Technical Requirements for
Digital Photography

First, a word or two about computer expertise. Not everyone feels technically skilled, nor does everyone enjoy the challenge of mastering new technology. If you would define yourself as one of these people, and you do not have either the time to do some pre-program learning, nor readily available technical support at your learning location, digital photography is probably not for you.

You can easily run a photography project using the materials in this package and conventional cameras - our pilot project students enjoyed the digital cameras, but said that regular "old fashioned" cameras would have been fine. You will, however, still require computers for word-processing and internet search activities.

1. Computer Equipment:

• You will need at least one independent computer (i.e. not on a network) per 2 students. (You can be connected with a network if your regular (default) printer is already an ink-jet printer, and you are able to install new software on the whole network. For the pilot project, we required stand-alone units because the computer lab default printer was a laser printer, and we were not able to install software across the network.)
• The computers need to be equipped with a USB port, a CD-ROM, and a 3 1/2" floppy drive at minimum. A zip drive is preferable to a floppy drive, because most photography files are larger than can be saved to a 1.4 MB floppy diskette.
• Internet access is required for many of the activities. If you do not have internet access, ensure that you adapt the internet based activities before starting the program!

2. Printing Equipment and Supplies:

• A colour ink-jet printer with a minimum resolution of 720 dpi (dots per inch)
• At least one extra black and colour ink cartridge (they run out quickly at high resolutions!)
• Regular ink-jet printer paper (at least.50 sheets), and Matte or Glossy photo paper (at least 10 sheets per student). Georgia-Pacific manufactures a relatively low cost, excellent Photo Matte Ink Jet paper (80 sheets for approximately $18.00).