To the professional photographer what I'm going to say amounts to heresy. You can publish professional quality photographs in an advertisement taken with an inexpensive digital camera. First most will tell you that film is so superior to digital that you'd never want to try. And if you want professional quality digital pictures you have to spend thousands of dollars.

True, without spending thousands of dollars film is technically superior to digital. For our purposes, however, digital camera are damn good enough and in most ways, more convenient and inexpensive to operate.

There are a couple of things you need to look for when choosing a digital camera to take cattle pictures. The most important item, to me, is the optical zoom lens. You need to be far enough from the bull so that he is relaxed and comfortable. To get a good shot you need to be able to zoom right up on him to fill the frame with bull, not landscape or fence. I suggest a 10x optical zoom lens for this.

I'm stressing OPTICAL zoom lens because there are two types of zoom on a digital camera. The important one is the optical zoom lens. This zoom is done the old fashioned way with light and optics. The second zoom is the digital zoom. It is a fraud, plain and simple. The digital zoom uses software built into the camera to blow up the image to give the appearance of zoom. You can achieve the same effect with Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Infraview, Paint Shop Pro, etc. It is the stupidest feature of any digital camera. Disable the feature the first time you use the camera.

The second thing is the resolution of the camera, expressed by the number of megapixels, or how many millions of pixels are in the picture. More the better, but you can easily over pay for resolution you don't need. A 2 megapixel camera is great for home use. If you are going to print 8x10 photos, then get at least a 4 megapixel camera. Anything more becomes overkill unless you are a serious photographer. An 8 or 10 megapixel camera produces huge files that are overkill for websites and email.

My camera is a 4 megapixel Kodak with a 10x optical zoom lens. My wife has a tiny Kodak that fits anywhere. It is the same 4 megapixel, but only a 3x optical zoom lens. It is fine for taking pictures of the kids, but not good enough in the pasture. With my 10x optical lens I can zoom in on that calf without disturbing it and get the butterfly on its nose.

The other thing you need to consider is how fast the camera is ready to take a picture after it just took one. I call it the recovery rate. I don't really know if it is a feature that is measured yet, but I know from experience that if it is too slow you will be waiting for the camera to be ready to take another picture and the bull will have moved from his perfect position and be at the other end of the pen. You can affect it some by the size of the memory card you have in the camera and how many pictures are on that card. If you have a huge card and a lot of pictures, the camera will recover slower. I suggest having several smaller memory cards rather than one huge card.

Oh, also, don't be afraid to get your knees dirty. The best pictures are shot from the kneeling or crouching position with the sun at your back. Get down low, zoom in, fill the frame and use the sun to your advantage. Good lighting is important with Angus cattle. Clouds and shadows are your enemies.

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