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Hello Photo Lovers,

Here’s a submission from a colleague at iLovePhotos.  We always welcome your articles.

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by Katharine

A few months ago, I decided to bring my own parents into the digital photography age (I work for iLovePhotos afterall, so I’m in the biz of sharing digital photos). I wanted them to be able to take more photos and share them with me. In the past, any time they wanted to take photos they would buy a disposable camera (my mom does own a reusable film camera, but it’s so old, the format of film isn’t made any longer). They would take photos only for very special events, and then process the camera, get prints, scan the prints, and email them to me, or worse, send them in the mail. So much effort!

Buying a digital camera wasn’t an option for my parents — they considered it an unnecessary splurge even though it would cost them less than disposable cameras  and processing in the long run. So I set about researching a decent camera for them as a surprise Christmas gift.

The first challenge I had was deciding on quality. I wanted them to have a good, easy-to-use point-and-shoot, with a decent lens. I also needed it to be relatively inexpensive (I have my own photography habit to fund!) As a Canon aficionado, I was leaning towards that manufacturer, but considered a few others that made entry-level models. I settled on the Canon PowerShot A590IS 8 MP. It was Canon, had zoom, was highly rated on Amazon, and was also deeply discounted at the time (score!)

When the camera arrived, my parents were duly ecstatic, but there was one huge hitch — the camera was not compatible with their computer! I had forgotten that were still using Windows 98, and the Powershot required XP as a minimum (they’re buying an iMac later this year thank goodness). I didn’t want them to have to send it back, so we had to figure out a work around.

As it turns out, their local film processor has a media kiosk that will take the camera’s memory card (since my parents live in a town that only recently was colonized by Starbucks, I was worried their processor was strictly film-based). They will still have to pay to get their images off the camera, but only until the iMac arrives.

So far my parents have enjoyed the convenience of the new camera, but are still figuring out all the features. They’ve also been under the impression that they need to wait until the memory card is full before downloading images, as if it were a direct analogy to a roll of film! Now that they have the freedom to take digital photos and no longer have to worry about wasted shots, my next task is to show them how to take better photos.

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