many of which are friendly to casual photographers who aren't experts at the stock photo sales game. You don't have to be a pro to sell your photos online.
What Is Stock Photography?
That's a good question. Stock photography includes images of landscapes, buildings, landmarks, people, animals, and events that can be sold to and used by a wide variety of media outlets. It's the meat and potatoes of many working photographers.
Stock photos are routinely used in Web sites, magazines, newspapers, corporate publications, and more. The same image can be sold over and over again, because the organizations that buy stock photos don't get exclusive rights. So if you have a great photo of a windsurfer, it could theoretically be sold to a sports magazine, an inspirational poster company, and a Web site--and the stock photo agency does all the work.
Online Stock Photo Agencies
Ready to try your hand at the world of online photo sales? Why not? After all, all it takes is one or two sales and you can call yourself a professional photographer--and it doesn't take a lot of effort, either. Just sign up for an account at an online stock photo agency, upload some photos, and wait.
Two of the best stock photo agencies that I've found are iStockphoto and Shutterstock. Shutterstock has a superb FAQ page. And istockphoto.com has a similar page .
Both iStockphoto and Shutterstock pay photographers for their sales, but the two sites have very different pay structures.
iStockphoto for example, offers royalty rates of 20 percent for most photos--on sales that range from $1 to $40, depending upon print size.
Shutterstock, in contrast, pays 25 cents per sale. That doesn't sound like much--and let's be honest, it's not--but Shutterstock boasts that at 2000 downloads per month, you can rack up $500 per month. In real life, you'll probably see a fraction of that, unless you have a lot of really great photos and can consistently upload new stuff to freshen up your portfolio. A friend of mine claims to have made $300 with Shutterstock in the last three months. That's not bad, especially since he doesn't think of himself as a professional photographer.
What Is a Photo Really Worth?
You might be curious about the going rate for a photo. Should you get $5, $50, or $500 for your work? Are you being ripped off with each quarter that rolls in? Well, the truth is that you're not going to get rich from selling your work online, although print publications often pay a bit better.
If you ever get a note from a magazine or a corporate publication asking to use one of your photos, what's a reasonable amount of money to agree on?
Believe it or not, my 14-year-old daughter was recently contacted by the editors of a small, regional trade magazine in the energy industry. They wanted to use a photo she had taken of a lake and posted, of all places, on imeem.
Off we went to the Stock Photo Price Calculator. Here you can get ballpark numbers for various kinds of publications and photo sizes. If a local magazine offered you $100 to publish one of your photos, for example, I'd take it.
The Old-Fashioned Way
Also, keep in mind that you can still sell your work the old-fashioned way.
I know plenty of folks that print, matte, and frame a slew of their best photos and offer them for sale at local craft fairs and art shows. If you're sufficiently motivated, this can be a really fun way to sell your work. You get to meet real people, chat with them about your photos, and get the satisfaction of physically handing them your work and knowing that it'll probably be displayed in their homes. Also, you're likely to make more on each sale than you would by selling through a Web-based stock photo service. And it gets you outside in the fresh air. What could be better than that?
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: " Flowers in the Sun," by Ashlyn Smith, Redford, Michigan
Ashlyn is 10 years old, and her dad submitted this photo. And we're happy that he did--this scene looks like it could have been captured by an old hand at impressionist photography. She took this shot at the Detroit Zoo with her Canon PowerShot SD200. That's her mom in the background.
Hot Pic of the Month: Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. For August, we chose " Window Kids," by Alex Boyd, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Congratulations to Alex and to everyone else who won a Hot Pic of the Week last month. Keep those entries coming!
http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/126972
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Take Sharper Pictures
How to steady your hands, adjust camera settings, and more.
Based on questions I get from friends, readers, and my wife, it appears that the most vexing problem affecting photographers today doesn't have anything to do with photo editing, flash media cards, or image sensors. Nope, the question I get all the time is, "How do I take sharper photos with my digital camera?"
When my wife asks, I often give her the same answer I'd give to a musician asking how to get to Carnegie Hall: "practice, practice, practice." She's getting tired of my snarkiness, so this week let's look at all the ways to shoot sharper photos.
