This section is for people with a new digital camera, and is designed to help you get started and enjoy the many benefits of digital as quickly as possible. With digital, you are not paying for film so you can experiment and delete any photographs that you don't want to keep.

What do you get in your new camera box?

The camera normally comes with a cable for copying photographs to your computer and software for organising, viewing and adjusting images. Many cameras have a TV cable, which allows you to view and delete your images using a TV screen.   Some cameras come with editing software. 

I don't normally use the cable to connect my camera to the computer, I prefer to use a card reader. If your PC doesn't have one, they can be bought for as little as £3 on ebay. If you do invest in a card reader you will not need to install the camera's software to copy files over. The card reader allows you to plug in to your pc and copy files over just like you would do from a CD or floppy disk.

Also, since most cameras come with small memory cards, I would recommend buying some extra memory as you don't want to be deleting pictures in the middle of a shoot. Memory cards have now come down in price and can be obtained quite cheaply on websites such as ebay or e-buyer.

Getting started

Read the instruction manual - that's the No. 1 rule.

Familiarise yourself with the different modes, which include landscape (normally shown as a mountain symbol), portrait (head-and-shoulders symbol) and macro (plant symbol). These are all explained in the camera manual - try them all and look at the results, so you know exactly which mode to use, before you have the need to capture that special moment. Most cameras have a novice automatic mode and an advanced automatic mode. These settings have been based on extensive research and give excellent results.

Quality setting

The camera can take photographs on low, medium or high quality. I strongly recommend that you use the camera at its highest quality setting. 

Nikon and Canon cameras have L M and S (for large, medium and small). I always use the highest setting i.e. H.

There is no point in buying a 12-megapixel camera if you are going to use it at, say, 3 megapixel quality.

The lower the quality, the more pictures you can fit onto the camera's storage medium (memory card), but the trade-off is the quality of your final print. If, or should I say when, you capture that magic moment, you want to be able to make a decent-sized print.

See associated article about pixels

Other items for your shopping list

o       An extra rechargeable battery so that you have a fully charged spare.

o       A memory card case can protect spare cards from damage and help you keep your cards together to avoid loss. 

o       Camera case

o       a spirit level (for SLR)

o       Editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. There is a lite version called Elements which is packed with features and costs about £80.It also has some nice special effects called "filters" that allow you, for example, to convert your image into a watercolour.