Digital Cameras : October 2003 : THE Journal

October 2003 — Product Watch

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7 Tips for Improving Your Digital Pictures

Avoid bad lighting. Film cameras are much more forgiving of bad lighting than digital cameras.
Take advantage of outdoor light. Since digital cameras do better with more light, they generally do better outside.
Crop with the camera. A digital camera stores a lot less information than a film camera, so the more you crop a digital image the lower its resulting resolution. One solution is to get in closer with your digital camera so more of its resolution is used to store the part of the scene that you really want stored.
Avoid digital zooming. Rather than using optics to get closer, digital zooming only magnifies a portion of the image, lowering the effective resolution. If your camera d'es not offer optical zooming, then position yourself closer to the image to be photographed rather than using digital zoom.
Quantity over quality. Since digital pictures cost nothing to take, it makes sense to take a lot of them to ensure you get the image you want.
Use the right resolution. Images for Web pages should be taken at a low resolution, while images to be printed should be shot at the highest resolution offered by your camera. If you are not sure how the image will be used, it's safer to choose a higher resolution since you can always lower the resolution later.
Keep lots of batteries on hand. Digital cameras eat batteries at an astounding rate, so you should keep a lot of batteries with you while shooting.

"Digital Cameras," T.H.E. Journal, 10/1/2003, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/16492

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