We maintain this page on our kitcar, CobraCountry, StreetRodCountry and MustangCountry websites, but these Motorcar Photography Tips are of course applicable to your car... no matter what variety it is.

Whether your goal is to sell your car on kitcar.com or CobraCountry, or merely to send photos to your favorite magazine editor to be published, here are some basic guidelines to ensure that you'll shoot high-quality photos of your car! Note that advice and tips specific to digital cameras is in blue text.

Mistake #1: Bright overhead sunlight. Not good. Harsh sunlight (and worse, the corollary harsh shadows caused by harsh sunlight) ruins more motorcar photos than anything else. Solution: wait 'til near sunset and position (i.e., rotate) your car to take full advantage of that softer light. Direct sunlight as a light source improves steadily as those rays approach horizontal. Alternative: wait for an overcast day and take advantage of that softer light. Take each of your outdoor shots TWICE: once with your flash unit forced to work, and once without flash. You'll discover that, almost invariably, your best shots will be the ones with the extra illumination provided by your flash. IF YOUR CAR HAS A METALLIC PAINT JOB, you'd do well to ignore "overcast day" light, and instead opt for dawn/dusk clear sunlight, since that direct sunlight will serve to "bring to life" the "glistening effects" of your metallic paint job.

Mistake #2: Park your car in Paducah, then back up to Baffin Bay to snap your shutter. Not good. Solution: get close/ zoom-in and "fill the frame" with automobile. Your objective is to photograph motorcar, not real estate. If your photos come out 15% motorcar and 85% real estate... you're getting it all wrong. This is especially important to keep in mind if you're using a digital camera: as many as possible of those precious pixels MUST represent your motorcar, not the surrounding real estate. "Real estate" is defined herein as anything that is not motorcar.

Mistake #3: Stand up and "shoot down" on your car. Not good, and for several reasons. Are you listening? Don't stand up and shoot down on your car. Solution: it's covered in detail below.

• Clean your car and tires thoroughly; give your tires a rubdown with Armorall.
• Schedule your photo session very early or very late (just after dawn or just before dusk).
• Park your car on (clean, unstriped) pavement. DO NOT photograph it parked on grass, unless perhaps your car is an off-road 4x4, or if you want it to look like an abandoned vehicle. Another splendid tip: use your garden hose or take along a 5-gallon (or 20 liter) container of water to wet down the entire area where you're going to position your car; this darkens the pavement and provides a "glistening" highlight effect.
  
  
• Carefully position/rotate your car so that you've got evenly-distributed sunlight over ALL the surfaces of your car facing your camera (the grille, the "chin," the tires, the sides). The (dawn or dusk) sun should be directly behind you, warming your backside and illuminating ALL of the surfaces of your car facing the camera; once again, just to make sure you've got it: with the (very early or very late) sun at your back, shoot the SUNLIT side(s) of your car, not, repeat NOT the shadow side(s). If you're shooting, say, a typical "3/4-view" shot, then not only the side of the car, but the grille, the "chin" and the tire tread should be illuminated by the sun. Are we clear on that? Color photography is about LIGHT, NOT SHADOW. And if you're going to shoot different views of your car (rear, head-on/front, etc.), then STAY WHERE YOU ARE WITH THE SUN AT YOUR BACK and have a colleague "rotate" your car into the next desired position. Contrary to some folks' expectations, you cannot "walk around your car shooting photos" and expect the sun to follow you accordingly.
  
  Think of it this way: your camera MUST be aimed in the direction of your (dawn or dusk) shadow. You could mount your camera onto a tripod facing in the direction of the tripod's shadow, epoxy your tripod and the camera into fixed position, then shoot all of your views of your car by doing nothing but "rotating" your car. And you'd have ideal lighting every time. One more time: photograph ONLY the sunlit side(s) of your car; for example, if you're shooting a typical "3/4" front/side view, your car MUST be rotated/ positioned so that BOTH THE SIDE AND THE FRONT of your car are sunlit.
  
