Why should I go for the costly digicam when I can go for ‘KODAK KB10 35mm Camera’ for just for a few dollars? This was an obvious question few months back when I was thinking to start capturing some good pictures for my album! That inspired me to go to the nuts and shells of camerasand photography as I could not settle on something that is meager!
Why Digicams are good today?
Though low cost digital cameras capture photos which are of far less quality than our grandpa’s 35mm film cameras, the important fact is every time we click a photo it is not necessary that we have to print it. Most of the times we need to put it on either Picasa or Flickr or an album on some site. Either we have to share them on mails with our friends or we have to put them on the digital photo frame in our home. Whatever may be the case, the shared photos on websites do not need to be printed to any sizes with a quality resolution. And our needs are very easily and quickly achieved by any of the digicams either they can be cameras or cameras integrated in our cell phones. So may it be every small dear smile or may it be some news event or may it be a picture for your website….you can exhaust your digicam until it has memory and battery in spare.
Types of Digicams – Search the One for your purpose
| Type | Short Description | Examples |
| Ultra Compact Digital Cameras | Very small and light weight can put in your pocket like a cell phone. Small buttons and menus but good features, though a bit expensive than their Compact counterparts | Canon PowerShot SD790 IS, Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, Nikon Coolpix S210, Olympus Stylus 1030 SW, Kodak EasyShare M1063 |
| Compact Digital Cameras | As the name suggests, slightly bigger in size and heavier but low in cost. A very thin line of differentiation | Kodak EasyShare C713 Kodak EasyShare C913 Black Canon PowerShot A560 Silver Samsung S760 Black |
| Point and Shoot Cameras | Good for Casual Photographers as less menus and buttons so less confusion. Just you can point and shoot a quality image! | Canon PowerShot SD550 Digital ELPHCanon PowerShot SD30 Fuji FinePix F50fd Canon PowerShot A400 Fuji FinePix F480 Nikon Coolpix 5200Â Â Â Olympus D-395 Digital |
| Advanced Digital Cameras | Make a move from a casual photographer to a professional photographer with these types. High quality and convertible lenses, more features, long telephoto zooms, external remote controls and flashes etc. | Canon Powershot G9 Panasonic Lumix LX3 Canon Powershot G10 Casio Exilim EX-F1 Panasonic Lumix G1 |
| Digital SLR Cameras | Excellent image quality as compared to all above but a bit bigger lenses making the camera size somewhat large. Brighter and clearer viewfinders than digicams. A wide range of interchangeable lenses. Sharp images with Image Stabilization (IS). Looks Sporty and best suited if you are a pretty adventurous. | Sony Alpha DSLR-A200Â Nikon D40x Pentax K200D Nikon D80 Canon EOS 40D |
Look for at least the most important features before emptying your pockets
Resolution
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If you need to print a poster go for good megapixels like 8.0 or 10.0 and if you need good prints of medium/large frame size (11 x 14 inches) 3.0 to 5.0 megapixels is still much better than your need.
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And if you like the family vacations photography, don’t spend more for greater than 2 to 3 megapixels because the 2.5 megapixels resolution is more than your computer screen resolution. So choose for your need and spend intelligently.
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Greater the resolution, more are the details captured but at the same time more is the size the picture occupies in the memory. So if you plan to share your photos online, you can easily select a camera with moderate/small resolution so that your file size is pretty small.
Storage/Memory
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For a 2 megapixel camera, if you have 8 MB of internal memory, you can store about 20-40 photos. So after the limit reaches, you are either obligated to download the pictures to your system and erase them from your camera memory or use some external memory card (if the camera architecture allows that).
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Selecting a camera with a facility to attach an external memory card is always beneficial either if you are planning for a long vacation or you are planning to capture each moment of an event shooting photos one after the other. External cards come with good space with cost proportional to the space they are offering!
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128 MB or more of storage should be ideally selected to suit all your needs. Keeping a spare memory card will negate your chances to miss the most wanted on the edge!!
Sensitivity/ISO
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ISO determines how sensitive your camera is while taking images in dim light.ISO 100 is a good choice. Most compact/ultra compact cameras offer this feature. Digital SLR cameras offer ISO up to 400.
Optical Zoom
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I always imagine how the photographers working for Discovery channel capture image of a very small creature or a beast far kilometer away so clearly. This is the optical zoom feature you might be searching for. More the optical zoom (telephoto zoom in this case), more your camera dares to go near a deadly creature without risking you!
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For non-professional photographers 3.0 optical zoom is far better.
Burst Rate
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If you are a photojournalist or sports journalist or having click-click-click-click…. type of photography job, this is the feature what you should be keen to know about!
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Burst rate is the speed how fast your digital camera can capture images one after another.
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Look for a digicam with RAM as a buffer and note down the lag between the two consecutive clicks!
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Burst rate also signifies the ability of your digicam to capture the image at the moment you want. There is almost 1-2 second lag between pressing of the shutter button and the image being captured by your camera. If you are so concerned, you need to seriously think about this so that you don’t miss the race winner crossing the line!
Batteries
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Always avoid AAA batteries that will be dead after a few big clicks. Look for good rechargeable batteries or lithium batteries.
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LCD monitors, now-a-days as present in most of the digicams, if used consume lot of your battery fuel. So avoid using the display always for viewfinders and as a screen. Rather switch then on for either playback of your captured images or for clearing your camera memory.
Do not forget to keep a spare battery. You can sometimes lose glamour if you miss it.