A Buyer’s Guide to Digital Cameras

The consumer digital camera market has become notably diverse as of late with products ranging from simple point-and-shoot models with just a couple of buttons, to more complex digital-SLR combos meant for semi-professionals and camera enthusiasts, but what really matters when you’re buying a camera?

One very important thing to clear up is that more megapixels do not necessarily mean better pictures. If a camera has 10 megapixels, it’s no more likely to produce huge quality prints than a camera with 5 megapixels so for most people, five or six megapixels will be more than satisfactory when they’re out and about taking photos.

It’s much more important to get a good quality zoom on a camera than to worry about the amount of megapixles that it has. An optical zoom means that actual physical lenses are at work inside your camera and this is what you want if you’re after really good quality close-ups. Most consumer digital cameras offer between 3x and 4x optical zoom. The jump to 5x zoom and beyond starts to have a big affect on price tag on the camera.

Alternately, digital zoom means the camera is digitally enlarging the image from the upper extent of the optical zoom. Digital zooming can however mean a progressive and sometimes dramatic loss of picture clarity in your images. When choosing your camera in the shop, don’t get too bogged down by the quality of the digital zoom as it won’t end up adding too much to your pictures.



It’s important to see and hold the digital cameras you’re interested in before you purchase anything as you can get a real feel for the camera but make sure you also shop online as well as this way you can compare the best digital cameras quickly and easily online.