Digital Photography for Small Business

Find the right equipment, edit and archive your photos

By Paul Vachier, Transmit Media

The popularity and high photo quality of digital cameras has made it easier (and cheaper) than ever for small and home-based owners to do their own digital photography. What small businesses once spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to get from professional photographers, many are now doing on their own.

If your business needs top quality work, by all means consider a photo pro. But for many typical small business purposes, low-cost digital cameras can be a quick solution to photos for your Web site, real estate listings, eBay products, brochures, newsletters, marketing materials or dozens of other uses. To get up and running, you'll need to make choices, from buying the right equipment, to editing and archiving your photos.

Some basics to keep in mind:

Determine your needs before buying and research the available options. Most small businesses don't need anything more than a moderately priced point-and shoot camera or an inexpensive digital SLR (single lens reflex) which allows you to change lenses
Familiarize yourself with some of the basic concepts of digital photography: camera resolution, file formats, memory cards, etc.
Spend time learning your image editing software. Knowing how to use it properly is critical for editing and archiving your work.
Always back up your work. CDs, DVDs and external hard drives provide good ways to archive your digital photos.

Choose the right camera

In most cases, 4 to 6 megapixels (or MP) are plenty for the needs of a small business. A well-rounded point-and-shoot of 5 or 6 megapixels is a good first camera. Single Lens Reflex cameras (SLRs) offer higher quality images and more resolution, but at a higher cost.
Try: DPReview lists the most popular cameras and includes user reviews, as does StevesDigicams. Choosing a Digital Camera is helpful, as is How to Choose a Digital Camera to Suit Your Needs and DPreview's Feature Search.

Decide what zoom range you need

A larger zoom range will give you greater leeway to shoot wide or go in tight with the same camera. For real estate or landscape, wide angle coverage is more important. When you need to shoot objects from far away, a longer zoom makes sense. Some cameras can go from very wide to telephoto but be aware that the greater the zoom range, the more the picture quality will suffer. Digital SLRs allow you to change lenses for different tasks.
Try: A Short Course in Choosing a Digital Camera: Lenses discusses zoom lenses and the difference between optical and digital zoom. Or learn more about zoom ratio.

Learn Basic Photo Editing

Once you take your photos you'll need to use a software program to upload them to your computer, file and arrange them and also edit them.
Try: Popular image editing programs include Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop, iPhoto, and Picasa, though many cameras ship with their own editing software. Read about the different image formats you'll need to familiarize yourself with to work with digital photos.

Publish and Archive Your Photos

Many image editing programs allow you to publish web galleries if you have your own server space. You can also use commercial and some free sites for album publishing and archiving your photos if you don't have your own Web server.
Try: At Backpackit.com, you can upload photos to appear on a Web page as well as add files, to-do lists and notes. Other free Web album, organizing and archiving sites include: Flickr, JAlbum, Kodak Easyshare Gallery, and Snapfish. Sites that cost money include: PhotoBucket, Pbase, iView, Zenfolio, .Mac (Mac only).

Try before you buy: go to a camera store and try out different equipment before you make your purchase.
Make sure your equipment includes a warranty and can be returned/exchanged within a short period if it doesn't work out for you.
A DVD burner is probably the best and most economical way to backup your photo collection since DVD's hold significantly more data than CDs.
Almost all digital photography equipment and services used for business is tax-deductible. Be sure to keep all receipts!