  
• Crouch down and shoot at ± headlight level. Take some shots with your headlights or parking lights ON. The doors and decks should be closed; if you're shooting for an ad, typically it's not a good idea to include models (i.e., people) in your photos; for an ad on the Internet, you should never have anyone STANDING beside your car, and your hood should be closed, since in each event you wind up with far too much "aerial real estate," thus adding to filesize and download time, with nothing at all gained on the positive side.
• Use a "normal" focal-length lens, or set your zoom lens accordingly (avoid wide-angle settings except for engine, cockpit and luggage-compartment shots).
• Zoom in to "fill the frame" with automobile, NOT real estate.
• Beware of ugly shadows and reflections on the paint surfaces (especially, avoid the chaotic shadows of shade trees!). Ideally your car should present an uncluttered surface, with shadows, glare and reflections reduced to a minimum.
• Use your flash (that is to say, FORCE your flash to work) for ALL engine and cockpit shots. Steering wheel straight, tilt column down, sunvisors (on roadsters) in horizontal position. Spotlessly clean carpet and upholstery. Wide-angle lens (or wide-angle zoom setting) okay for these shots. Again, use your flash. In daylight/outdoor photography you cannot trust your "automatic" flash "to work automatically." In light of that reality (if you'll pardon the unintended pun), most modern cameras today have a "forced flash" feature, which on your camera's digital readout usually appears as a lightning bolt icon. For your outdoor shots (whether you're shooting a motorcar or a wedding party, you MUST use this "forced flash" feature, since most cameras' "automatic/un-forced flash" will usually fail to work out in the harsh sunlight/harsh shadows... where you need your flash's extra illumination the most!

1. Make sure your car is sparkling clean. Use Armorall (or similar rubber treatment) on the tires (hint: spray your Armorall onto your towel, not on the tire, so that overspray on the pavement won't show up in your photos). Take along a bucket of cleanup/touchup items on your photo session, for on-the-scene detailing. And take along a container of water to wet down the pavement beneath and around your car.

2. Use a good 35mm camera and a standard (50mm) lens... or a good digital camera. Don't attempt to use a wide-angle or zoom or telephoto lens for motorcar photography. A wide angle lens produces too much "fisheye" distortion; your zoom or telephoto lens will tend to "abbreviate" your wheelbase. Use any good color negative or transparency film; we prefer Fujichrome (slide/transparency film) and Fujicolor (negative film) for most of our photography, but the brand you choose isn't particularly important; 200-ISO film is appropriate for most of your motorcar shooting; if you plan to use a tripod, use 100-ISO or even 50-ISO. The best place (price-wise) for you to purchase Fuji film (in the U.S. and Canada) is Wal-Mart.

3. If you use a digital camera, PLEASE send us your image(s) exactly as you downloaded them from your camera... that is to say, NO EDITING, NO CROPPING, and especially NO RESAVING. We'll do that ourselves, and we need all the data on your original digital-camera image in order to achieve the best results for you.

4. For digital images THAT you intend to keep and use for yourself, make sure that upon uploading them onto your computer, you resave them IMMEDIATELY as "TIFF" format (or ".psd" Photoshop-native format) files, before you do any editing or resaves. You see, every time you resave a "JPEG" image in an image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, you degrade the image (a fact that the camera makers seem to never caution folks on). You can resave your TIFF image as many times as you desire without fouling the quality. Be advised that this cautionary note refers only to RESAVES in your image-editing application; merely copying your image from one disc to another is not a problem.

If you need to use or email your final, edited image on the Internet, then make a copy of your TIFF image as a 72-ppi low- or medium-quality JPEG, and email/upload the JPEG copy. Keep your TIFF image on your hard disk as your "working original."

5. Get up close and "fill your frame" with automobile, not real estate. This tip is all-the-more important if you're using a digital camera... you can't squander those precious pixels on real estate. Folks don't need or care to see your entire county, they want to see the car you've got for sale. Repeat: Get up close! Focus on the part of your car closest to your camera, and select an f-stop of between f5.6 and f16, so that all or most of your car is in focus, and avoid wide-angle zoom settings. And if you're going to use those photos on a website, then crop out whatever real estate that remains. You gain nothing by forcing folks to patiently download all that unnecessary real estate when all they care to see is your car.

