Digital Focus: Save Money on Photography

Dave shares tips for penny pinchers and explains how to choose a camera for Web publishing.

Dave Johnson

Penny Pinching With a Digital Camera

I got into digital photography because of the immediacy--I can take a picture and immediately print, e-mail, or Web-publish it, with no intermediate processing and scanning. But a lot of people go digital because it saves money. You already know the reasons: no film to buy, no processing, no paying for a bunch of prints that came out terribly. But there are other ways to watch your pennies, and that's good news now that you're faced with a post-holiday credit card bill.

Choose Your Camera Wisely

If you want to shop frugally, start with the camera. When I bought my Nikon CoolPix 990 last fall, local stores were selling it for $1200. Online, I found the same camera for hundreds less. While there are benefits to shopping locally, like being able to carry your purchase home and knowing the camera will come with a full warranty, Internet pricing is hard to ignore.

(Some "gray market" online and mail order camera shops sell products that lack the manufacturer's warranty. Such cameras can save you a lot of money, but there's obviously some risk as well. If in doubt, check to see if your camera will bear a full warranty before you buy.) You can comparison-shop at PC World's Product Finder.

The Sweet Spot for Digital Film

The 8MB memory card that comes with many digital cameras is downright anemic. You'll want to upgrade to a bigger card that can accommodate lots of images or long MPEG movies, but don't go overboard. Find the sweet spot in the memory card curve to buy the most megabytes for your dollar. Here's an example: I found a 128MB CompactFlash memory card for just $50 at PC World's Product Finder.

That's great, but a 256MB card is dramatically more expensive. The cheapest I could find was $129, which means you could very nearly buy three 128MB cards for the price of one 256MB card.

Charge--Don't Dispose--Your Batteries

I never get tired of recommending rechargeable batteries. The most expensive part of a digital camera can be the four AA alkaline batteries, which, since I take a lot of pictures, I found myself replacing almost weekly back in the old days. So, instead of spending $300 a year on batteries, I bought a single set of NiMH rechargeables for about $20.

Of course, with rechargeables, you also have to pay for the electricity to recharge them. Rechargeables also wear out, so you may have to replace them once a year or so. But even so, rechargeable batteries are a bargain.

Fit More on the Card

If you don't plan to print enlargements, you can pack more pictures on your memory card by reducing your shooting resolution. Sacrificing resolution is never a decision to make lightly, because fewer pixels always give you less flexibility for cropping and printing. But if you really need to take a boatload of pictures, switching from 3 megapixels to 1 can give you hundreds more images per card and save you the expense of buying a new Memory Stick, CompactFlash, or SD card.

Remember this rule of thumb: 3-megapixel images print as large as 8 by 10 inches quite nicely. Two megapixels give you a 5-by-7-inch enlargement, and 1 megapixel yields 4-by-6-inch prints.

Print Carefully

Digital cameras let you decide what pictures to print, at what size, and with what sorts of processing and cropping. But at nearly $1 per sheet, the premium-quality photo paper can cost more than traditional photo processing and printing. The solution? Print lower-quality prints, like proofs, on plain paper. Only switch to the good stuff when you're ready to make the final print.

You can also find specially sized 4-by-6-inch paper in computer and photo stores that can save you from printing on larger sheets and cutting them apart, wasting expensive paper.

Get the Most Out of your Prints

Once you've taken some great pictures, don't let them go to waste. Web sites like Club Photo and Ofoto turn prints into coffee mugs, T-shirts, enlargements, posters, greeting cards, and more.

My personal favorite: Club Photo can create fully edible cookies from your photos. You've taken the pictures--get the most out of them.

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Dave's Favorites: Agfa Photo Courses

While I realize that most of you sit around your PC each week eagerly awaiting the arrival of your next Digital Focus newsletter, I also know that a few of you also like to get some digital photography information from sources other than me. If you are part of that renegade group, I've got some good news for you.

Agfa, the digital and film photography company, has a surprisingly extensive Web site. Rummaging around the site recently, I found a set of online lessons that teach visitors all about the basics of digital and film photography.

The lessons are actually pretty good. The film photo classes are taught by Michael Nischke, a noted professional photographer, and many of the lessons have information that applies to the world of digital as well. The digital photo course isn't credited to a specific photographer or author, but it covers the essentials pretty well.

The lessons are free, of course, and worth spending an afternoon exploring.

Q&A: What Camera Should I Buy?

I am thinking of buying a digital camera to take action photos of sports teams for our Web site. What would be a good resolution for this purpose? Also, how many photos does a typical memory card hold?

-- Ira Thor, director of sports information at New Jersey City University, Jersey City, New Jersey

I grew up in Jersey City; please say hi to everyone there for me. To answer your question, you'll eventually want to post your images to the Web in 640-by-480-pixel format (or perhaps even smaller). But that doesn't mean a VGA resolution camera will make you happy. Such cameras are typically quite cheap, have poor optics, and include awkward controls.

Since you want to shoot sporting events, you'll want a camera with more action-oriented features, like shutter speed control and the ability to capture several pictures quickly. You'll find a few 2- or 3-megapixel models like that in the $500 range. I suggest that you consider the following products: Toshiba PDR-M65, Olympus Camedia C-2040 Zoom, or Epson PhotoPC 3100Z.

The number of pictures you can fit on a memory card is directly related to the size of the pictures. Three-megapixel images take up a lot more room than 1-megapixel photos, for instance. Assuming you have a 3-megapixel camera, you can fit about 30 high-resolution images on a 16MB memory card. Drop the camera's resolution to 1 megapixel, though, and your capacity jumps to 200 images on a single card.

Send your questions to question@bydavejohnson.com, and please be sure to let me know where you're from.

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 $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We're disqualifying some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions aren't following the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in the e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter:

Send us your photograph in JPG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels, to hotpic@pcworld.com. Entries at higher resolutions will be disqualified immediately. 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 of the photo 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 regs.

This week's Hot Pic:

Emma Womb, by Davis Smith, Middletown, Connecticut

Davis says:

"I took this photo of my daughter on her eighth day. We particularly liked the fact that she seems to still be in her in-womb position, with legs and arms compactly folded. I used my then brand-new Olympus C3000Z with the flash off."