Steady Hands
The single most important thing you can do to improve your pictures--especially if you're new to photography--is to keep a steadier hand. Specifically, press the shutter release more gently. It takes only a tiny amount of pressure to activate the camera's shutter. Try this: Look in a mirror while you take a picture and watch what happens when you press the shutter release. If you see the camera wobble or jiggle, you're pressing it too hard. The camera should not move at the moment of exposure. Practice in the mirror until you can shoot pictures with minimal camera shake.
Something to Lean On
As I'm sure you know by now, I am a huge fan of tripods; I recommend using them whenever possible. And here's a little secret you might not know: the more megapixels your camera is capable of, the more important it is to use a tripod to get sharp photos. New 10-megapixel cameras have problems with camera shake a lot more often than 4- or 5-megapixel models, because they record much finer detail. If carrying around a tripod is too much trouble, consider a monopod--my wife has a combination monopod/walking stick for hiking, and she loves it--or a bean-bag support like The Pod.
If all else fails, just brace yourself against something, like a door frame. Use common sense, of course, and make sure that what you're bracing against is stable. Trying to stabilize your camera against a sapling on a windy day could introduce unwanted movement. The ground is dependably stable--unless you happen to get caught in an earthquake, of course.
Last week, I wandered through a Japanese garden and snapped some shots of a waterfall at a fairly slow half-second exposure. I didn't have a tripod, so I got down on the ground and positioned my camera on a rock. Despite the agonizingly slow shutter speed, I managed to get some sharp photos, like this one.
Tweak Your Camera Settings
Don't forget that your camera is an ally in your quest for sharp photos. Take advantage of your camera's exposure settings. In general, the faster your shutter speed the better, so use your camera's shutter priority mode (if it has one) and set the fastest shutter speed possible. For tips on using this setting, read " Making the Most of Shutter-Priority Mode," one of my August columns.
If your camera doesn't have a shutter priority mode, then dial in its Action or Sports setting. You might also be able to choose Program mode and then use the camera's adjustment dial to increase the shutter speed while the camera keeps the aperture setting in sync. Of course, a fast shutter speed means you'll have less depth of field in your photos, but depth of field doesn't contribute much to sharpness unless you're taking extreme close-ups (macro photos) of tiny objects. For more on this topic, read " Master Your Camera's Depth of Field," one of my May columns.
In lower light conditions, when the shutter speed is too low to generate sharp prints, you should increase the camera's ISO setting. As you increase the ISO from, say, 100 to 200 to 400, the best available shutter speed increases from 1/15 to 1/30 to 1/60 second, for example. Remember that higher ISO settings add digital noise to your photos, so return the setting to the lowest position when the lighting improves. For more on ISO settings, read " Use ISO to Take Low-Light Photos," one of my January columns.
Sharpen Your Photos Afterwards
Finally, don't forget that you can add sharpness on your PC afterwards. Most digital cameras capture a slightly "soft" photo anyway, and you can use a tool in your favorite image editing program, like Unsharp Mask, to increase contrast and enhance sharpness.
In Corel's Paint Shop Pro, for example, open your photo and choose Adjust, Sharpness, Unsharp Mask from the menu. The default settings are generally just fine; click OK to sharpen your photo.
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: " Tight-Lipped Fellow," by Brian D. Watters, London, Ontario
Brian writes: "With a Canon 20D EOS in hand (including an 18-to-55 mm lens and a Canon 420EX Speedlite with Luminance Bouncer attached), and lying on my stomach in the wet muddy leaves at the edge of a bog, I waited patiently for this little fellow to surface. Surface it did, but not in front of the lens. So I began to move my camera. When I thought everything was just right, the frog dove again. We played this game for about five minutes. Finally, I thought I figured out the pattern, and my little green playmate came up right in front of the lens. Without an active display on the back of the camera, I had no idea if the frog was in focus, but the camera's beep told me something was. This is the end result of my time in the mud."
http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/126978
Based on questions I get from friends, readers, and my wife, it appears that the most vexing problem affecting photographers today doesn't have anything to do with photo editing, flash media cards, or image sensors. Nope, the question I get all the time is, "How do I take sharper photos with my digital camera?"
