Snap Happy! Capturing The Moment

As your child gets older, you’ll want to collect the memories with a camera or camcorder. This article looks at which features might be of most important to your family over time.

Digital cameras can be small. Light, easy to use and very competitively priced. They are also instant, which means that you won’t need to send your films off to be processed. You’ll be able to view each shot on the camera screen and delete it if you don’t like it. If you have a printer attached to your home computer photographs can be printed out onto special photographic paper. They also be emailed to interested friends and relatives.

If you’re looking to buy a new digital camera the following features might be of interest:

• High resolution mega pixels
• Large LCD screen
• Minimum 4x optical zoom
• Various Autofocus options to maximise on various lighting conditions and environments
• Bluetooth options
• Camcorder options to shoot short bursts of film
• Flash system
• Waterproof and shockproof build

Camcorders are now small, light and extremely portable. Image stabilisers can help to avoid shaky footage. Many camcorders have manual focus, night shooting options and photo modes to enable you to take still photographs. All camcorders have both optical and digital zoom

Look for the following if you are thinking of buying a Camcorder:

• Large memory card 4GB or greater
• LCD screen
• Manual focus
• High resolution mega pixels
• Optical Image Stabiliser to reduce camera shake