6. If it's bright overhead sunlight (which means you've got a harsh shadow under your car), go fishin', not photographin'. Bright midday/mid-afternoon sunlight introduces two phenomena, both undesirable, both... ugly: 1) HARSH GLARE and 2) HARSH SHADOWS. Good automobile photography demands even, soft lighting all over and around every part of your car facing your camera. You should either wait for an overcast (cloudy) day, which provides much softer and more-evenly-distributed illumination (although you should avoid getting the cloudy/overcast sky itself into your photograph), or schedule your photo session for when the sun is low (i.e., at dawn or dusk). Be sure to shoot the sunlit side(s), not the shaded side(s). Color photography is about light, not shadow! Repeat: rotate your car so that the (dawn or dusk) sun is on the camera side!! Once again, EVERY PART OF YOUR CAR facing your camera should be lit by the sun. Have you got that yet? This means that if you're shooting a "3/4 view," with mostly the side of your car but also the front end in your viewfinder, the sun should be lighting up the grille and your tire tread just as much as the side of your car. If your car has a metallic paint job, you're best off employing dawn/dusk clear sunlight, NOT overcast day light. Reason: that direct sunlight will "bring to life" your metallic paint. Also, forcing your flash to work can similarly "bring to life" your metallic paint job, especially in relatively low-light/shade settings. When I advise you that color photography is about LIGHT, that admonition is especially true in regards to metallic paint.

There's one caveat: with all dawn/dusk shots, you must be careful to keep your own shadow off your car! But there are two things you can do to prevent your shadow from reaching your car: 1) get down on one knee and shoot from waist level (which you should be doing anyway), and 2) back up a little further from your car and zoom-in your lens a little more so that your viewfinder is still "filled with motorcar."

And don't position your car under a shade tree to avoid harsh sunlight; your resulting photos will leave the impression that you painted your car in a chaotic jungle camouflage scheme; indeed, you should always be on the lookout for unwanted reflections on the body (trees and buildings and road signs can produce really wretched, chaotic reflections, especially on black and dark-colored cars... just take a look at the snapshot below). You can sometimes obtain very good results by parking in the (dawn or dusk) shade of a building, but only if there's a very bright sky overhead to provide adequate illumination. Whatever the weather or time of day, make certain that the normal "shadow areas" (e.g., the 'chin,' the grille, the tire tread) have ample light to show up in the photo; this is one area where employing your flash attachment (and your camera's "forced-flash" feature" can often help you get a significantly better photo. Position/rotate your car for optimal lighting... on the camera side of the car! If you need to shoot the other side(s) of your car, then reposition your car NOT yourself. Take some shots with the headlamps or parking lights turned on; for your rear-end shots, have someone sit in the driver's seat with his/her foot on the brakes to light up those brake lights... yet another splendid lighting effect, especially in regards to Lamborghinis and Ferraris, with their typically large taillight fixtures.

The trans-am from Transylvania.
Beware of surface reflections. Especially ghoulish reflections.

If you're using a digital camera that provides separate settings for resolution and "quality," set your camera for "medium" or "high" resolution and MAXIMUM or "FINE" JPEG quality. Listen carefully: the term "resolution" refers ONLY to the number of pixels making up each image (640x480, for example, merely means that there are 307,200 pixels making up the image); JPEG "quality" such as "standard vs. fine" on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to do with resolution. JPEG "quality" has to do with how much pixel-artifacting (damage) to the image you're willing to tolerate as you increase the JPEG compression to reduce filesize. Thus if your digital camera offers you a separate control for "quality" and "resolution," you can set your camera for, say, maximum-quality/medium resolution images (perfect if you intend to edit the image for use on the Internet), or conversely you can even set it for wretched-quality high-resolution images. If your camera does not provide separate settings for "quality" and "resolution," but only simplified settings that read something like "Standard, High and Fine Quality" (or perhaps "small filesize, medium filesize, large filesize"), this means that each setting represents some fixed blend of JPEG compression ratio and resolution. In this case you should select "Fine Quality" or "large filesize" (or whatever operative naming scheme is employed by your camera) for your motorcar shots. If you're going to send us those maximum quality/medium or high-resolution images to be used in an article or a "For Sale" ad, we'll have the maximum amount of image data to work with, and we'll "sample them down" (i.e., size them down) appropriately for viewing on the Web.

