Genealogy Chat

In the summer I am going to England on a family tree 'mission'. I intend to take fotos of houses, gravestones, places of work, etc. I want to print these out for my file and also store them on the computer to send to other family members. I am going to buy a digital camera BUT I haven't the faintest idea what to look for, so any suggestions please?

Not an expert, but have used digital cameras at home and at work and they are all roughly similar. The bigger the pixels the better the image. You will want fairly good definition if you are photographing gravestones - the carving won't show up as easily as print does. If you google you can probably compare different models. More expensive may mean better, or it may just mean that there are lots of optional features that you don't want. Technology is moving very fast. Husband has a smallish camera which takes photos. At work we've just bought some tiny things, scarcely bigger than a mobile phone, which take photos and video clips. You can download onto a computer or take the camera to a chemists and do your printing on a self-service machine or get them to do it for you. nell

the main thing to remember is that they are getting better every 6 months- a fast moving market- there are plenty of cheap ones on the market now that will give you 5 or 6 million pixels.

I was really wary of spending too much on a camer because we'd had problems at work with a really expensive one - the batteries would keep running out. What I did was buy a really cheap one from Tescos (yes, I know - they ARE taking over the world, but..). It cost just under £40 + £9.97 for the memory card. And it has been fantastic! I can take 180 pictures & only need to charge the battery occasionally. Took great pics on holiday - was amazed. Whilst I may well progress to a better camera later, it has been really good to practice with. However, if you are talking about photographing documents for research - I don't know if that would work very well as haven't tried it. Jacquie

Thanks everyone for the advice so far. Do you have to buy a memory card with all models? And can you store the fotos on the computer with all models?

I've just got a good one from Olympus but as per what the others have said - the more mega pixels the better the quality!! And yes most will come with a CD to be able to download them onto your PC!! Good luck!! xx

Krissie, Usually the cameras come with quite a small capacity memory card, and it could be worthwhile getting a bigger capacity one if the camera model will take it. Also, unless you can make some arrangement to copy your pictures on to a CD to take home with you (maybe with UK relatives?), it might be worth getting more than one bigger card (I am assuming you are not bringing a laptop with you). Think of the memory cards as the equivalent of films in conventional cameras - when one is full you need another. Of course, you can clear the memory on a card and use it again, but if you have not copied the first lot of pictures either to a computer or a CD, they would be lost. The number of pictures one can get on a card depends on the quality chosen (best quality uses more space on the card) as well as the card's capacity. Hope that's helpful Roger

I have kust bought an Olympus optio 50L from Jessops for £99 which is a 5 million pixel camera. It also has a 2' screen which is ideal and has different settings to take different modes. ie sports, portraits etc. I needed a better one to take photos of my 7 year old playing football. I then bought a 1mb memory card from ebay which can hold 387 photos and 1.5 hours of video. I also forked out and bought a battery charger and 2 sets of rechargeable batteries, these then last quite a while and do work out cheaper than having to buy new ones. The photo quality is excellant. Hope this helps Nicky

Thanks everyone, I've got a bit more idea now. Can't wait to get started!

for future ref.

The range of Vivitar cameras is very good. Fairly low price and easy to use. Viv