What to look for...and look out for

Choosing a digital SLR is a bit trickier than choosing a film SLR because you have all of the film-camera considerations, plus a number of digital aspects to weigh. One benefit, though, is that you can't go wrong with any of today's D-SLRs—they all offer lots of features, good performance and enough resolution to produce quality 12x18 inkjet prints.

Choose and use simple camcorders to create Hollywood-style results

If I had any doubt of what could be achieved with an affordable camcorder and a bit of imagination, it was swept away while attending a high-school film festival. As I watched, kids from San Fernando High School in Southern California shared short live-action and animated films they had created with cameras, computers and software.

Personal storage with personality

Mundane tasks like data backup and image archiving aren't as exciting as working with your images on the computer. It may be essential to protect our irreplaceable photos, and the time and creative effort we put into perfecting them, but as I write these words—"external hard drives"—I imagine your eyes are glossing over in boredom. Though necessary, backup storage devices aren't the kind of equipment typically associated with "fun."

Shoot it right from the start and get better images for use in the computer

While everyone knows Photoshop is a marvelous imaging tool for photographers, in some minds it has been transformed into a magic wand, with powers beyond imagination—you don't have to shoot the image perfectly initially because you can always fix it in the computer. As good as the digital darkroom is, the old acronym about computers is still important to remember: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Paying attention to the craft of taking the picture is also about using Photoshop and other image-processing software, because how you first capture your subject tremendously affects what you can do in the computer and how you do it.

Simple fixes to turn an okay image into a “wish you were here” moment