0: Avoid shooting your car in the bright sunlight... otherwise:
1: use your flash (force it to work)
2: use a lens shade
3: use a polarizer filter

7. If for some obscure reason you MUST shoot in bright sunlight (at an outdoor carshow, for example), force your flash to work "force-fill" light into those dark shadows caused by harsh sunlight. Any decent 35mm or digital camera will permit you to "force" your flash to work in bright sunlight; the (forced-flash) feature is usually indicated with a lightning-bolt icon.

Pro photographers routinely use "fill flash" for their daytime shots, although I couldn't count the times someone at a race or carshow has asked me "Why are you using that big flash unit with all this bright sunshine?" Read my lips: the brighter the overhead sunlight, the more you need to employ "fill flash." Repeat: bright overhead sunlight means USE YOUR FLASH (forget your camera's "automatic flash" option; instead, set it to force/fill flash, so that the bright sunlight won't prevent the flash from working)!

When you use your flash in the "traditional way" (i.e., to provide EXTRA/ ADDITIONAL light in, say, a darkened room or at dusk or after dark outside), you're actually providing MORE light to your film (or to your sensor array in your digital camera), since there isn't enough ambient light to for you to capture a well-illuminated photograph.

ON THE OTHER HAND, when you're outdoors in the bright sunlight where there's ample natural light, your goal is entirely different: you don't need MORE light, you need to RE-ARRANGE the light. Using your camera's FORCED flash (lightning bolt icon) feature, you're merely RE-ARRANGING the light, so that MORE LIGHT (your flash) illuminates those pesky dark shadow areas... while simultaneously LESS SUNLIGHT is captured that otherwise results in harsh glare on your windshield and color bleachout on the painted surfaces. Voilá, with your flash you've "softened" all that harsh glare/harsh shadow! Put another way, essentially the same amount of light winds up on your film (or sensor array)... but the light is more evenly distributed, thus usually rendering a far better photograph, whether your subject is your motorcar or a closeup of your family on the beach. You've taken a photograph instead of a crappy snapshot... and the only thing you did differently was to force your camera's flash to "soften" all that harsh shadow and harsh sunlight.

This (outdoor/forced-fill) use of your flash unit is so fundamentally important for you to understand and to take advantage of... yet the camera makers, if they mention it at all, do so in fine print on p. 62 of your user manual. It should be IN LARGE PRINT on p. 1 of your manual.

One caveat (this should be a no-brainer): forcing your flash to work when you're shooting a distant skyline, or your football team from the bleachers 75 meters away... or your motorcar parked 30 meters away... isn't going to improve your photo at all. Leave it turned off.

You're unlikely to get good photographs in midday bright sunlight without 1) a lens shade, and 2) a good strobe flash attachment. Period. The lens shade will help keep the sun off your lens, and the flash unit will serve to both lighten the shadows and reduce the intensity of the brightness in the glare areas. A built-in flash (which I refer to as a "cigarette-butt flash" typically doesn't provide enough light to entirely overcome harsh midday shadows, although it will help some.

8. Get a polarizer lens filter ($25­$50); use it to greatly reduce the glare (and thus lighten the shadows) in your midday & mid-afternoon shots. You'll find that same polarizer filter to be worth its weight in Krugerrands for your vacation shots as well, especially your beach and ski shots, where your photographs will take a quantum leap in richness of color. But there are a few caveats: occasionally a polarizer filter will over-emphasize the contrast, especially with a bright yellow car.

