Whenever you place a call to tech support—for any reason—take notes. Get names and of course dates and jot down a summary of all conversations. Nine times out of 10, when a customer complains about the behavior of a tech support agent, the conversation begins “I don’t know who I was talking to but…”

When you’re on hold and hear: “Your call...

My friend wanted to begin shooting digital images of small objects for his company’s website, so he asked me to get him a deal on an expensive, full-frame D-SLR. The images were to be used primarily online at low resolution, and occasionally in an HTML e-mail newsletter. They were using a professional photographer to shoot the artwork for brochures, packaging, and their trade show booth.

Someday an innovative manufacturer will market a memory card that changes color as it fills with images, then changes back again when it’s downloaded. Such a feature would make it easier to determine which cards are ready for formatting. That wouldn’t stop us from accidentally deleting a keeper now and again, but it might help us steer clear of total calamity. However, until...

Shooting JPEG images is similar to shooting color negative film and handing the roll to a photo lab for processing and printing. The results--overall--are generally good. But someone else is making decisions about sharpness, white balance, saturation, and other vital parameters that determine how the final image looks. In the case of digital cameras, a group of engineers...