"DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY and the INTERNET

made affordable with a TIME MACHINE"

There you are! Everything you want for £742.60 - not quite!

Let us look at the details - when given. The computer will perform satisfactorily for ordinary home computing purposes, but has only got 32 Megabytes of memory. This will limit severely the size of picture and any manipulation you may wish to do.

Included are - a digital camera (no specifications given, not in up-to-date catalogues).

- a colour printer (O K for letters, but not of photo quality). - a colour scanner (no specifications - to scan prints only, at low definition). - £1000 of software, some very useful, but usually of superseded editions and many without any instruction book. - Free Internet Access ( you can pick this up free at any supermarket).

No mention of any software for manipulation or modification of images.

No mention of any storage device, such as a Zip Drive, to save your masterpieces, because they will fill up the hard disk at quite a rate.

Yes, it will do just what it says, but the whole package is designed to produce simple 6 x 4 prints. Up-grade any one item and it will show up the shortcomings of the others. Not really a good option for a serious photographer.

What should you do instead?

1) Are you 'computer literate'? If not, join an evening class in Computing for Beginners before you spend another penny. Discover whether computing suits you and what the technical words mean. Learn the frustrations we all have, when the **!!@@** machine won't obey.

2) Study what is needed, what is available, what you can afford.

3) Camera Clubs now have strong D P sections. Pick the brains of members, you will get lots of advice - filter it carefully.

4) Remember that within a couple of months of your purchases, most items will have become obsolete. That doesn't mean they will not do the job they were designed to do, just that new models have come out which will do it better, or quicker.

5) Make sure that any computer you buy has an operating system which can be up-dated and a memory which can be expanded as your aspirations increase. The minimum memory you should aim for is 128Mb.

6) The Hard Disk is where things are stored more permanently or semi-permanently than in the memory. They will still exist after the computer has been switched off and on again. It is also used by programmes like Photoshop for temporary storage in a cache. Again, you need plenty. 2 to 3 Gb is the minimum (A gigabyte = 1000megabytes).

Reading this through, I could well be accused of trying to put you off going in for D. P., rather than encouraging you. Not so, I think most of the future of photography will be electronic and digital. I came across a Daguerreotype portrait the other day. It made me think.

Eric Weatherill. eric.weatherill@ntlworld.com