Again, avoid at all costs photographing your car in bright midday or mid-afternoon sunlight. If you're shooting in clear weather (i.e., minimal clouds or overcast) and your shadow isn't at least 15 feet (±5 meters) long, you're shooting during the wrong time of day.

9. Make sure that the backdrop is neat and appropriate. A fashionable restaurant or hotel or downtown plaza or fountain or a college campus scene or a '50s-styled drive-in restaurant or even a beach or wharf scene can make an ideal backdrop. Make sure there is no signpost or tree "growing out of" the top of your car or a parking-lot line jutting from a tire. Make sure the steering wheel is straight (and on a Cobra or other roadster, the sunvisors should be turned down to horizontal). Keep your car on clean, unlined/uncracked pavement and off the grass; a motorcar photographed on grass or tree leaves tends to look like an abandoned vehicle. Above all, remember that it's your car that's the primary focal point of your photograph, not the background or the live models.

10. Take your photos from different angles and different camera heights, from ± headlight level. Amateurs tend to "stand up and shoot down" on their car. Not good. The most dramatic, even menacing, sportscar shots are low-angle and zoomed-in to "fill the frame." Position yourself for 3/4 view, 3-dimensional shots that capture part of the front and more of the side. If you intend your photos to be used on the Internet, also shoot a few "broadside" shots; a broadside shot (with the decks and doors closed) enables you to display your car on the Internet at a larger physical size while the filesize remains relatively small, which means a bigger image/faster download for each person viewing your car. If you really want to get serious, mount your camera onto a tripod (adjusted down low) so that you can critically examine and adjust the composition of each shot.

11. If your camera offers you the option of imprinting the date/time onto your film or digital image... for cryin' out loud, turn this annoying "feature" off when photographing your car.

Use your flash. Repeat: use your flash. One more time: USE YOUR FLASH! For cockpit shots, make sure the upholstery and carpet is vacuumed to spotless. Straighten the steering wheel; if it's a tilt wheel, tilt it down to driving position. If your car is a Cobra or other roadster, adjust the visors and harnesses and windwings. You can use your wide-angle lens (or a wide-angle zoom setting) for engine and cockpit shots.

images above hotlinked to scan comparison page

You may have already noticed that we urge you to send us your (35mm film) negative strips along with your photo prints, so that we can achieve the best scan possible. If you'd like to witness firsthand what an astonishing difference a good film scanner makes, check this hotlinked scan-comparison page.

If you're taking photos of your car to put it up for sale: good photographs represent your most important step in effectively marketing, rather than merely advertising, your car (or your kit car/Cobra/streetrod lineup) for sale. Similarly, if you plan to submit a photo of your car to the editor of a magazine, the odds of its being published are increased a hundredfold if you submit a professional-caliber photograph or digital image; also, bear in mind that magazines invariably prefer a color transparency (a "slide") over a color print.

Take advantage of the fact that most folks take really bad photographs of their motorcar--and then give yourself a big competitive edge by applying what you've learned on this web page and presenting your motorcar in (ahem) its best light.

If you're shopping for a digital camera, bear in mind that Nikon (http://www.nikon.com) and Olympus (http://www.olympus.com), both with extensive model lineups, offer perhaps the best overall quality images for the dollar (or Pound Sterling or Deutschmark...). Epson (http://www.epson.com) also offers a good bit of bang for the buck with several of its models.

