A digital single lens reflex camera is an incredibly versatile and flexible piece of photographic equipment that can help you take the best photos of your life. There are several brands to choose from today that all have interchangeable lenses, allowing you to choose from a wide variety of shots from wide angle and closeups to telephoto images.

But before you decide that a digital single lens reflex camera is just what you need, first consider how you plan on using it. If you mainly like to take snapshots of your family and friends and maybe some special events like weddings and anniversaries, you probably don’t really need a camera as sophisticated and complicated as a digital SLR. In fact, a compact digital camera with a fixed lens will probably do the job just fine. So you can save yourself the added expense and steeper learning curve associated with dSLRs.

But on the other hand, if you are a photography hobbyist or perhaps you plan on increasing your photography skills in the near future, then a digital SLR camera will probably fit your needs well. Or perhaps you need a camera that can do double duty as both a simple fully automated point and shoot camera and a more sophisticated manual camera too, as more than one person with different skill levels will be using it. Happily, a digital SLR can fit the bill here too as most of them also have completely automated settings that can be used by almost anyone.

But if you decide that a digital SLR will work for you, which camera is best for you? Most likely you will need to do some research to find out what models are available in your price range and then read some digital SLR camera reviews online to learn more about which models are the best in that price range.

But from reading many of the online digital slr camera reviews by both independent reviewers and consumers, we have found two cameras that we can highly recommend based on their popularity in these unbiased reviews. For beginners, the Pentax ist DX is often mentioned as an extremely easy camera to learn and use and with a 18-55mm zoom lens and costs just under $1,000. For more advanced users that require even more features and capabilities, the Nikon D70s is well reported on by almost all reviewers that we saw, and with a 18-70mm lens, it costs around $1200. Of course, both of these cameras can be bought for less if you really make a good search for them online.

Regardless of which digital single lens reflex camera that you choose, they will all bring a higher level of photographic capability and sophistication to any photo that you take. If you follow the guidelines and tips provided above it can help you decide whether or not a digital SLR will fit your needs and help you decide also on which one will work best for you.

Thad Pickering writes on many consumer related topics including digital photography. You can find digital slr camera reviews and a digital cameras comparison by visiting our Digital Photography website.

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Digital photography lighting may utilize the same light as film cameras, but these cameras have very different ways of reading, interpreting, and dealing with it.

Digital photography lighting presents many challenges, not the least being that some CCD sensors still lack the broad exposure latitude of color films.

This means that some digital photos taken in strong light conditions, may have empty shadows and blown out highlights.

However, this is exactly where these cameras have the upper hand! They offer you the opportunity to test your understanding of digital photography lighting conditions, and to learn from previous mistakes!

Most digital cameras have preset digital photography lighting modes, or “scenes”, which have been carefully set up to deal with a wide variety of lighting situations.

To give an example: a camera such as the popular Olympus SP500 Ultra Zoom has 21 preset scenes. If a more challenging digital photography lighting situation arise, you can easily choose any one of these to get the perfect shot.

The ‘night & portrait’ scene is for shooting both your main subject, and an illuminated background in the night. This setting uses a slower than normal shutter speed.

Then there is the “museum” setting which is optimized for shooting without a flash (or sound!) in a museum, or art gallery - or when your kid is sleeping… This is where the versatility of digital photography lighting clearly shows itself.

With digital photography lighting, most cameras have various options for white balancing. This is the process of determining what will be the baseline white in your image, relative to which other colors are rendered.

Digital cameras boast options such as daylight, cloudy, shade, and tungsten. Most cameras also have an automatic setting for white balancing.

Many of these cameras also display a histogram to help judge exposure (under or overexposure) in different digital photography lighting situations.

What about lighting equipment? You don’t necessarily need expensive lighting equipment. For example, if you’re taking informal portraits of your family and friends, you can easily start with something such as the Screwfix double 500W site light set including a telescopic tripod.

To help you master both the technical and creative aspects related to digital photography lighting, Michael Freeman has written ‘Digital Photography Expert: Light & Lighting: The Definitive Guide For Serious Digital Photographers’.

He includes 350 photographs to demonstrate the most important techniques. He explains the full spectrum of light, how the camera measures it, as well as how to get color accuracy in your digital images.

If you want to fully explore how to use post-processing in Photoshop to achieve a variety of digital photography lighting results, you may want to study ‘Creative Photoshop Lighting Techniques, Revised and Updated’, by Barry Huggins.

Huggins explains techniques such as how to bring sunshine into cloudy day pictures, and to create underwater effects. You can also find out about light sources, and different types of light, such as candlelight and neon.

The message of these authors are clear: practice, practice, practice makes for perfect digital photography lighting!

For more information visit Best-Digital-Photography.com

Rika Susan of Article-Alert.com researches, writes, and publishes full-time on the Web. Copyright of this article: 2006 Rika Susan. This article may be reprinted if the resource box and hyperlinks are left intact.

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The digital photography histogram is a handy tool to ensure your pictures are light and color balanced, and is well worth the effort of learning how to interpret and use it.

Some cameras show the digital photography histogram in real time, allowing you to make adjustments as you go along.

What is a digital photography histogram? A histogram will show if there is enough detail in the shadow, midtone and highlight areas of your image, and importantly, whether or not your picture is overexposed.

The digital photography histogram indicates how the 256 levels of brightness are distributed in an image. Compare it to a horizontal line with 256 positions which represent all levels of brightness from pure black on the left, to pure white on the right.

It consists of a little graph which indicates hills, valleys and spikes of data according to the number of data pixels present for a given level of brightness. If your picture generally has low contrast, the pixels will cluster in the midtone (grey) area of a digital photography histogram.

An image with high contrast will have high stacks of pixels on the opposite ends of the graph, with fewer in the midtone area.

An overexposed image will show a lot of pixel data stacked on the far right side of the graph (lots of white). If you have most data on the left, and a big space to the right of your data, your picture is likely underexposed.

If you are new to the concept of the digital photography histogram, it takes a bit of time to interpret, but you will soon begin to see how the graph relates to your pictures.

For example, the digital photography histogram of an outside picture with a lot of dark sky and little color variation in the rest of the picture, will show a strong spike on the left (dark sky) and a low horizontal bar all the way to the right, indicating little variation in light intensity.

In overexposure you lose data that you can’t get back - even in Photoshop! Many photographers would argue that it is better to underexpose slightly. You can then correct a good deal of underexposure in an imaging program like Photoshop. It lets you distribute the lightness values of pixels more evenly across the spectrum from black to white.

Do you need the digital photography histogram? Many photographers never look at a histogram, but just view the images to check for exposure.

You will find that you are able to analyze your pictures in greater detail, and even to correct them afterwards in an imaging program like Photoshop, once you have mastered the digital photography histogram!

For more information visit Best-Digital-Photography.com

Rika Susan of Article-Alert.com researches, writes, and publishes full-time on the Web. Copyright of this article: 2006 Rika Susan. This article may be reprinted if the resource box and hyperlinks are left intact.

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