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The following is a summary of experiences from Missionary Moms. Please read everything before deciding what camera to get and whether to use memory cards or CDs to transfer photos home.

1. Buy a digital camera that also offers video WITH sound. Some do not come with sound! These are priceless videos. You can store the videos on a photo website such as the one we highly recommend: If You Click Here. Choose photo storage websites carefully! They do have time limits--6 months, one year, etc. and if you do not PAY, your photos will be GONE. One missionary couple went to Africa on a Humanitarian mission. They took many digital photos and uploaded them onto a website. Then they erased their memory stick, thinking that their photos were "safely stored". When they returned, they discovered that there was a time limit on the site (like all sites we know of except for this one (Click Here Please), and they lost ALL of their photos from their Humanitarian mission. Very sad!
2. Be sure to send some printed photos back to your missionary to share with others where he is serving.
3. Have your missionary keep track of names of the people he has in his pictures. Use an index card and number them. Also, have him label AND DATE the CD he sends home.
4. If your missionary is serving in a mission where the Mission President will not allow them to upload photos to a website, be sure to have him take a CD burner with him, and everything he needs to burn CDs.
5. Buy at least 2 or 3 memory cards! One for the missionary in his camera. One en route home, and one on the way back to him. Make them interchangeable with cameras you are using at home so that you can take pictures for your missionary to see when the card gets back. Using memory cards is even easier than burning CDs and sending them home.
6. Buy everything they need for their camera. Good quality batteries, perhaps rechargeable. Send all cords needed to go with the camera.
7. Purchase your camera before your missionary goes into the MTC!! Highly suggested. Give him/her time to learn how to use it before they leave.
8. If your missionary cannot upload photos to a website, have him burn TWO CDs. Many missionaries upload photos to a safe website at the same time they are emailing their parents. CDs can go bad, break, or get lost or stolen! Our missionary had one lost by a companion who was supposed to give it to us after he returned home. My son's mission memory photos for his first six months are lost forever. By burning two CDs, he can send one home for mom or dad to upload to a safe internet site, and keep the other to bring home at the end of a mission. Please Read (CD Life Span article).
9. Keep memory cards separate from the camera in case the camera is stolen. Months of photos can be stolen if the card is with the camera. This applies even when left in their apartment!!
10. Memory cards can be stolen in the mail! This is another reason why uploading to a safe internet site is best--if possible. However, we all make do with what we can. If you are mailing memory cards back and forth, conceal them well in the envelope. If you think this only happens in other countries, think again. One missionary mom told me that her son's memory card was stolen from the envelope when he mailed it from the MTC to Salem, Utah!
11. Almost all missionary moms told us that sending a digital camera is the very best instead of the old 35mm cameras. They told us that the 35mm cameras took lousy photos, and used batteries up quickly. Film in other countries is very, very expensive to print, even negatives were of poor quality. It is also expensive to mail the photos home! If you are thinking of purchasing a 35mm for fear of the digital camera being stolen, think again. One missionary scruffed his camera up...purposely putting scratches on it to make it look old, and scratching out the name brand. He then kept it in a baby sock in his pants pocket. He's never had a problem.
12. Put your missionary's name on his camera! Many missionaries have identical cameras, and some are always left behind after a Zone Conference. There is no way to tell whose camera it is!
13. Make sure you double check to see if the digital camera has audio (sound) to go with the video. Some don't! It should have a little mic in front.
14. Buy a small camera that can be slipped into a pocket. Don't have them keep them in backpacks or book bags. Even in the apartment, have them slip it into a sock and store with socks and it won't get stolen. :-)
15. Check the batteries!! Our daughter forgot, and they lost all of their precious baby photos because the batteries went dead.
16. There is a risk in sending home memory cards! Many have reported them lost in the mail, being destroyed by post office machines, getting lost, stolen or whatever. Here is what one MM reported: "He lost a lot of pictures the first time he tried to send his memory card. DO NOT SEND THE MEMORY CARD IN THE MAIL.... The employees in the post office will cut the envelope and take the memory card. You will get an empty envelope with a small slit in the bottom. It took a while, but he eventually found a computer place that allowed him to upload his pictures." (MM from the Caribbean).
17. If you do send home memory cards, here is what can happen to them: "We purchased a Kodak Easyshare digital with an expansion slot for our son. He sent the digital card home once, but it was empty when it got here." (from the Caribbean). Their missionary now uploads his photos onto a website.
18. Your Elder should take the camera cables that come with the camera so he can upload his pictures on the computer as well.
19. Sending memory cards home can be very expensive! Yes we sent our Elder with a digital camera. He likes it. Our original plan was to have him send us the memory cards home periodically so we could see his pictures and short videos. However, he went to UPS and DHL and it was going to cost $60 to send it home. He took 3 memory cards with him. We would love to see his pics but $60 is outrageous.
20. Some computers in the missions are very, veryold and do not have a large capacity for uploading photos. CD's would work the best.
21. He has been able from his location to email photos to us. Make sure they know the reduce the size of the photos before trying to send, as Digitals take up a lot of space.
22. Our Missionary told us that his companion has a digital camera that takes a special battery. These batteries are not sold in Ecuador so he has to have his parents send him a replacement batteries. Also, if your camera will take a rechargeable set of batteries be sure to get the quick charge ones. They recharge in on hour instead of overnight. In some places (the internet cafe's) the computers don't allow hook-ups for uploading pictures--or for that matter uploading anything. In those areas he was not able to email pictures home unless he found a member or a place where he could upload. If it wasn't in a member home then there was usually an extra fee for uploading which discouraged him from emailing pictures. I guess the last thing would be is that our Missionary didn't really know how to upload the pictures when he first got his camera. Neither did his companion. It wasn't until he changed companions to one who know computer stuff until he was able to send pictures home. Bobbi, Elder in Ecuador
23. Battery advice!!! From an MM: The only bad thing about the camera is that it uses AA batteries instead of having a rechargeable camera battery. He was going through batteries so fast that it was costing him quite a bit of money so we sent him a battery charger that charges in 15 minutes. We didn't think to send the adapter so he wound up spending one whole P-day going around to various electronic shops to find one that was reasonably priced and he became sort of a sensation with this amazingly fast battery charger. In every shop that they went to they wound up plugging it in to do a demo because no one believed that it could recharge batteries that fast. Everyone was very impressed with American technology! My advice would be to get a digital camera with it's own rechargeable battery (and make sure you include the adapter).
24. I would recommend one that has a rechargeable batteries.. I bought digiatals for my other children and it eats the batteries. So watch that...
25. Expensive cameras do not upload quickly. Here is a hint from an MM: I really like the Kodak brand cameras for there ease in getting pictures. They upload fast (my expensive one can really try my patience!) and have great features in formatting them for printing. I
26. He said that he didn't want to install the camara software every time he used the camara at a computer at a cafe. He once accidentally deleted all his pictures before he got them burned onto a CD. so after that he just bought a new card each time and saved all his cards.
27. When you decide how to carry it, use the oldest, most disreputable bag that has been in your family for years, and put stickers, or any other designs on the camera itself to make it look like the old family camera from a distance. When people are "scoping" for good cameras to steal they will look for nice bags and shiny equipment. No one needs to know that under all the disguise is a good camera.
28. I was worried about theft too but it did not seem to be a problem. I think he kept it locked up. We had a friend who had his camera stolen in the MTC. Note: Marking up the camera, putting on stickers, etc. will identify it as their personal property. Any missionary stealing a camera wouldn't want to steal one that was individually identified.