The only way you're going to get acceptable-quality images on a floppy-disc-drive Mavica is to shoot at the "fine" quality setting. The root of most of the Mavica's shortcomings is that Sony chose to fit a 3.5" floppy drive into the camera body (more accurately, it's a portable floppy drive with a lens and shutter attached for marketing purposes). It was a cagey marketing idea, but one without a trace of redeeming practical qualities (heavy weight, excessive battery drain, low-capacity storage, snail-paced data storage)... then, due to the tiny amount of storage capacity on a floppy disk (by comparison, a 512 megabyte Compact Flash storage card that's only 3mm thick and the size of a match flap, provides you with the storage capacity of 366 (three hundred and sixty-six) floppy disks!), Sony had to mega-compress each digital image (22.5-to-1 compression ratio at standard quality mode) in order to shoehorn images onto that micro-capacity floppy. That high JPEG compression ratio results in VERY noticeable and image-wrecking "artifacts" in--and blotchy discoloration of--the image. Further, the optics on the lower-end floppy-drive Mavicas tend to introduce brownish "halos" along areas of high contrast that prove to be quite challenging to edit away with Photoshop. But all is not lost: once again, if you shoot only at the "fine" quality mode AND maximum resolution, you'll come out okay. More or less. Compare the first two (Mavica) images (left & center) below with the third image shot with another brand of digital camera that uses a kinder/gentler implementation of JPEG compression:

