Digital Camera Buying Guide - Features You Should Look For

Every other month, if not more often, a new series of cameras enters the market, and the uninformed or undecided buyer has to make a tough decision when choosing among the wide range of morels. With the smart buying choices that we will point out in this article, you will hopefully pick one for its real features instead of the bells and whistles that the sales people are boasting.

Number of megapixels
Most stores, both online and brick-and-mortar, concentrate on promoting megapixels - the more, the better. This is only a marketing technique and is not always true. Let us understand why.

The image produced by a digital camera is comprised of a series of spots called pixels. The more pixels make up that photo, the more details it can show; in other words, the more megapixels a camera has, the more you can zoom into the image, or print in a big enough size, before it becomes fuzzy and unclear. Think, for example, of a 10×10 inch mosaic and imagine filling it up with 2×2, 1×1 and 0.1×0.1 inch tiles: the more pieces you use, the better the quality.

Since the price of the camera increases with the amount of megapixels, you should first analyze what you will use the camera for. If you will mainly use it to take shots for your blog or will not likely print anything larger than a 5×7 there is no reason why you should go for something higher than a 4.0 megapixel camera. Save your budget for other features and accessories instead of investing in megapixels you will not use.

However, the main advantage you would get if you decide on spending more for a higher resolution camera is cropping: a 9×12 shot taken at 5.0 MP can be resized to 8×10 or 5×7 without any loss in quality.

Total zoom
Most, if not all nowadays’ consumer cameras come with zoom feature. This functionality can be particularly useful when taking a shot of something that is too far away and you can’t get close to the subject, or you want to frame a portrait without shooting much of the distracting background.

Optical zoom is the “real” magnifying feature, the camera magnifies the image through an assembly of lenses before the picture gets to the image sensor, while the digital zoom enlarges the photo already stored in the camera. Make sure you understood the camera’s technical specifications clearly. The total zoom is calculated by multiplying the digital and optical zoom figures. Make sure that the optical zoom meets your needs and don’t rely on digital zoom at all, you can achieve its very same effect with any photo processing software.

Getting the perfect camera, is never an easy thing, especially with the way digital technology is constantly changing. Fortunately, there are plenty of helpful websites online, that can narrow down your search and help you find the camera with all the features important to you.