The Trials and Tribulations of an Amateur Photographer: How it all began (part 2) - getting in deeper

A series of articles on my introduction to modern digital cameras

(You may wish to read my Previous Post )

OK, I have my new digital camera and I have taken lots of photographs of my first hillwalking trip with Wingman . I now needed a way to view all these wonderful images other than simply keeping them on the camera and viewing them on the built-in screen. That wasn't much use since I wanted to share my new-found expertise with friends and family.

My first thought was to take the camera (or rather the SD card) to my local photography shop and have a few copies of selected images printed out on their photo-printing machine whose existence I was aware of since that was where I took all the disposable film cameras which I had previously used on my hillwalking trips for developing of the film.

So off I went with the SD card in my pocket and a song in my heart. This was going to be magnificent - I could show off my photos, maybe even frame a couple of the best ones and everyone would admire my work!

Ha! Talk about being naive!

A look at the price list of the various sizes of print available and the prices of photo frames soon put my gas at a peep - crestfallen doesn't begin to describe it. If I were to go down this road it could cost even more than what I had previously been paying to get my disposable film cameras developed. Bummer! However, since I was there I opted to take two prints home with me (without frames). Those two 8x10 (inch) prints cost me four quid each! Double bummer!

I was at a loss as what to do next. Remember that this was several years ago and I had virtually no experience of that new-fangled technology which seemed to be everywhere and, now that I had had my ears bent by Wingman on the benefits of technology, I was beginning to take notice of. A couple of days later, on a grocery shopping trip with Mrs Kasman I spotted a magazine on the supermarket shelf - Practical Photography - which had an illustration of an SD card on the front cover and an article within the magazine entitled Everything You Wanted to Know about SD Cards But Were Afraid to Ask .

'That'll do me!' I thought. So I bought the magazine with a view to finding out more about, not only SD cards, but digital cameras in general. There were lots of interesting articles within the magazine. I found out some things about SD cards (I now know more about SD cards than I ever imagined there was to know!). I read about cameras and lenses and how to use them (much of which went straight over my head) and I learned about the various types of photo-editing software which is available on computers.

This was the first time I had heard computers mentioned in conjunction with digital cameras and little did I realise where that was going to lead!

. . . to be continued!

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