The result of excessive JPEG compression:
the proof is in the pixels

photo#1: This 160x160 pixel JPEG image was shot with a Sony (floppy-drive) Mavica. Click on the photo to see a blowup of the effects on the photo of the Mavica's high JPEG compression.	photo#2: This 160x160 pixel JPEG image was shot with a Sony (floppy-drive) Mavica. Click on the photo to see a blowup of the effects on the photo of the Mavica's high JPEG compression.	photo#3: This 160x160 pixel JPEG image was shot with another brand digital camera (an Olympus*) that uses a kinder/gentler genre of JPEG compression than the Mavica. Click on the photo to see a blowup of this image.
*Click on the following text hotlink to see a collage of 3 superb photos of Chuck Conway's red Cobra hotlinked (same car as #3 above), skillfully shot with a consumer-priced (but very good quality) Olympus D-510 digital camera. By sheer coincidence, as I was working on these comparative images today (18 October 2002), I received an emailed ad from http://www.overstock.com that offered that very digicam for $229.95. Update (March 2003): both Olympus and Nikon have introduced several marvelous new models. Several colleagues of mine have purchased Olympus' new (today, anyway) model C-5050 zoom is a splendidly-featured digital camera. It's a top-of-the-consumer-grade camera with an intuitive feature set, 5.0 megapixel resolution, captures excellent images. As with any camera, I recommend you spring for a separate strobe flash; on that note, Olympus offers an excellent "bracket/grip handle" (FL-BK01) so you can mount their FL-40 strobe flash unit. Good stuff. I wish I could test and report to you as thoroughly on other models and brands, but, alas, I haven't the time! Here's a hotlink to the C-5050's review page on the steves-digicams website: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2002_reviews/c5050.html Contrary to many folks' misconception, you don't have to spend a lot of money to purchase a very capable and well-appointed digital camera. But as with any other high-tech product, you MUST do your homework first... before you fork out your folding money.
Now you can perhaps appreciate why I urge you to set your digital camera (whatever brand you have) on the highest-quality/ fine-quality setting: it's so you'll minimize the image-damaging effects of JPEG compression. Click on the hotlinked photos (#1 or #2) above, so you can more clearly see the image quality defects they represent: the 'pixel noise' along the contrast edges and the 'big chunky blocks' of pixels and the discoloration are the direct and inevitable result of excessive JPEG compression. Contrary to general misconception, these image-quality problems have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with a digital camera's resolution (indeed, all three of the images above are precisely the same 160x160 pixel resolution); the problems you see in photos#1 and #2 have EVERYTHING TO DO with the image-wrecking effects of excessive JPEG compression. The digital camera makers do everything to lead you to believe that pixel count (i.e., resolution) is all you need be concerned with; they do little or nothing to provide you with the more important issue of image damage done by the JPEG compression process... especially when a digital camera maker pushes JPEG compression beyond its reasonable limits. So here's Curt's digital-camera buyer's/user's advisory: Resolution is only one of several considerations you must consider when selecting a digital camera; if you're shooting exclusively or primarily for display on the Internet or on your own computer screen, just about every digital camera ("digicam") provides you with ample pixel count (resolution). Don't get bedazzled with a high megapixel count, and forget all the other--more important--considerations. Case in point: that Olympus D-510 that was used for those photos of Chuck Conway's red Cobra (above) outputs only 2.1 megapixels... yet look at the splendid-quality images it's capable of capturing.   JPEG compression (and the resulting image damage) must be minimized (keep your camera set for "Highest Quality" or "Fine Quality"). Just refer to the photos #1 & 2 above if you question the issue of image damage caused by excessive JPEG compression.   Lens: a high-quality lens is just as critically important (perhaps more so) as with a film camera. Plastic is unacceptable: your digicam MUST HAVE a high-quality optical-glass multi-coated lens, just as on any good 35mm camera.   Flash: fundamentally important for all color photography. And it's every bit as important for outdoor/ bright sunlight photography as it is for indoor/nighttime photography. The built-in flash on most cameras (both film cameras and digicams) is fine for indoor/nighttime purposes, but somewhat underpowered for outdoor/daytime "fill" flash, which constitutes all or most of your motorcar photography (and probably most of your 'people pictures' and vacation photography). You'll benefit greatly by choosing a digicam that has not only a built-in flash (and a 'forced flash' function), but also a 'hot shoe' so you have the option of mounting a more powerful strobe flash. Most folks consider a flash as something you need only occasionally. Wrong. Repeat: WRONG. For color photography (film or digital), the more good illumination the better... and thus you should consider using your flash to be THE NORM rather than THE EXCEPTION. Most of your photos, especially of motorcars and people, will come out better if you use your flash, and use the 'forced flash' feature, usually indicated by a lightning-bolt icon.   Fun Flash Test #1: Remember, the brighter the overhead sunlight you're shooting in, the more important you need to use your flash (and force it to work). If you'd like to run a quick test of this advice, take your family or friends outdoors midday in bright overhead sunshine, and make sure one or two of them is wearing a baseball cap, and do a group shot without using your flash. Then take another shot with your flash set to 'forced flash.' Compare the photos: without flash, you've got streaks of harsh shadows under their eyebrows, under their noses and chins... and probably the entire face of those folks wearing a baseball cap is dark shadow; with your 'forced flash' shot (especially if you're using a separate, more powerful strobe unit), all those shadows are eliminated or greatly reduced, including especially the folks wearing a baseball cap... that extra illumination thus resulting in a far better photo. Just as with midday motorcar photography, there's lots & lots of light... but it's concentrated in all the wrong places, and it's blended with ugly/harsh shadows on your family's faces. Folks, that's why your camera came equipped with a forced-flash setting! One caveat: on the other hand, if your family and friends are all REALLY unattractive, you might want to leave your flash turned off...   Fun Flash Test #2: Now here's another "flash test" for you to try out. Wait 'til very late in the day (dusk), then line everybody up for another shot... with the sun directly behind the group (ideally, with their bodies blocking the sunlight from directly striking your lens). Take shot #1, with your flash turned off; now take shot#2, with your flash set to "automatic"; now take shot#3, with your flash set to "forced flash." Shot#1 will be a throwaway... everybody's face and torso is a mere dark silhouette against the bright sunset; shot#2 will also probably be a throwaway, since your camera's "automatic/sees-all/ knows-all" automatic flash decides with its programmed-in genius that with all that light facing the camera, flash isn't required--so the odds are you'll wind up with the same set of faceless/featureless silhouettes as with shot#1; shot#3 (forced flash) will be markedly better than the other two shots, since the subject of the photo (your family & friends' faces) are nicely and properly illuminated even against the bright sunset. Trust me on this: your camera's 'forced-flash' feature is far more useful and functional and effective for you than any ludicrous "automatic flash" feature. "Automatic Flash" is a cagey marketing maneuver targeted mostly for the brain-dead... it's your camera's "Forced Flash" feature you should be regularly and routinely using, especially when you're shooting out in the bright sunlight.   Memory/storage: Most digital cameras today use either a Compact Flash (CF) memory card, or a SmartMedia Card (SM). Both are approximately the same (physical) size, altho' the CF card is thicker (±3mm), and offers a greater maximum storage capacity (512Mb and more, vs. 128Mb for SM). Most camera makers short-change you on the card that's included... usually only 16Mb or 32Mb; you'll want at least a 128Mb card, which you can purchase for under $50 (USD). Save the card that came with your camera as an auxiliary backup. With memory cards this inexpensive, I cannot discern any advantage to selecting a camera with a disk drive (floppy or CD-ROM): the memory cards are faster (and far lighter weight) and demand much less battery drain than any variety of disk drive. And if the store salesman smugly pronounces "This model here is what you need: it uses a floppy disk, which you just pop out and put in your computer"... don't walk, don't run... make a flying dive for the nearest exit. You're not shopping for a portable floppy drive, you're shopping for a camera. In any event, don't expect an electronics store salesman to possess any credentials that would qualify him/her to provide you with knowledgeable advice regarding digital cameras (and certainly don't expect him to know anything about photography); you MUST do your own research... on the Internet (see the link to Steve's Digicams' website I've provided to you below), purchase a digital photography magazine or two, and perhaps seek advice at a good photography store... they're likely to be 1,000 times more qualified to provide you with sound advice about photography and digital cameras than any salesperson at an electronics store.   Feature set: Just as with any good 35mm camera, features such as shutter-speed choices, aperture choices, zoom range, tripod mountable, hot shoe for strobe flash, time-delay shutter release, et al., are just as important when you're selecting a digicam.

