Digital Camera Requirements

Recommended 35mm SLR Film Camera Options needed for 1st year

First-year students work mostly with 35mm film cameras. A pre-owned camera is perfectly fine, provided that it is fully functional. You will need a working light meter. There are many great deals to be found out there on used film gear.

A few affordable new film cameras are available. You might consider:

• Nikon FM10, F75
• Canon EOS Elan 7NE
• Vivitar 3800N

Recommended Digital SLR Options needed by 2nd year
(Check for educational pricing.)

A digital SLR has become the industry standard for most shooting applications. The following list includes prosumer level choices that would meet your student needs at Sage. For each brand listed, a price range is represented from least expensive to moderate. At this point, investing in a high-grade professional camera is neither necessary nor recommended; it will likely become obsolete by the time you have graduated.

Note: some cameras are available as body + lens kits. Usually, the lens included in the kit is adequate for student use. If you can afford a higher quality lens, then it might be better to purchase the body and lens separately. These lenses can then be used on higher quality bodies you might purchase in the future.

These recommendations are based on reviews than can be found on the very useful website: www.dpreview.com. This site provides in-depth reviews, discussions and comparisons between cameras of similar price-points.

Highly Recommended Accessories: Card Reader, Extra memory card(s), digital flash hot-shoe

Laptop Requirement needed by 2nd year.

An Apple Macintosh laptop is most highly recommended. Although PCs are fine, they do not network easily with the visual arts server and printers.

There are two primary levels of Macintosh laptop, Macbook and Macbook Pro. Either one would be fine. Avoid the Macbook Air. The minimum specifications are suggested below for each. Educational pricing may be obtained from the Sage Mac Store (http://store.apple.com/us_edu_87510)

• MacBook
  13-inch: White
  2.4GHz
  2GB RAM. Up to 4GB RAM possible. Get as much as you can afford.
• MacBook Pro
  15-inch: 2.4GHz
  2GB RAM. Up to 4GB RAM available. Get as much as you can afford.

Required Accessories needed by 2nd year

• Firewire 400 external hard-drive for backups and transporting files. At least 350 GB. $100-$200, money well spent. Decent brands include LaCie, Maxtor, Iomega.
• Recommended: 1GB jump drive

Required Software needed by 2nd year.
(Check for educational pricing.)

• Adobe Photoshop CS3/CS3 Extended/CS4 (coming soon). This includes Adobe Bridge.