When my wife and I first found out a few years ago that we were going to have a baby, we both automatically shifted to baby-prep mode. She spent her time buying pretty things for the nursery and shopping for cribs and car seats. Like the ultra geek that I am, I started shopping for a digital camera so we could forever celebrate little Haleys birth with pictures. Shes now almost three and little Will has joined our family as well. Of course, daddy still has to carry that little digital camera everywhere so I can capture any moment at any time. With the sheer number of pictures taken, if we were to have used a traditional film camera, we surely would have gone bankrupt within a year considering the price of film and processing. A digital camera can be very cool, but it helps to know what features to look for. Whether you want to commemorate your children growing up or just want a cool toy to play with on weekend outings, a digital camera is a very wise and money-saving purchase. This week, well discuss some things to look for when making that purchase.

The most obvious perk of having a digital camera is that you will never again have to buy film. Digital cameras store pictures either into internal memory or an external memory card. You simply download the pictures onto your computer and then reuse the memory to take more pictures. Also, you no longer have to pay for film processing, though you can still buy prints of your pictures by simply taking your memory card into most department and dug stores and using a digital print kiosk. As a better alternative, you can print some fine pictures from a photo or color printer using specially-designed picture paper.

One thing to watch out for when buying a digital camera is the number of mega pixels. This is a number that indicates how large a picture the camera can take. Dont be fooled into thinking that you have to have a 6 MP (mega pixel) camera. A 3 MP model will print very nice looking 4X6 pictures and will be more than enough to take a picture to use as wallpaper on your PC desktop. 4 MP cameras will take pictures that will print up to 8X10 pictures quite nicely, while a 5 MP will print up to 11X14 pictures. For most usage, a 3 mega pixel camera will work just fine. I suggest you buy as much camera as you can afford, however, as it never hurts to take pictures that are larger than you need, and you never knowyou might want to print a poster of that image some day

One of the single most important features to look for in a digital camera is its zoom ability. There is a very real difference between optical and digital zoom. Optical zoom means that the cameras lens will zoom in on the subject, retaining the original quality of the image. Digital zoom, on the other hand, uses software within the camera to modify the image to make it appear closer that it really is. This leads to something called pixelation and is a very bad thing. Using digital zoom can ruin an otherwise very nice photo. When buying a digital camera, I completely ignore the digital zoom capabilities, instead looking only at the optical zoom. Try to get a camera with at least a 3X optical zoom.

There are a number of memory card formats on the market today. These include Compact Flash, Secure digital (SD), Memory Stick and xD. Any of these will work just fine, just be sure to buy the kind of memory card that fits your camera, and get a card that will hold as much memory as you can afford. Well, a 1 gigabyte card might be overkill, but try to get at least a 128 or 256 megabyte card.

Now, for the Cool Site of the Week... This weeks site is WebMD.com. WebMD is a wonderful health and medical site. No matter what ails you, WebMD will have some useful information on it. It has a really cool feature where you can even answer some questions on your symptoms and it will provide a diagnosis. Of course, this site should not be used in place of visiting a real doctor, but it can give you some very useful information for your research.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please email me at mike@MikeBryant.com.