Researcher Willy Walter of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has fairly typical gel-documentation needs: "We take pictures of ethidium bromide-stained agarose gels using a UV transilluminator and of yeast colonies under white light." If, like Walter, recording simple digital images of gels is your goal, a low-end system will provide the necessary functionality for under $5,000, and many are flexible enough for other imaging tasks, given correct lighting and filters. Those with more sophisticated applications like chemiluminescence in mind, will need a more powerful system. But even these can be had for under $20,000.