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Buying Digital
When it comes to buying a digital camera, how do you determine what kind to choose? Ask yourself a simple question: "Why and how will I be using this camera?" If it's for family snapshots, you'll get an easy answer. If it's to supply professional digital images to a buyer, you'll get a different answer.
If your purpose is professional, you need to ask another question. "Will I be using this camera to supply images for commercial use such as for an advertising agency or commercial entity, or will the camera be used to supply quarter-page images for textbook publishers?" Your answer could make the difference between thousands of dollars in purchase price.
How do you find your answers? Ask. Find out from the clients on your personal Market List what kind of digital images they utilize (size, format, dpi, and so on). Select a camera that will deliver those needs. By tailoring your digital equipment to your clients' needs, you can assure their continued friendship, cooperation, and interest in your photos (i.e. sales).
SCANNERS BEGONE ?
Many photographers seem to think that once they purchase a professional-grade digital camera, they'll have no use for their scanner for film images.
A recent survey conducted by Trend Watch Graphic Arts shows a different story. The survey asked the question: "How Has Your Use of Color Scanners Changed as a Result of Owning a Digital Camera?" 54% of the respondents said scanner use stayed the same. 10% increased use, and 35% said they decreased the use of scanners.
More than half of the respondents stated that they're using their scanners at least as much now as before they purchased a digital camera.
What conclusions can be drawn from this? For one, don't put your scanner in storage just yet. As a matter of fact if you don't own a scanner, NOW's the time to start looking for good bargains. A good film scanner will allow you to digitize all your old slides and negs and start marketing those as digital images.
A word of caution. A scanned digital image must be as clean and dust free as a crisp, newly processed strip of film. Specks of dust or a microscopic strand of hair in a scanned image can be enough to have a photobuyer put you on their list - and it's not a good list.
Learning digital - be it scanned images or files from a digital camera - can sure seem like a huge task. There is help to be found though, and plenty of it. For questions about digital, try our Q&A board Kracker Barrel (http://www.photosource.com/board/wwwboard/wwwboard.html). (Note: The 2002 Photobuyer Digital Survey Report from PhotoSource International deals with all things digital .)
< https://www.photosource.com/101/survey2.html >
Photojournalist Mikael Karlsson has 14 years' experience of working for magazines and newspapers in more than 30 countries. He moved to the United States in 1998 from his native Sweden. He lives in Nebraska and is currently US correspondent for 11 Swedish magazines and a regular contributor to a wide variety of U.S. publications. Reach him at mike@photosource.com.
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