Never a Better Time for Young Photographers

These days children grow up with the computer - at school and at home. They also grow up with the mobile phone, and these days the standard mobile phone comes with an inbuilt digital camera. Their mobile phone is the first point-and-shoot camera that many children use. Many will go on to develop a more serious interest in photography - with a little bit of encourgaement.

The home pc together with software for editing digital images (and there's lot around) is the equivalent of the photographer's darkroom from the age of film photography - but a lot less messy and much more powerful.

Today's digital camera is a great way into photography as a lifelong hobby - or maybe even a future career.

With a digital camera you can shoot as many photos as your camera's memory card will allow, come home, upload them to your pc, and see the results of your work - fantastic! Delete the files on your memory card and you're ready to shoot again.

With an inexpensive digital camera, a young person has the opportunity to build up a treasure store of memories, and to learn a lot of photographic skills along the way.

So how do you choose a camera for a young person. Don't get caught up in the megapixel wars. A 3MB camera resolution is perfectly adequate for a starter, but most new cameras will be larger. (In fact, the very largest sensor resoloutions, 12MB and the like, require the best lenses, because the imperfections in the cheaper lenses will show.) Look at what controls are on offer. If an interest in photography is to be given a chance to develop, then the camera must be able to go beyond point-and-shoot and a few scene modes. Aperture control and shutter speed control are desirable, so that a young photographer can experiment.

Do your research online before you buy. The places to start are here.