This page is meant as a brief introduction to cameras, their components & how they work. Also included are some useful links to tutorials, magazine articles and other stuff that people may find useful.

So what is an SLR camera? An introduction to cameras and how they work can be found explained by Tom Harris on the ever resourceful "HowStuff Works.com" site here and on the excellent "wikipedia.org" here.

Important advantages of SLR cameras is that you can easily vary the Shutter Speed which determines how long an image is exposed, Aperture which determines the Depth Of Field , the abitiy to change lenses (for example normal, wide-angle & telephoto/zoom lenses) & the film speed (ISO).

Over the last number of years digtal SLR camera have become much more popular out-stripping sales of their traditional cousins. Digital photography uses an electronic sensor (usually CMOS or CCD) to record the image as a piece of electronic data rather than as chemical changes on film. Both digital and traditional cameras have their advantages and disadvantages over each other as is quite well explained here.

There are many tips and tricks when composing and working on a photograph. These include the Rule-of-Thirds, simplicity, lines, framing, balance & contrast. Here are some uselful articles explaining this concepts;

• Guidelines for better photographic composition
• Learning to Photograph the landscape by Guy Tal
• The Magic of Selective Vision by Arnold John Kaplan
• Composing your Picture - Kodak Inc.

The most commonly used program for editing and manipulating digital images before printing is undoubtedly Adobe PhotoShop. This is a quite expensive package to buy, however most Digital SLR cameras include a copy of the more basic but still very useful Adobe PhotoShop Elements. If you don't have either of these packages and are on a tight budget, why not try The GIMP (GNU Image Manipultaion Program) which is quite good and totally free. For other useful free software to download check out the Forms & Downloads section.

Adobe PhotoShop is an excellent program but would probably take a life time to master. Some excellent tutorials and resources can regularly be found on CDs included with monthly Photographic magazines and in locations such as the here.