Digital cameras will not only save you enough money to justify an immediate purchase of one, they'll help you make more sales and get more listings. By the shear number of companies that are entering the digital camera market, you can be certain that they will be very commonplace.

The prices have come down considerably to the point that you can get an excellent camera for less than $500.

There are several things to consider before choosing a particular model. As a real estate agent, you will be taking pictures indoors and will need a flash. If you don't have one, the light meter will average the exposure so that you might have perfectly exposed windows but dark walls.

A flash will also help you take pictures outside if the subject's back is to the sun. By forcing a flash, you will properly expose the person instead of having a dark image.

Another thing to consider is the lens size. You'll need a somewhat wide angle lens so that you won't have to stand on the roof of the house across the street to have the entire subject property in the frame. It is especially important for interior shots. You'll want to be able to get most of the room in the picture.

The normal wide-angle lens is 28mm while the minimum acceptable lens is approximately 35mm. Some cameras do have attachments for wide angle and telephoto lens.

As I speak all over the country, invariably, someone will ask me about the film for digital cameras. There obviously is none required. The pictures are stored on memory chips. Typically, cameras will hold 48 low-resolution pictures and 24 high-resolution pictures. Some cameras can have memory added to hold more pictures.

The last thing to consider about the digital camera is the software that it comes with. This will allow you to take the pictures from the camera and put them in your computer. It will also allow you to make minor alterations such as cropping, lightening or darkening, or adding special effects.

Having looked at a variety of different cameras, my favorite considering quality, features, price, and software is the Epson Photo PC 500. This camera is easy to use, compact in size, has a good lens and a flash. It has options of additional lenses and a LCD screen to view the pictures immediately.

One of the things that I especially like about the Epson camera is the software that comes with it. It is very easy to use and intuitive. That means that you probably won't even need to read the manual. It also has a feature that allows you to build slide shows very quickly. This is included in the price of the camera and the marketing applications are limitless.

The Epson Photo PC 500 can be purchased for about $445 street price through CompUSA at 800-8-DIRECT #55555 or Astron at 800-574-7155 or Superstar Computing at 800-333-5939.

WAYS TO USE A DIGITAL CAMERA

• Take a picture of a home as you drive up for a listing appointment and insert it into a multimedia presentation to use minutes later.
• Place a picture of a prospect on a flyer in front of a home you are showing them and suggest that you will duplicate the announcement of their new address to their friends.
• Print a single copy of a series of flyers with the seller's home on them to show how you are going to expose the home to the market, open house, neighbors, best agents in the area, and their friends.
• Have a picture taken of you working with buyers at a table, showing homes, and with a Sold sign in a yard.
• Send a picture of homes in email, as a file attachment, to a prospective buyer.
• Add a picture of the home just listed or sold to the envelope that is mailed with.
• Take a picture of every home in your geographic farm and maintain them in your contact manager.
• Gradually, take pictures of your prospects, past customers, friends, and neighbors and keep them in your contact manager. They can later be used in birthday or anniversary cards.
• Use a digital camera to make a Household Inventory to record all the personal belongings in case of burglary or other loss.
• Build a slide show of a new listing to show at the office meeting.
• Build a slide show of each of your listings to show prospective customers prior to actually looking at the home.
• Build a slide show of each of your listings to show prospective customers who come through an open house but don't like that one.
• Build a slide show of the community to show things like schools, churches, libraries, and other sites.

• It uses no film thereby saving time and money from buying, dropping-off, and picking-up film being processed.
• There is no such thing as wasted exposures on a roll of film allowing the user to shoot what they want.
• Immediate use of pictures.
• Eliminates the step of scanning pictures taken in a conventional method.
• Pictures can be saved in a variety of formats to be used in other programs.

Pat Zaby is the President of PREP™ Software, developers of the REAL Suite that includes contact management, presentation, financial, and multimedia in one integrated package. He has been a REALTOR� since 1968 and has been involved with automating real estate agents for over 12 years and speaks to tens of thousands of people a year on the subject.

PREP™ Prospecting is easy-to understand, requires less keystrokes, and gives you more control than any other contact manager. It comes loaded with valuable letters, postcards, action plans, and telephone scripts that you can start using immediately. Wizards guide you through tasks effortlessly that are tedious routines in other programs. The data moves seamlessly throughout the entire PREP™ suite of products.

If you are thinking of changing from another contact manager, PREP™ Prospecting has automatic imports to transfer your data effortlessly so you can start enjoying the marketing power you expect from PREP Software. For information on competitive upgrades, phone 972-991-1998 or [email protected] or the website at http://www.prepsoftware.com.