Posted By Ian Stone I have been offered a digital camera to aid in accident investigations, but seem to remember something about that they are not acceptable in a court case as then can be changed. At present I use a polaroid camera. Thought please Thanks Ian

Posted By Jonathan Breeze They say the camera never lies. They are of course wrong. Most digital cameras are also sold with image editing software and therin lies the problem. How does a court of law or insurer know that images being submitted as evidence have not been manipulated? I'm not saying that images from a polaroid shot cannot be manipulated, but it is whole orders of magnitude harder and requires specialist techniques which are not available to the casual user. So stick with your polaroid and avoid having to prove your integrity.

Posted By Philip Roberts Ian, I work in the rail industry and use both types of camera. The digital is used for general everyday use for taking pictures to aid identification of parts and maintenance issues. But for investigations that may have a legal implication such as accidents or incidents then it must be the polaroid to prevent tampering. I am fairly sure that digital images are not acceptable as evidence in a court of law but I stand to be corrected. My own instinct for accident investigation is stick to the polaroid. Regards Phil Roberts

Posted By Karen Todd Hello Ian, You can now leave your flash card (or whatever storage medium you use) into Boots and get your digital photos printed on real photo paper. If you had one of these photos, it would be hard to tell that it had been taken digitally. I think that you have to be able to verify any photo. Years ago, I made a personal injury claim against a man whose alsation attacked me (I know, I know, claims culture!). I decided to claim for a number of reasons: the man was so horrible to me, the man hid the dog from the police and the dog warden so they couldn't destroy it, the dog had attacked other people previously, it attacked me as I was walking away from it, it went for my throat but luckily I got my arm up in time (old person or child wouldn't have stood a chance), whole upper arm v. badly bruised but luckily was wearing leather jacket and escaped with 1 long scar where 1 tooth punctured the jacket, v. traumatic incident indeed. Anyway, enough justifying why I made the claim. When we went to court, I had brought with me photos of my arm at the time, which my Mum had taken. The man's legal counsel looked at the photos and asked who had taken them. They asked me if my mum was there and could verify the photos. I said she wasn't present. They then started muttering amongst themselves, "Oh, inadmissable evidence". I asked my solicitor what they meant but he just said they were being silly. It was settled out of court, so I don't know whether they would have been admissable or not, because the person who took the photos wasn't there to verify them, even though I was in the photo and could have verified them. Regards, Karen

Posted By Jay Joshi Yes, this is an old one--refer to the Home Office website:- http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs/digimpro.pdf