Digital Cameras

• I am finding that digital cameras are like the curtains in my living room.  I spend a lot of money on them, I stupidly think I’m going to get years and years use out of them, but I end up getting new ones every 18 months anyway, because the new ranges are just so much better, and what was too expensive 18 months ago is now enough for even me to buy.

• So I ending up with a new camera every year.  Even though some are given to me for presents, I still end up replacing them.  My $1,700 camera from 2004 still looks 'big and professional', but my new $150 camera from Target is so much better, and doesn't need its own huge backpack and bag of attachments with 10 different cables and a funny battery, with its own huge charger.  And it finds faces! And I usually take photographs of faces!  What a coincidence. 

Here’s what you need in a digital camera: 

• A good flash.  Forget everything else.  A good flash will make your photos look good.  Always use your flash.  Test the camera’s flash.  It should charge quickly, be very bright, and have a diffused cover (bumpy plastic), so it spreads light around the room, not shining a focused beam onto your subject’s sweaty patch of skin on their forehead.   
  

•  Fast record times.  I remember once I was working in the central education office and a well known company gave us 100 free cameras.  We initially got excited, as we could give them to schools for prizes or a special program.  Then we tried to use one.  It took forever for the camera to get ready for me to press the button, and when I did press the button, it took about another three seconds to actually take the photo (after my subject had already left the room).  Then it spent the next five minutes recording the photo onto the SD memory card.  We then showed so much passion and mercy by never giving these to any school. Sure, new employees would see them in the cupboard and have a great idea for them, and then I'd ask the newbie to test one.  The camera was then returned to the pile.  I actually started using them to appeal people who were angry with me, and somehow got past security into the building and appeared at my desk.  By the time they got home and tried the camera, I’d make sure they never got to find me in person again.

• A lens that lets you take photos of things in front of you, without having to step back so much until you are in the next room.  A good camera with a decent lens will capture an exact replica of what you can see in front of you.  Cheap lenses will have a narrower focal distance, so if you are taking a photo of a group of students, you can never, ever fit them all in.  Unless you step back and extra ten feet, which means the flash won’t work properly and you’ll get an awful picture.   

• Batteries that you like.  If you can’t remember to recharge your special battery, of if you have a shared camera and can’t trust other people to leave the camera fully charged for you, you might want to consider a camera that will take normal batteries.  It will be bigger, heavier and possibly slower than other cameras, but at least it will work if you have some spare batteries in your desk draw.  If the camera is just for you, get a built in battery.  It will be smaller and last a lot longer.  You can also buy replacement batteries cheaper than you think, from a place like Teacher Syndicate (email your request, I don’t list all batteries).

• A button that says ‘automatic’ or something like it.  Why use anything else.  Even for all of my years as a wedding photographer, I never used anything but the green automatic button (I didn't tell people that).
  

•  A menu that makes sense.  Like mobile phones, we all know that some phones are easy to use, others are awful and impossible to use.  For phones, everyone knows that Nokia menus are easy to use.   It’s the same with cameras.  I like Sony and Canon menus.  I also just bought an Olympus that just had two buttons, which was very impressive.  You just press the same button to cycle through options.  And then there are the other brands.  My Casio has periods where you just touch the wrong button and it makes bird sounds and instantly goes into a mode where it wants to take a photo of a toy robot or a whiteboard.    And it takes more than a simple button press to get back to ‘just a normal photo mode, please’.  And of course the cameras and phones my parents buy are the cheapest possible, meaning absolutely no investment/thought has gone into the design of the menus. They are incredibly hard to use, meaning the actual product won't be used at all, meaning its a complete waste of money.  I'm sure everyone has had a cell phone like that before and can understand the importance of an intuitive interface (and remember, this is for school and you're going to have to help students that are confused by a bad menu - so this feature is much more important now).
  

• A viewfinder.  LCD screens are great, but you can’t see them on a bright day, so you have no idea what you are taking photos of. Newer cameras don't have view finders, so you'll need to practice shading the screen with one hand.

•  A tripod or something that will help you keep the camera still, even if it means placing the camera up against a brick wall and holding it still against the wall.

• A good resolution.  It’s really not that important.  I started my photography career with a 1.3 MP camera.  I did full-page newspaper ads, commercial postcards and 30 foot high night-time projections.  And really, are your young students ever going to need 8 or 12 MP photo?  They are not going to take photos for a double page spread in Vogue, and you probably don’t have a printer that can achieve that level of detail anyway.  Read a whole article about resolution here.  Smaller photos are SO much easier to handle anyway.  They come off the camera faster, they preview faster, they take up less storage media, they don’t clog your printer with large files, they don’t make your MS Word documents 125,000 MB, and you can email them.  And they don’t go crazy when you put them in PowerPoint, making you zoom out to 10% so you can actually see the photo, then spend five minutes trying your best to resize them. Repeat that thirty times for every child in your class and you’ll be throwing the camera at the wall.  If you have art/media students in high school, you will need a few good cameras with different shooting modes (eg: RAW) but you would know about that anyway and I don’t need to explain it.

• Permission to take a photo of what you are taking a photo of.  Do this before taking the photos, not after.  Murphy's law says that your best ever photo will include a students whose parent has not given consent for their child's photo to be taken.  Guarantee it. 
  

Product Links:

• Cameras (these will change often so come back and check regularly)
• Memory Cards (you should have a card for every activity, to ensure you don't erase a current activity by mistake)
• Cleaners (cameras need cleaning - don't be scared to blow air into the lens and lightly rub fingerprints off the lens)
• Video accessories, chargers and cables/adapters (you'll end up needing spares, as parts will get lost, especially if the camera is being shared with others).