I've been shopping for about six months. I want to accept some shops that require a digital camera, but I'm having a hard time deciding on which one and how much to spend. Any advice or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Ok, practical advice here. For shops you "need" something that only takes photos of about 1 megapixel. If for the rest of your daily living you want something with a lot more megapixels, that is fine, but for shops your needs are miniscule compared to current technology. If you get a camera with the megapixels, you need to learn how to take your pictures using settings that will record with the lower resolutions or use your software to reduce the size of the picture file because most uploads want smaller files.

If the budget is tight, go to Craigslist.com for your area or to a garage sale because the chances are you can pick up an older Sony or Kodak in good working condition for $10 or less that does everything you need for shopping.

On the other hand, the purchase of a camera (new or used) for your mystery shopping business is tax deductible as a business expense. I picked up a little Kodak EasyShare last December that is a 12 megapixel. It is light, it fits well in my hand, I love the view screen, the pictures are crisp and it has that anti-jiggle feature so that it is hard to blur a picture. I am impressed with it. The instructions that came with it were a miserable excuse for anything, so I googled a decent manual for it on line. The software interface to my computer is pathetic, so I just use a card reader with the memory card to pull in the pictures to my computer to edit with other software. And the camera eats batteries so if I am heading out to do a bunch of shooting I make sure I have a pocket full of recharged batteries. Granted it is much less devouring of batteries when I am taking lower megapixel shots. The camera, however, is small enough that it works well for anonymous photos.

When I am doing a reveal shop I take along my old Sony Mavica. It has 1.4 megapixel capacity, is really easy on the built in rechargeable battery and is a big old "hang around your neck" kind of camera. The picture quality is certainly adequate for the jobs. It has been banged around the world, dropped and rained on and still keeps going. It can get around 250 pictures before needing to be recharged so is super for a day of reveal shops. Again, I use a card reader for the memory sticks and the old graphic software on my laptop rather than messing with the software that came with the camera.

The good news is: Any digital camera will do. My friend gave me his older camera, I'm a crummy photographer, and I do just fine. Most MSP's are not concerned about photographic artistry, as long as they can see the information they want. The photos are informational, to back up some piece of data.

If you know how to crop your photo, that's even better. The easiest program for cropping and simple lightening and darkening is Irfanview, a free graphics editor and viewer at www.irfanview.com.

Thanks! I'm new to the forum, and it was a great help. I truly appreciate your advise. One other question. One company I work for told me that the only camera they have had problems with is the Kodak Easyshare, which is the camera I was leaning toward. The scheduler told me that they need pictures in 640 x 480 pixels. If the camera doesn't do that automatically, is it hard to change them before you upload?

Thanks again.

I don't understand why a company would even know what kind of camera a shopper was using. If they need 640x480 that is something you can adjust to in software such as an older version of Photoshop. On my EasyShare Z1275 the lowest I can go is 2.2 megapixel, so I am always adjusting down the pictures with the software. My old Mavica will actually produce a 640x480 directly. But 640x480 is camera phone equivalent and many MSPs refuse to accept camera phone photos. Where I have issues with the old Mavica (it is about 7 years old) is that it cannot do a date stamp and many MSPs are now requiring a date stamp (while others require you turn the date stamp off). Even with Paint (that comes with Windows I think) you can adjust picture size in the Image/Stretch-Skew by reducing the % for both the horizontal and vertical by the same percentage. Then in Image/Attributes you can see how large the picture is compared to your 640x480 goal. Like anything else it would take a little experimentation with a copy of the picture to see what % reduction would work for you.

Thanks Flash. It was Maritz that said that. They just said that almost every time they had a problem with a shoppers pics size that the shopper said they had used a Kodak Easyshare. I appreciate your help and I am sure glad I found this forum. Signed up with two new companies through the job board. Bye.

Flash--some applications ask you what brand of camera you use. I've had several.

True, I think I remember going to look at the Mavica to see if it was spelled Mavica or Mavika. It is a rare occurrence though and not something I updated when I moved over to the Kodak for the anonymous shops.

Irfanview is great for resizing, and it's very simple to use and forever free.
www.irfanview.com