Great information site: A marvelous website for you to check out is http://www.steves-digicams.com, which arms you with a wealth of information and product reviews about digital cameras ("digicams") and related accessories. Make sure you check out the "camera reviews" page: http://www.steves-digicams.com/hardware_reviews.html.

Storage: SmartMedia and CompactFlash memory cards: Check out http://www.newegg.com. Their prices on storage cards are among the best. (If you stumble across similar or better prices, let me know!)

NiMH batteries: I receive a lot of questions about digital cameras and related topics; you see, I added an Olympus D600L digital picture-taker to my grab-bag of Nikon equipment in 1998 (in 2001 I upgraded to Olympus's top-end E-10 professional digicam. In any event, here's some hot news for you: you can obtain those top-of-the-line/top-rated MAHA/Powerex AA Nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries, and rechargeable lithium batteries,at the website http://nimhbattery.com/mh-4aa180.htm There's also lots of entertaining and useful information about batteries in general. And their NiMH battery charger (the battery-conditioning model, the MAHA/Powerex-C204F, at $24.95 USD (for an additional $4 the charger comes with a 12v car adapter... an added bonus for trips and vacations) is a runaway best value; it's full-featured and very compact in size, and recharges both AA and AAA size batteries, and both NiMH and NiCD (nickel cadmium) batteries. For the record, "conditioning" a NiMH battery means to "drain it down to minimal charge," and according to expert advisories is important to do occasionally to maintain your NiMH batteries in peak operating condition. Thus having a "drain/condition" feature on your NiMH charger (and, of course, using the feature periodically) should ensure both better performance and a longer life for your NiMH batteries.

Reviewer Dave Etchells' test of this charger concludes with: "It seems to us that the C-204F is just about the perfect battery charger for digicam enthusiasts. It's fast, reasonably gentle on batteries, super compact, and reasonably priced. Very highly recommended. Don't think twice, if you have a digicam that uses AA cells, buy one of these and a couple of sets of high-capacity NiMH batteries. When it comes to compact battery chargers, the C-204F is about as good as it gets!"

Just recently (mid-January 2002) been advised that (North American) retailers "Costco" and "Sam's" also offer low prices on NiMH batteries, to wit:

"Curt: Thanks for some great camera tips; I read your recommendation on the AA NiMH batteries with interest because I recently bought some at Sam's at a super deal. Sam's had a package of 8-AA energizers in 1700 mah NiMH with a companion charger that charges NiMH or NiCad at the flip of a switch. The total package is $19.95. I don't know how they do it. All the Birmingham Sam's offered this deal, and I bought several for friends who don't get into town often."

Huel Young
Pell City, Alabama

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