The Digital Photographer

Want interesting tips and tricks about digital photography? No need to go all over the Web ... its all here in The Digital Photographer.

Each week, we send out how-to guides on shooting, editing and sharing digital photos. Get advice on the best value digital photography cameras and equipment. Become the photographer you've always wanted to be!

Start Off With The Essentials ...

Frustrated by the confusing photography jargon you hear out there? Get a crash course on digital photography by reading the following articles:

How to choose a digital camera
How to shoot better digital photos
How to use photo editing software
How to organize photos for easy retrieval
How to share your photos with friends and family

Work In Progress ...

Here are some items I'm working on for the website ...

• A brand new, exclusive digital photography forum!
• A photography eBook that consolidates all tips on the website
• A quarterly scoop of the top digital photography products

Tell me what to do next! What's your biggest wish for the website? Should I add more topics on night photography? Add a forum? Or feature more product offers and discounts? Tell me what you need.

Table of Contents
 

From The Forums

• Truckloads of digital photography tips
• Making money with a digital SLR
• Book recommendations for a novice

Articles

• New articles on the website
• 5 Tips for Conserving Camera Battery Power

Top Tips

A review of the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D digital SLR camera
A review of the Canon PowerShot A520 digital camera
A review of the SmugMug photo-sharing service
Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 software review
Neat Image 4.4 Pro+ software review

And here's the feature article of the week ...

5 Tips for Conserving Camera Battery Power

Running out of battery power can be one of the most annoying aspects of digital photography. Too many times in the past have I experienced taking the time to set up a shot or needing to use my camera in the heat of the moment, only to find that the battery didn’t have enough power left to capture the moments that I wanted to photograph. 

Instead of carrying spare batteries with me incase this happened, I decided to research into the area of conversing camera battery power. I share what I learnt with you in this article in the hope of helping you to avoid such annoying situations! 

Tip 1: Keep LCD Use to a Minimum
The part of your digital camera that uses up the most power is without a doubt the LCD screen. Every time you open up this digital display you are presented with a view of what the camera sees in real-time, meaning that the display has to be refreshed multiple times every second to show you a fluent-moving picture. Keeping usage of the LCD screen to a minimum will definitely help a freshly charged battery last much longer! 

Tip 2: Manage Photos While Your Batteries Charge
Another easy way to cut down on the amount of power drained from your batteries is to wait until you can plug your camera into an AC adapter before you start to manage your photos. This is an important tip to remember - you may enjoy cropping, deleting, and viewing your photos on the go, but it will leave you with much less power to take photos if you do so.

Tip 3: Try Not to Use the Memory Card
This tip goes hand in hand with the previous one, but also plays an important factor in keeping enough juice in your camera batteries to take those important photos! It uses up a lot of power every time that you access the memory card, so keep this in mind before reviewing every photo that you take while relying solely on battery power.

Tip 4: Don’t Mix Different Types of Batteries
Keeping the same types of batteries together can help to conserve power in digital cameras as well as most other battery-powered devices. This is mostly because the performance of older batteries will not be as good as newer ones, and they will drain much faster. Another important reason to remember this tip is that mixing different types of batteries can be dangerous – the batteries can become damaged and even leak, which in turn could end up damaging your digital camera.

Tip 5: Let Batteries Run Out
Letting batteries completely run out of power before recharging them can help them to last longer as well as increase their performance. Something that people tend to forget is that just because your batteries aren’t holding enough energy to run your camera it doesn’t mean that they are entirely empty of power. You can make sure that your batteries are as empty as possible before recharging them by leaving them in an old radio or a flashlight that is turned on until they run down.

Conclusion
Hopefully this article has offered you some new suggestions to help you conserve digital camera battery power. It may first seem annoying to not immediately review all of your photos as you take them, but after a while you will most likely find that you get more photos taken this way, and using this in combination with some of the other tips will help you become more efficient at using your digital camera!