When my wife asks, I often give her the same answer I'd give to a musician asking how to get to Carnegie Hall: "practice, practice, practice." She's getting tired of my snarkiness, so this week let's look at all the ways to shoot sharper photos.
Steady Hands
The single most important thing you can do to improve your pictures--especially if you're new to photography--is to keep a steadier hand. Specifically, press the shutter release more gently. It takes only a tiny amount of pressure to activate the camera's shutter. Try this: Look in a mirror while you take a picture and watch what happens when you press the shutter release. If you see the camera wobble or jiggle, you're pressing it too hard. The camera should not move at the moment of exposure. Practice in the mirror until you can shoot pictures with minimal camera shake.
Something to Lean On
As I'm sure you know by now, I am a huge fan of tripods; I recommend using them whenever possible. And here's a little secret you might not know: the more megapixels your camera is capable of, the more important it is to use a tripod to get sharp photos. New 10-megapixel cameras have problems with camera shake a lot more often than 4- or 5-megapixel models, because they record much finer detail. If carrying around a tripod is too much trouble, consider a monopod--my wife has a combination monopod/walking stick for hiking, and she loves it--or a bean-bag support like The Pod.
If all else fails, just brace yourself against something, like a door frame. Use common sense, of course, and make sure that what you're bracing against is stable. Trying to stabilize your camera against a sapling on a windy day could introduce unwanted movement. The ground is dependably stable--unless you happen to get caught in an earthquake, of course.
Last week, I wandered through a Japanese garden and snapped some shots of a waterfall at a fairly slow half-second exposure. I didn't have a tripod, so I got down on the ground and positioned my camera on a rock. Despite the agonizingly slow shutter speed, I managed to get some sharp photos, like this one.
Tweak Your Camera Settings
Don't forget that your camera is an ally in your quest for sharp photos. Take advantage of your camera's exposure settings. In general, the faster your shutter speed the better, so use your camera's shutter priority mode (if it has one) and set the fastest shutter speed possible. For tips on using this setting, read " Making the Most of Shutter-Priority Mode," one of my August columns.
If your camera doesn't have a shutter priority mode, then dial in its Action or Sports setting. You might also be able to choose Program mode and then use the camera's adjustment dial to increase the shutter speed while the camera keeps the aperture setting in sync. Of course, a fast shutter speed means you'll have less depth of field in your photos, but depth of field doesn't contribute much to sharpness unless you're taking extreme close-ups (macro photos) of tiny objects. For more on this topic, read " Master Your Camera's Depth of Field," one of my May columns.
In lower light conditions, when the shutter speed is too low to generate sharp prints, you should increase the camera's ISO setting. As you increase the ISO from, say, 100 to 200 to 400, the best available shutter speed increases from 1/15 to 1/30 to 1/60 second, for example. Remember that higher ISO settings add digital noise to your photos, so return the setting to the lowest position when the lighting improves. For more on ISO settings, read " Use ISO to Take Low-Light Photos," one of my January columns.
Sharpen Your Photos Afterwards
Finally, don't forget that you can add sharpness on your PC afterwards. Most digital cameras capture a slightly "soft" photo anyway, and you can use a tool in your favorite image editing program, like Unsharp Mask, to increase contrast and enhance sharpness.
In Corel's Paint Shop Pro, for example, open your photo and choose Adjust, Sharpness, Unsharp Mask from the menu. The default settings are generally just fine; click OK to sharpen your photo.
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: " Tight-Lipped Fellow," by Brian D. Watters, London, Ontario
Brian writes: "With a Canon 20D EOS in hand (including an 18-to-55 mm lens and a Canon 420EX Speedlite with Luminance Bouncer attached), and lying on my stomach in the wet muddy leaves at the edge of a bog, I waited patiently for this little fellow to surface. Surface it did, but not in front of the lens. So I began to move my camera. When I thought everything was just right, the frog dove again. We played this game for about five minutes. Finally, I thought I figured out the pattern, and my little green playmate came up right in front of the lens. Without an active display on the back of the camera, I had no idea if the frog was in focus, but the camera's beep told me something was. This is the end result of my time in the mud."
http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/126978
Demystifying Lenses
Focal length, zoom, f-stops--if you've wondered about it, we discuss it.
