Digital Camera for Genealogy

[Pandad]

Came across this whilst having a browse for information. Quite interesting.

http://www.eogn.com/forum/index.php/topic,61.0.html (http://www.eogn.com/forum/index.php/topic,61.0.html)

Never actually tried, or considered it, in the context of documents, and one of my hobbies is photography.

[Jane Gee]

I started to use my husbands digital camera at the national archives last year especially for documents where they are so heavy they have to scan them for you at something like £5.oo per page. I am hopeless at photography but even I managed things half way decent saving them to the computer as a jpeg file them means you can crop and enlarge as you want. Just remeber to put on your reference if you are only copying part of a page you can use the paper from the national archives to put on ref no.
Remember no flashes you do not have to register camera and always check image is in focus, our Nickon coolpix (which has now been superseeded) works very well flashes red if the image taken is not in focus etc and blue when everything is ok. Those who are nervous have a practice with documents at home and even I was surprised how well things came out. I can only say I am definitely not a photographer so dont be nervous because if I can do it you will!

[Sue Mackay]

I only use my digital camera for genealogy - when we go on holidays we take a film camera - the films are lighter and cheaper than all the batteries needed! (They also come back in the form of prints which can go in an album, as opposed to all the digital photos of places that never emerge from people's computers)

Each time I go to Kew I take about 900 digital photographs on Macro and then transcribe them at home at my leisure. This has enabled me to transcribe all the 1819 settler applications to emigrate to the Cape of Good Hope (some 10,000 images) and all BMDs from South African newspapers held at Kew. I couldn't have done this without a digital camera, and I couldn't have done it without a camera (Canon Powershot A80) that didn't have a rotatable viewfinder.

[ChristineR]

I made sure that my camera had a macro function before I purchased it.

Our archives place in Victoria actively encourages one to use a digital camera as it is less stress than photocopying on items. We are not allowed to use a flash, but the place is lit up like daylight. We are also not allowed to use tripods, and we have to get permission for every item we want to photograph.

I find it useful at home too, with library books - not wise to flatten them out in the scanner. :)

[Peter Goodey]

I would endorse the messages from Sue and Christine.

Like Sue, I use a model in the Canon Powershot series and I reckon it ticks the right boxes for genealogical use. It has a macro function and the usual 'point and shoot' setting (fine for snapshots) can easily be overridden to provide manual control over all the settings. I usually increase the ASA setting but find that automatic focusing is fine in most situations. If necessary I switch to manual focusing. The white balance sometimes benefits from manual adjustment because of the odd mixture of light in many record offices (fluorescent and daylight, often). Oh, and it's easy to switch the flash and sound effects off!