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Consumer Reports has an article entitled, "You Need to Know: How to Make the Most of Memory-Storage Cards."

Each missionary will need to take at least a minimum of TWO memory-storage cards on their missions. If you choose to have your missionary send home his memory card for you to upload his digital photos from, then he might need 3 cards. One for current photo taking, one en route home, and one at home soon to be sent back to the missionary.

If your missionary has a digital camera that takes videos (with sound), and we recommend it, then you must buy a better memory card!

Here are the recommendations from Consumer Reports:

1. Buy at least 256 megabytes of storage. Consumer Reports says, "...don't consider a card smaller than 256 MB, which can hold 100 to 200 JPEG images, depending on image content and camera settings." Video clips use a lot of memory!
2. Allow more storage for more demanding uses. Consumer Reports recommends the highest quality 1-GB card, which costs about $55 and can hold a few hundred JPEG images. However, because missionaries can also record video, you need higher storage. Consumer Reports says, "Allow roughly 1 GB of storage for each hour of MPEG-4, 30-frames-per-second, 640x480 video, or 1 GB for each half-hour for a rapidly changing scene, such as a basketball game."
3. Don't pay more for "high speed" cards. Consumer Reports calls it overkill and isn't worth buying for video, either. Just be sure not to open the camera's battery compartment while the camera is still on. You'll corrupt image files (your photos). Also, if you use AA batteries, the camera will automatically shut off and corrupt files.
4. Vary resolution and compression to suit your needs. The higher the setting of the photo resolution, the more memory is used on your card.

I hope this information is helpful. :-)

From MM Shauna:

I would recommend one more thing. Buy a camera that will take video clips w/sound. Most digital cameras will, but be sure to check. It has been a lot of fun to see a tour of my son's apartment, hear a newly baptized member wish me Happy Mother's Day, listen to my son play Praise to the Man on a harmonica and other such fun things. All the missionary has to do is download the memory card to a CD at any of the machines that print digital pictures.

We have also traded memory cards and we have a camera that uses the same type of card, so we were able to send short video clips of the family to him. He watched them on his camera and then delete them. -Shauna Hair

If you have a missionary serving in an international mission, you cannot guarantee what services will be available to them. Some places have very old computers, so services might be very limited. Whether or not missionaries choose to send home CDs of photos/video clips, or Memory Cards, will be up to your missionary and the recommendations from other MM's with missionaries serving in that same area.

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Rinda, Elder in Ecuador Guay. North 11/05-11/07

PS: The CD burner is called the Digital Photo Copy Cruiser, Stand Alone, Data Storage Device and records to CD-R/RW Discs.

One place to get it is www.bhphotovideo.com (#ALDPCC). The manufacturer's number is 310101. Their price is $169.00 plus shipping (around $8 to $12).

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It was a bummer to find out that this camera had a short video option and we made the assumption that meant it also had audio. He immediately was sent a new one with audio. Double check your camera (it will have a little mic in the front). And yes, we had read the instruction booklet a few times. :)

Karen

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Mindy

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