Ever since I was a kid and could hold a camera, I did. I've used film, VHS, and digital cameras. At any family function you will see me behind a camera documenting the events of the day. I shoot photos on a daily basis. Often I am asked by friends and family alike my advice on buying a digital camera. I own quite a few and use them all for different purposes. I have a few more but I ran out of hands.

A digital camera is an essential tool for a blogger. Why? Well, for one thing you can't do some opps without one. But beyond taking opps and using the digital camera for them a digital camera allows you to communicate your ideas visually. Think of some blog posts that you have read lately. Was there an image on the post? Did the image draw you in and make you want to read more?

I've been seeing posts written that say that you should cull Flickr for legal images to post to your blog. I think that is cheating a bit. Today's digital cameras are so easy and inexpensive that you should be taking your own shots and including them in your posts. I might be a bit biased because my daily blog post focuses on the photo that I take each day. My own personal rules dictate that any photo I put up on my blog has to have been taken by me. This goes for my Photo-A-Day as well as the photography memes that I participate in. There are tons of different photo themed memes out there. Participating in them can help drive more traffic to your blog and photos that you took yourself are always better (in my opinion) than anything you snag from Flickr.

So, what does one look for in a digital camera? Ask yourself these questions:

How much can I afford to spend? If you are buying a digital camera for blogging purposes remember that you may be able to deduct it as business equipment. That is well and good but you still have a budget to contend with. Budget the amount you want to spend on a camera. If it is for basic snapshots I would say about $150 for an adequate to $250 for a really cool Point and Shoot (POS) camera. If you are going to try and sell your images then we are talking many more dollars say $600 - $$$$. Remember that you are going to pay for bells and whistles so make sure you want them before you decide.

What the heck are megapixels? If you see ads for cameras and when you go to stores you are going to see cameras with 2MP to 14MP (yeah there is a 14MP DSLR one out there, *drool*). What does that number mean. With more megapixels you can blow up an image and print it out without distorting or pixelating the image. So are you going to be printing 8X10 prints or higher? Probably not but you may print out 4X6 photos. So if you are primarily printing 4X6 or not printing at all you could get by with a slightly lower megapixel camera.

Here are examples of a 2MP, 4MP, 7MP and a 10MP image.

Image taken with a 2MP camera phone.

Image taken with a 4MP digital camera.

Image taken with a 7MP digital still/video camera.

Image taken with a 10MP DSLR using a 70mm-300mm lens with macro.

Do you see much of a difference in quality between the 4 images? Not really. Now if I printed each of these out in their full resolution there would be some major differences. However, we are not going to be printing the images instead we will be posting them to our blogs.

Each of those images above was cropped to 450 pixels by 350pixels (a dimension that fit well on my first blog and I haven't seen the need to change). I also set the pixel size to 96 dots per inch or dpi. Why? For load time, unless you are planning on reselling your images through a photo hosting site you don't need to post them with the highest dpi. Usually 72dpi or 96dpi works great.

In the case of the images from four cameras above I could get by easily with a 2MP camera, but it sure is nice to have all the advanced features of the 10MP Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera. But talking about those features will be saved for the next post.

Are you using photos on your blogs? What kind of camera do you use?

I am splitting this post into two parts. Part one asks a few basic questions about selecting a digital camera to buy. Part two will talk a little about bells and whistles of digital cameras.

Drew writes five blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, BenSpark 2: Electric Boogaloo, Flatwater Tech and The BenSpark Utterz

Posted by BenSpark at 03:11 PM in Blogging | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)