What should I take a picture of?
Because it’s digital - Take pictures of everything!
Then delete them (unless you like one of them)
Then take more pictures of everything.
Experiment with as many features of the camera as you can (I liked the experiments with the macro feature on mine, some very cool close-ups resulted)
Take pictures of landscapes, sunsets, famous things near where you live.
I GOT ONE TOO!! (And from the Ex-BF no less). I’ve taken pictures every day since getting it - - and deleted some of them - - and taken more - lol! I hope to read the instructions some time this week on how to download the pics onto my computer to send them to friends. My camera also has a “internet teleconferencing” (webcam) feature. Not that I’ll use that any time soon, but it’s good to know I suppose.
Have fun!! 
I GOT ONE TOO!! (And from the Ex-BF no less). I’ve taken pictures every day since getting it - - and deleted some of them - - and taken more - lol! I hope to read the instructions some time this week on how to download the pics onto my computer to send them to friends. My camera also has a “internet teleconferencing” (webcam) feature. Not that I’ll use that any time soon, but it’s good to know I suppose.
Have fun!!
I got one also! Well, hubby and I got one from my mom. I’m wondering if it’s got a problem, tho, because after taking maybe15 photos, the batteries were dead. And those were new batteries that we installed after the ones that came with the camera died after about 6 or 7 photos.
I’m about to contact Olympus and complain…
I got an Olympus too, and as you found, the batteries only lasted for an hour or so of snapping. Apparently, ordinary alkaline batteries will only last that long if you are running the screen as a view finder etc, and faffing around a lot as you do with a new toy. I investigated their website, and found that they actually recommend that you use a lithium battery, which lasts some 20 to 30 times longer. Having said that, they also suggest that you don’t continually run the view screen as this is particularly power hungry (I think it says as much in the little booklet that came with mine). The lithium batteries (1 replaces the 2 ordinary types) are about £10 a throw over here in the UK, and I have invested in a couple. I have also got another memory card, as the 16MB that it came with will only hold 32 mid resolution pictures. Other than that, I am thrilled with mine.
Digital camera’s eat batteries and the preview screen doesn’t help. The camera I use takes regular batteries so I pack as many 2100 ma rechargable batteries as I can.
The neatest thing I’ve done with my digital camera is to take panoramic shots. You do this by taking side-by-side pictures and then stitching them together with a program such as Adobe Elements. It takes some practice to do it right but the results are so beyond what a regular camera can do that you will be amazed.
I got such a camera!
OK, so I bought it for myself.
Cannon EOS 300.
I got pictures of fruit at the Grocery store, and everyone I work with, and the snow, and the Driveway of a house near work, and someone’s house in the snow, and a Birdhouse in the snow, and flowers at the store, and me being Santa with all my clients, and . . . well, the weather has been sorta dark, and rainy, so I am waiting a bit.
I also found out that COSTCO makes prints for twenty cents a shot, straight from the Card, in an hour.
Big enlargements for three bucks, too.
I am so waiting for spring, and Cherry blossoms. I do the Cherry blossoms every year, but this year it’s 6.3 megapixels, and A4 prints! Gonna get the TJ memorial, and the Lincoln, and all those muscular women carrying the horses on the Memorial Bridge!
I got a monopod, so I can go to the Mellon Gallery too, to steal some great works.
Tris
When you get a digital camera, NiMH rechargeables should become your new best buddy. I have two sets, and I rotate them between the charger and the camera.
I have 3 batteries for my camera (Sony MVCD 400) and I numbered them so I could rotate, I bought a dual charger for it and when I went to Europe earlier this year I never encountered a battery problem (~1300 pictures in 16 days).
unclviny
Ohhh, digital cameras are SO wonderful. I’ve had mine for about four months or so, and I absolutely love it.
There’s a program you can download for free called The Gimp that’s basically like Photoshop but without all the high-end techie stuff that only professional printers need; it’s perfect for touching up/enhancing digital photos. You can get it here.
And if you’re looking for somewhere to show those photos and hone your skills at the same time, I recommend starting a Fotolog. It’s free for a basic account (you can upload one photo a day), or you can pay five bucks a month and upload more than that and get some other features too. (I go ahead and pay it; they don’t run ads, and someone’s gotta help.)
If anyone’s interested, my fotolog is here. It’s really done wonders for my photos.
By the way, my camera is a Kodak EasyShare CX4300. 3.2 megapixels, pretty basic features, but I got it for only $170 on eBay. Some fun!
Thank you very much for this information! I hadn’t had the chance to look into it myself yet, so you jsut saved me some time.
My mom has an older Olympus and she said she got the NiMH rechargeables and a charger, so I’ll be investing in that as well as another memory card.
Now, if only I could take a decent photo… <sigh>
Yay! I got a digital camera for Christmas too!!
Though, it does seem to use batteries like they’re going out of fashion. Some good info from Sqwerticus, I reckon I’ll go get me some lithium batteries
I got an Olympus C-5000 from my husband, and I snapped a ton of pics (and mini-movies) and didn’t kill the fancy-schmancy battery for two days. I love it! The movies are a big drain, though.
I have been collecting pictures of lost or abandoned gloves for a few years now; it just became a lot easier after I got the digital camera.
Much to my dismay, I recently learned that my idea is not unique - there are actually websites devoted to pictures of lost gloves.
Ow.
Hey, I’ve been there with you on battery run-down!
For those of you with low AA battery life, may I suggest buying some rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries and a plug in charger. (I think the best ones come from Radio Shack of all places)
I have two sets of these batteries, and keep one set charged…the charger works at home and in the car. These batteries last MUCH longer than the normal alkaline batteries and will quickly pay for themselves.
I also bought two 128M memory cards.
Yes, on the rechargeable batteries, even if you don’t use the screen for viewfinding. Yes, invest in the biggest memory card you can – it’s worth it, not to miss that one great shot. Yes, plug into your computer and go through the photos on the memory card, deleting all but the best, to free up more space in the camera’s memory. Yes, get some photo-editing software (I love ACDSee) to work on your photos with.
And one other point that your email correspondents will be grateful for: Learn how to reduce the data size of your photos before you start emailing them. Use formats like bitmap or TIFF for printing, but use JPEG for email – it’s about a tenth as large a file for the same size photo as the printable quality, and looks fine on the screen. Be sure your emailed photos are no more than around 400 x 600 pixels in size, or your email recipients will get monster pictures that take forever to download and are way too big for the screen without slider bars.
Your camera’s software will have editing menus that include ways to do all this stuff, like selecting which format to save a photo in. Any good photo-editing software will have all that and tons of other editing options. Play with them, have fun!
When I want to share a photo, I always download it to desktop, open the file in my photo-editing software, do any downsizing, cropping, brightness adjustment, etc., and then save it to desktop or a document file, leaving the original file unchanged on the camera’s memory chip in case I want to do something different with it.