When a good friend of mine recently purchased an inexpensive digital SLR, I knew that something fundamental in the fabric of space and time had changed: This is the guy who always used a point-and-shoot camera and never would have considered a film SLR.
So what has changed? To be honest, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's that digital SLRs are a lot easier to use and often require less effort to take better pictures than their film cousins. Whatever the explanation, a lot of people are making the switch to digital SLRs these days.
But no matter how easy-to-use digital SLRs become, some things won't change much. Take lenses, for example: I get tons of questions about how to purchase and use the myriad lenses available for today's digital SLRs. So this week I thought I'd answer the top questions I get about interchangeable lenses.
What Does "Focal Length" Measure?
The technical answer is that the focal length is the distance from the lens to the point at which light passing through the lens is focused, measured in millimeters. In more practical (and understandable) terms, the focal length tells you the magnifying power of the lens. A small focal length of up to about 35mm is considered wide angle; focal lengths between 35mm and 70mm are considered normal, because this range approximates what the human eye sees; and anything beyond 80mm gets into telephoto territory.
What Is the Difference Between a Prime and a Zoom Lens?
You might hear the term prime bandied about when discussing camera lenses. A prime lens is simply any lens that only has a single focal length, whereas a zoom lens has range of focal lengths, such as 12-24mm, 70-300mm, or 18-200mm.
Zoom lenses are obviously more convenient to use, but there are engineering trade-offs involved in a lens that can move through a wide range of focal lengths. Prime lenses perform better--and they are less expensive.
Serious photographers tend to carry a few prime lenses in common focal ranges, but the rest of us get by with one or two zoom lenses that cover the whole gamut.
What's the Relevance of f-Numbers on Zoom Lenses?
All camera lenses have a maximum aperture setting--in other words, how big an opening the lens can make to admit light during exposure. The smaller the number, the larger the opening will be.
Engineering compromises mean that many zoom lenses can't open as wide as you might like. My nifty 18-200mm zoom, for example, offers enough wide- and telephoto oomph to cover 90 percent of the photographic situations I usually encounter. But set to wide angle, it has an f-number of f/3.5. When I zoom all the way to 200mm, it degrades to f/5.6. Compare that to some 200mm prime lenses that can open up to f/20, and you can see that there's a lot less light available to shoot pictures with my zoom. That means fast-moving subjects will blur unless I increase the ISO or shoot in the middle of the day when there's plenty of sunlight available.
All things being equal, the lens that offers a bigger aperture (the smallest f-number) is always the better choice--and it will always be more expensive.
Is the Diameter of the Lens Important?
Not especially.
Some people are surprised to find that there isn't a standard diameter among interchangeable camera lenses. My 18-200mm lens has a diameter of 72mm, for instance, while my 80-400mm lens has a 77mm diameter. Generally, telephoto lenses need more glass to be able to collect more light. The size of any given lens is the result of many design decisions, however, and not something to consider in your buying criteria.
Of course, that means you generally can't share the same set of screw-on filters among several lenses. You might want to see if there's a step-up or step-down adapter available for your lens that will let you attach a different-sized filter. Beware of step-down adapters, though, since they can cause vignetting--if the filter is smaller than the lens you're attaching it to, it can produce shadows in the corners of the picture that you'll have to crop away.
What Is Image Stabilization?
Some premium lenses come with built in stabilization that allows you to freeze the action as if you were shooting with a faster shutter speed than you really are. This feature is great for telephoto lenses with mediocre f-numbers in low light, for example, or for shooting pictures without a tripod.
Image-stabilized lenses used to cost a fortune, but these days they're appearing at a relative bargain. But keep in mind that image stabilization isn't the cure for all your blurriness issues. An image-stabilized lens won't be able to freeze the action if the subject itself is moving, for instance. But I am a big believer, and all of my lenses are now image-stabilized.
As an aside, I've noticed that a few new digital SLRs are hawking image-stabilization in the body, claiming that this makes the lenses cheaper since you only have to buy the stabilization technology once and it's automatically available to all your lenses. The jury is still out on this approach; the longer a lens is, the more powerful the image stabilization motor will need to be, and the stabilization built into these new cameras might not be able to keep up.
