Kodak, the company well-known for taking cameras out of the hands of professionals and put them into the hands of everyday users, is in financial trouble. Why? People today -- everyday people -- are moving toward digital cameras, leaving film-based cameras to gather dust in the closet. As the largest manufacturer of film-based cameras, and photographic film, Kodak finds itself losing loads of money.

But a digital camera won't save you any money if you don't know how to use it. So here are some pointers on how to use your camera, and take advantage of your Mac, too.

You need a computer

While some types of cameras allow you to view your photos on a TV, in reality a digital camera is quite worthless without a computer. The best computer to have for digital photo editing is a Macintosh with a USB port, which generally covers everything Apple has made since the iMac.

It will also help if the camera comes bundled with Macintosh-compatible photo editing/viewing software. Mac OS X 10.1 comes with software capable of downloading pictures directly from some cameras; you may not need to load a thing.

Learn the basics

Yes, you need to read the manual. Some of the cameras don't even come with a printed manual; you'll have to read an Acrobat file from the CD-ROM that came with the camera. Concentrate on finding all the controls and learning how to use them. Make sure you know how to load batteries, plug it into your computer, and turn it on and off.

Take particular note of buttons you don't want to push. (I recently watched someone wonder aloud what one button did, so they pushed it -- and watched their rechargeable battery fall into the Pacific Ocean.)

Generally speaking, the better the camera, the harder it is to operate the camera. Inexpensive digital cameras rarely support more than "point and shoot:" you point it, you push the button, it takes a picture. The camera will try to auto-focus the image and adjust the exposure according to available light.

You will find that more expensive digital cameras will enable you to manually adjust focus, focal length, lighting, and countless other settings which will help you turn a good picture into a really bad picture -- if you don't read the manual.