On our summer vacation to British Columbia, my girlfriend Mary and I took along my now-discontinued, early model Sony MVC-FD5 digital camera. We took more than 75 shots.
Here's one of them:

When I got home, I combined some of the snapshots into an electronic photo album and sent them to some of my friends.

When I bought this digital still camera for $599 nearly two years ago, it was considered innovative and top-of-the-line. That's because it captures images and then stores them on a floppy disk. Not all digital cameras have this feature; some store the images on a hard drive. I may have an older model, but show me the floppy. A 1.44 megabyte floppy will hold between 25 to 30 images. After you're done shooting, you simply place the floppy in your computer's "A" drive, and then copy it to your hard drive. From there, you can use a tool like Adobe Photoshop to edit it, or you can e-mail it to your friends.

Digital still cameras range in price from around $200 to more than $1,000. Hey, don't be too surprised-but you get what you pay for. The cheaper ones have no zoom, erratic flash for shooting in darker light, and fairly mediocre image resolution. But even the cheapest ones are a lot of fun and are easily to get to learn how to operate.

Why They Are Cooler Than 'Regular' Cameras

Features To Look For

• Image resolution. Pixels* is short for picture elements (Duh! What took you so long to figure it out?). The term refers to how many distinct image components there are on a screen. The fewer pixels, the more your image will degrade in quality when you blow it up on your computer's hard drive or convert it to a "hard-copy" photograph you can hold in your hand.
  Lower-end digital cameras will pull about 640 pixels wide by 480 pixels tall, enough to fill up a 3-inch by 5-inch space. Pixel performance of 1152 wide by 864 tall is adequate for 5- by 7-inch shots; "two megapixel" cameras generate great 8 by 10's.
• The lens. Zoom is cool. Fixed lens isn't. You like cool. You like control (well, hopefully not obsessively). For image control, go for zoom, especially optical as opposed to digital.
• Memory. Newer digital still cameras come with removable memory cards that can significantly boost your camera's photo-carrying capacity. In the summer of 2000, new camera models from Sanyo, Hitachi and Olympus will offer this feature.
• Sensing Element. You'd do well to buy a camera with a charged-couple device that measures the amount of light and color and turns it into digital codes.
• Viewfinder. There are look-straight-through types and ones that work with LCD* screens (liquid crystal display). LCD technology is good for reviewing what you shoot, but not for lining up the actual shot. Why? In a word, glare. So look for a camera that offers both.
• LCD Screen Button. Again, LCDs are nifty, but they're battery hogs that can reduce your camera's stamina. If you're eyeing a model with an LCD, see if it has a screen button that lets you turn off the LCD when you wish to operate with that mode disabled.

The Good Ones

Here are some of the better digital cameras available:

--Russell Shaw is a veteran online journalist and author on consumer technology and finance.

Copyright 2001 by TheBostonChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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