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: " Fire of the Night," by Michael Genovese, Lutz, Florida
Michael writes: "I took this picture in a Piazza in Rome. I was playing with various shutter speeds, trying to get the picture to focus sharply in the low light. I accidentally set the wrong shutter speed and this was the result. Even though the picture was a mistake, I loved the result."
http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/128098
When a good friend of mine recently purchased an inexpensive digital SLR, I knew that something fundamental in the fabric of space and time had changed: This is the guy who always used a point-and-shoot camera and never would have considered a film SLR.
So what has changed? To be honest, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's that digital SLRs are a lot easier to use and often require less effort to take better pictures than their film cousins. Whatever the explanation, a lot of people are making the switch to digital SLRs these days.
But no matter how easy-to-use digital SLRs become, some things won't change much. Take lenses, for example: I get tons of questions about how to purchase and use the myriad lenses available for today's digital SLRs. So this week I thought I'd answer the top questions I get about interchangeable lenses.
What Does "Focal Length" Measure?
The technical answer is that the focal length is the distance from the lens to the point at which light passing through the lens is focused, measured in millimeters. In more practical (and understandable) terms, the focal length tells you the magnifying power of the lens. A small focal length of up to about 35mm is considered wide angle; focal lengths between 35mm and 70mm are considered normal, because this range approximates what the human eye sees; and anything beyond 80mm gets into telephoto territory.
What Is the Difference Between a Prime and a Zoom Lens?
You might hear the term prime bandied about when discussing camera lenses. A prime lens is simply any lens that only has a single focal length, whereas a zoom lens has range of focal lengths, such as 12-24mm, 70-300mm, or 18-200mm.
Zoom lenses are obviously more convenient to use, but there are engineering trade-offs involved in a lens that can move through a wide range of focal lengths. Prime lenses perform better--and they are less expensive.
Serious photographers tend to carry a few prime lenses in common focal ranges, but the rest of us get by with one or two zoom lenses that cover the whole gamut.
What's the Relevance of f-Numbers on Zoom Lenses?
All camera lenses have a maximum aperture setting--in other words, how big an opening the lens can make to admit light during exposure. The smaller the number, the larger the opening will be.
Engineering compromises mean that many zoom lenses can't open as wide as you might like. My nifty 18-200mm zoom, for example, offers enough wide- and telephoto oomph to cover 90 percent of the photographic situations I usually encounter. But set to wide angle, it has an f-number of f/3.5. When I zoom all the way to 200mm, it degrades to f/5.6. Compare that to some 200mm prime lenses that can open up to f/20, and you can see that there's a lot less light available to shoot pictures with my zoom. That means fast-moving subjects will blur unless I increase the ISO or shoot in the middle of the day when there's plenty of sunlight available.
All things being equal, the lens that offers a bigger aperture (the smallest f-number) is always the better choice--and it will always be more expensive.
Is the Diameter of the Lens Important?
Not especially.
Some people are surprised to find that there isn't a standard diameter among interchangeable camera lenses. My 18-200mm lens has a diameter of 72mm, for instance, while my 80-400mm lens has a 77mm diameter. Generally, telephoto lenses need more glass to be able to collect more light. The size of any given lens is the result of many design decisions, however, and not something to consider in your buying criteria.
Of course, that means you generally can't share the same set of screw-on filters among several lenses. You might want to see if there's a step-up or step-down adapter available for your lens that will let you attach a different-sized filter. Beware of step-down adapters, though, since they can cause vignetting--if the filter is smaller than the lens you're attaching it to, it can produce shadows in the corners of the picture that you'll have to crop away.
What Is Image Stabilization?
Some premium lenses come with built in stabilization that allows you to freeze the action as if you were shooting with a faster shutter speed than you really are. This feature is great for telephoto lenses with mediocre f-numbers in low light, for example, or for shooting pictures without a tripod.
Image-stabilized lenses used to cost a fortune, but these days they're appearing at a relative bargain. But keep in mind that image stabilization isn't the cure for all your blurriness issues. An image-stabilized lens won't be able to freeze the action if the subject itself is moving, for instance. But I am a big believer, and all of my lenses are now image-stabilized.
