| How to Use Old Digital Cameras Nov 7th 2012, 08:00 An old, used digital camera can offer fantastic value for money; even professional cameras that were once unobtainably expensive are now almost, and sometimes literally, being given away.[1] Using these modern classics is fun (and definitely beats sending them to landfill), so here's how to make the most of an ancient digital camera. - Buy a card reader. Forget trying to use the manufacturer's software or drivers to copy files from your camera; if your camera is very old, it probably won't work with modern operating systems. Every common card reader will work with every operating system from the last decade. Even if you could get the manufacturer's software to work, the very cheapest $5 card reader will copy files much faster than trying to transfer them directly from the camera.
- Be careful when buying memory cards. Some old cameras will not work with larger memory cards. Check your manual; if it doesn't specify an upper limit it's generally safe to assume that it can't handle cards larger than 2gb (the maximum that the old FAT file system could address). This isn't as big a deal as it might seem; older cameras typically have much less resolution than modern ones, so the files tend to be much smaller. It also means you don't need to cheap out with off-brand memory cards, as well-known cards from manufacturers like SanDisk are very cheap in this size range.
- Buy another battery. Batteries wear out over time, and it's almost guaranteed that an old camera will get substantially fewer shots on a charge than a new one. Don't bother with genuine batteries; even if you can still obtain them, they tend to be so expensive that it's not economically viable to do so. As you've got no warranty to void, there's no reason to avoid cheap after-market batteries; most of them are actually very good, and some actually work better than the manufacturer's originals.[2] Remember to dispose of your old battery in an environmentally sound way.
- Shoot raw. Older cameras generally do not do such a great job of getting superb images when shooting JPEGs, and often have some issues with colour accuracy. Carefully-processed raw files often give much better results.
- Shoot carefully. Very old cameras tend to have slow read and write speeds; therefore shooting blindly then looking at your LCD can take a frustrating amount of time. Treat it like a film camera; shoot slowly and thoughtfully.
- Pay attention to your highlights. Old cameras don't handle high contrast scenes as well as modern ones do. Fix your lighting by moving somewhere else, by shooting at a different time of day, or by simply popping up your built-in flash.
- Keep your ISO as low as you can. Old cameras cannot shoot in near-darkness and maintain clean images like modern digital cameras (especially modern SLRs) can.
- Pay attention to your white balance and exposure. Old cameras rarely do a good job of getting automatic white balance perfect. They also rarely nail the exposure perfectly; use your camera and learn what situations will require exposure compensation. (You'll probably find yourself defaulting to about -2/3 exposure compensation most of the time.)
- If you already have accessories from the same camera system as your old camera, check for compatibility with your older camera before trying to use them. For example, the latest Nikon flashes won't work properly with pre-2003 Nikon SLRs, and pre-2003 Canon SLRs cannot use EF-S lenses.
- Some Canon compact cameras that do not support raw formats can do so using CHDK,[3] which is hacked firmware that supports the open, and widely-supported, DNG raw format.[4]
- If you need inspiration, try finding a copy of a glossy sports or wildlife magazine from the era in which your camera was made. If those shots look great, remember that it's likely that those shots were taken from a camera very much like yours!
Edit Things You'll Need - Older digital camera
- Card reader
- Memory card (generally with lower storage capacity)
- Spare battery, generic
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