Choice guide for the newcomer to digital photography

Signs of digital photography's rise at the expense of the film-based kind can be seen everywhere.

Newspapers and chainstore catalogues are full of ads for digital cameras, with just one or two film cameras to be found if you look hard.

For those whose loyalties remain with film, there has never been a better time to buy a high-quality camera, as their prices are squeezed by the astonishing array of digital models.

The demise of businesses that used to make a living from processing film, and the spread of kiosks into supermarkets and elsewhere for outputting digital images, also confirm the revolution that is sweeping photography.

Helping the consumer cope with the change is a veritable library-full of digital photography books. A glance at Amazon's website shows more than 1600 books on the subject.

Random House New Zealand published one in 2003, Get the Most From Your Digital Camera, by Rob Clarke, a long-time columnist in PC World magazine.

A fresh offering from Choice Books, an imprint of the Australian Consumers' Association, is called The Choice Guide to Digital Photography, by Margaret Brown.

Brown has been a reviewer of photographic equipment and a writer about photography for 25 years, and is technical editor of Photo Review Australia.

Undoubtedly with a view to sales on this side of the Tasman, the book throws in some references to the New Zealand digital camera market, and includes details of local distributors of digital imaging products, along with the Australian ones.

Brown points out that in the 12 months to last August, prices of compact digital still cameras declined by about a quarter. More expensive digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras halved in price in the same 12 months, and can now be picked up for about $1600.

Home computers and the internet fit into the digital photography picture as means of manipulating, outputting and sharing digital images.

Brown's book is pitched at the tens of thousands who will be enthusiastically launching into photography for the first time, propelled by the instant gratification of snapping a shot and displaying the results on the camera LCD screen.

The technical chapters - on digital technology and photographic technique - will be read by the most enthusiastic.

But the reality for most hobbyist photographers is that all we want is to capture some significant moment and output the results for our personal record.

Digital photography complicates this by presenting us with a confusing array of options for storing and printing photos.

The Choice Guide is a well-organised introduction to the whole subject, helping to allay the confusion of file formats, storage media and printing possibilities.

It begins with a guide to buying a suitable camera, describes how images are produced, dissects a camera into its component parts and explains the controls.

The daunting step of choosing from scores of cameras is helped by descriptions of the broad product categories.

Brown does a good job of skirting round the variations in settings and controls for different camera makes and models, while describing the general concepts of shooting modes.

The book is a useful, although grey - it has just an eight-page colour section - guide for newcomers to digital photography. Clarke's book, in contrast, is more colourful, and it traverses the same territory.

We'll know that the digital revolution is over, and the new technology entrenched, when such guides are no longer being published regularly. The Choice Guide to Digital Photography

Pros: Clear, detailed introduction to digital photographic gear; useful guide to mastering camera controls, taking photos and tweaking the results
Cons: Stingy with colour
Price: $39.95
Herald Rating: 4/5
NZ distributor: Addenda Publishing