FIGURE 1-7 Almost all digital cameras rely on an optical system that includes both a
viewfinder and an LCD display.
CHAPTER 1: Go Digital 17
Some cameras allow you to turn off the LCD display to conserve power. Leave the
display off most of the time to get more battery life.
Power Systems
Your digital camera, of course, takes batteries. While some digital cameras rely on a standard
set of AA batteries or their rechargeable equivalents, it??™s a lot more common to design cameras
around special Lithium Ion battery packs. The advantage is that these batteries are much
smaller than a foursome of AAs, so the camera itself can be much smaller. You can see the size
difference here between the battery compartments of a camera that uses AA batteries and a model
that features a tiny Lithium Ion battery:
FIGURE 1-8 The optical viewfinder and the camera??™s lens don??™t always see exactly the same
thing, especially when close up to the subject.
18 How to Do Everything: Digital Camera
On the downside, you can??™t just pop in ubiquitous AA batteries when the cells run dry, which
means you need to keep one or more spares on hand. Here??™s a little advice to help you get the
most mileage from your batteries:
?– Insert batteries according to the diagram on the camera body??”make sure you align the
battery??™s positive and negative ends correctly (so they work at all!).
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