As an aside, I've noticed that a few new digital SLRs are hawking image-stabilization in the body, claiming that this makes the lenses cheaper since you only have to buy the stabilization technology once and it's automatically available to all your lenses. The jury is still out on this approach; the longer a lens is, the more powerful the image stabilization motor will need to be, and the stabilization built into these new cameras might not be able to keep up.
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: " Fire of the Night," by Michael Genovese, Lutz, Florida
Michael writes: "I took this picture in a Piazza in Rome. I was playing with various shutter speeds, trying to get the picture to focus sharply in the low light. I accidentally set the wrong shutter speed and this was the result. Even though the picture was a mistake, I loved the result."
http://www.ecoustics.com/pcw/howto/128098
Finding the right battery for your digital camera is vital because of the power that digital cameras draw
Highlight:
Digital cameras' power demands can quickly drain batteries, which means that you need to find batteries that will stand up to the rigors of these hungry devices. Alkaline batteries can quickly be run down in a digital camera and need to be thrown out once they are spent. Thus rechargeable Li-ion, NiMH, or NiCad batteries are a much better choice for digital cameras.
Original source:
http://www.bytecamera.com/content/view/210/2/
Summary:
* Being such a crucial task as if searching for a good heart for a human being, perhaps the most tedious thing about digital cameras is the quest for their battery consumption and thereby finding a suitable one for any particular one.
* Leaving aside the ever power thirsty LCD screens and flashes, the digital cameras themselves exhaust batteries much faster than film cameras, due to their state of the art electronic designs and intricate circuitry.
* Many digital cameras run from AA cells, around 4, and can even drain a set of alkaline cells in less than 1 hour of working!
* For example, the Kodak DC120 draws about 210mA during start or switch ON, but progresses to around 1.3A with the association of the LCD fully working and can go ahead to about 2.1A while picture taking and after it too.
* It is light in weight and currently available for many commercial uses and thus being so the Li-ion (Lithium Ion) battery type is becoming quite popular.
* This has an added advantage of being able to endow with more power than any of the other main cell types available.
* It is also free from the problems of memory effect, hat some battery types do have, and maintenance is least in this type of battery.
* These batteries or cells have an aptitude for handling high power loads, and therefore is more frequently found in handy power tools and devices that require more amounts power to work efficiently and perfectly.
* Yet again, these batteries too have the problems of memory effect, and much more maintenance and care is required while handling this kind of battery.
* Apart from the different batteries themselves, the selection should be based upon the charging techniques and the different charges available for all these digital camera batteries.
http://www.newstarget.com/001540.html
Digital cameras' power demands can quickly drain batteries, which means that you need to find batteries that will stand up to the rigors of these hungry devices. Alkaline batteries can quickly be run down in a digital camera and need to be thrown out once they are spent. Thus rechargeable Li-ion, NiMH, or NiCad batteries are a much better choice for digital cameras.
Original source:
http://www.bytecamera.com/content/view/210/2/
Summary:
* Being such a crucial task as if searching for a good heart for a human being, perhaps the most tedious thing about digital cameras is the quest for their battery consumption and thereby finding a suitable one for any particular one.
* Leaving aside the ever power thirsty LCD screens and flashes, the digital cameras themselves exhaust batteries much faster than film cameras, due to their state of the art electronic designs and intricate circuitry.
* Many digital cameras run from AA cells, around 4, and can even drain a set of alkaline cells in less than 1 hour of working!
* For example, the Kodak DC120 draws about 210mA during start or switch ON, but progresses to around 1.3A with the association of the LCD fully working and can go ahead to about 2.1A while picture taking and after it too.
* It is light in weight and currently available for many commercial uses and thus being so the Li-ion (Lithium Ion) battery type is becoming quite popular.
* This has an added advantage of being able to endow with more power than any of the other main cell types available.
* It is also free from the problems of memory effect, hat some battery types do have, and maintenance is least in this type of battery.
* These batteries or cells have an aptitude for handling high power loads, and therefore is more frequently found in handy power tools and devices that require more amounts power to work efficiently and perfectly.
* Yet again, these batteries too have the problems of memory effect, and much more maintenance and care is required while handling this kind of battery.
* Apart from the different batteries themselves, the selection should be based upon the charging techniques and the different charges available for all these digital camera batteries.
http://www.newstarget.com/001540.html
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