Ginger I have an Olympus d-520 that I got last year. It is my first and I love it. From what others told me, cheap is not the way to go, but you also do not need to sell your first born. There is plenty of middle ground. Look around and read all you can before you buy. Like anything techie, you can get a lot more today than you could even last year. You'll be very happy in probably the 200 to 400 range. Then just go for it and don't look back. Try these links: http://pcphotoreview.com/ http://www.dpreview.com/ http://www.shortcourses.com/ - maybe the best overall for learning - check out the glossary at the bottom Don't be fooled by zoom and megapixel numbers. Megapixel is more important for good pictures. Course, what I wanted may not be what you want. I wanted to be able to take close ups of my roses so you could see a dew drop on them. I can. It is called a macro feature. That will also let me copy papers and forms. Great for my genealogy work. Use IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com/ - freeware. This is great software and very easy to use. You can crop and rotate your pictures with ease. Take your picture in as high a resolution as your camera will permit. Save that version. Use save as for the new ver and manipulate the picture with irfanview. That way you will have 2 copies and not have destroyed your original. Add a letter like s for save as for the second ver so you can tell them apart. The copies you can reduce in size and crop or whatever and make them suitable to send as emails. By not destroying the original high resolution, you'll be able to print good pictures from that ver. What you print and what you send via email are two different animals, but irfanview lets you do both. Also, there is no substitute for good photo paper. It is expensive, so practice on the cheap stuff. Have fun. J Pat Foley wrote: > What features,etc would you say were a good digital camera for this work? > What exactly makes a good digital camera? Sorry, I know this must be > elementary to most but I quite new to camera, let alone digital ones. Thank > you Ginger -- Joyce Ragels It is easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is getting up and taking action. - Al Batt