First Impressions

I wanted to "go digital" to rejuvenate my interest into photography. This included:

• Removing the marginal cost of "pushing the shutter". I want to be able to take tons of pictures, and only keep the ones I liked.
• Being able to work with the photos after they are taken, in order to enhance them (i.e. have a "darkroom" capability).
• Make it easier to take and to share family photos, photos from "events", travel photos, etc.
• Have the ability to be creative in my photography, but recognizing that I'm not a professional photographer, or even a serious amateur.
• Getting a wide range of capabilities from my equipment, while keeping the cost reasonable.
• Providing a starting point for my getting back into photography as a hobby, and eventually getting more serious about it.

I'm really happy with my decision to "go digital". For what I want to do, it suits me perfectly.

Camera Versatility

You can read more about my camera choice, a Canon Powershot S45, in the my camera section. I've found digital photography able to cope with a wide range of photo-taking, at a reasonable price, without a lot of extra equipment. I've successfully photographed:

• Lots of family "snapshots", both indoors and outdoors, with and without a flash
• Portraits
• Landscapes
• Fireworks
• Panoramas, including one at night
• Track & Field competitions
• Flowers (macro photography)
• And even a few insects (macro photography)
• Not to mention videos with sound. (Fun, especially for kids)

In general, the ability of today's digital camera to take good pictures in a wide range of conditions is really quite amazing.

You can find examples in my gallery.

There are limits though. Photographing sports (like track & field) is a real stretch, and good bird photography is impossible with your typical digital camera on its own. A 105mm lens is not long enough, and the lens is not fast enough. I could use an add-on lens to solve the long lens problem, but there's no way to get a faster lens without going to a digital SLR and big, big bucks. But this has nothing to do with digital, we are talking optics here.

I happened to pick a camera with poor macro capability, and after making my purchase discovered that I'm interested in macro nature photography (photographing bugs!) I think I can address this with an add-on close-up lens or tele-converter. But again this very little to do with digital.

Ease of Use - Use by children

The "point and shoot" fully-auto mode of the camera is trivial to use, and can actually take quite good pictures. The movie mode is equally easy to use.

My 11-year old daughter is quite a heavy user of the camera. Just put it on auto and away she goes! She loves to take pictures and movies. Since there is no marginal cost of use, she can take as many as she likes! The instant gratification of being able to load the pictures on to the computer after a shooting session and view them is great for kids. We usually go through them together and delete the bad ones, and I give her pointers on what's good and what she could do to improve. I've put some of her better photos on the gallery here.

Personally, I found myself taking the time to learn the details of the camera, and I now mostly use my S45 the same way I use my OM-2S film SLR. I use either aperture preferred, shutter preferred or full manual shooting modes. I try to make use of all the cameras features and capabilities. It takes quite a while to learn the camera... you need to read the manual a couple times, and takes lots of test photos. You also need to have a basic background in photography. But you get much better photos for it.

Viewing and Sharing Photos

This is the really great part of digital photography! Its so easy to see and share the results.

First, I make a point of getting pictures off my camera and on to my computer ASAP. At least within a day of shooting, often right after shooting. I happen to have a laptop, which I will take to the cottage, or when I travel and am taking pictures. This allows me (and my daughter, family, etc) to enjoy the pictures right after they are taken, and it helps me improve, by seeing the results while things are still fresh in my mind.

Its also quick and easy to share the photos in a number of ways. So far I've:

• Made CDs with a "photo gallery album". When my daughter and 2 others from her school made it to the provincial track championships, I went along with my camera. I made up an html "photo gallery", with photos and movies of the championships, including the official results pages. I then burned CDs with the gallery, as well as the full-quality images, as "memories" of the meet, and gave them to my daughter's teammates, and their coaches, 2 days after the meet.
• Put photo galleries from an event or party on my web site. I can get the gallery up on the site a day or two after the event. Friends really enjoy this. Because some people are nervous about having their pictures on the internet, I assign a simple userid and password to each gallery, and then let people know by email. These galleries are linked on my gallerys page, but you won't be able to access them!
• Had prints made. I tried making my own prints on an inkjet printer at home, but its pointless... Its expensive (add the cost of photopaper and ink together. Yikes! Unless you buy in bulk it costs $0.30 or so for a 4x6 print)... Its fiddly, Its slow, and Its hard to get good results. So I upload my files to a local photography store who prints them. Much easier, simpler, streamlined. I get good quality prints with no hassles. I found I had to shop around a bit to find a place that is both good quality and inexpensive.

You can look at my workflow section to find out how I do all this. My software section describes the software I use, (and also some I've tried but don't use) to manage, edit and share my photos.