Do your home work. Review on Buying a Digital Camera

Whenever my purchase cross the limit of 50$, I try to do home work on it. More expensive it is, more is my input as home work. Digital camera also need home work. The main reason to purchase digital camera is, it cuts the cost on developing and printing and the way you can change your images later is just brilliant. No worries of spoiling the important photographs, you can view it immediately, as good as a polaroid camera and above all easy to share. Use emails and send them anywhere in world in minutes at no additional cost. Have you thought of storing the all of your albums, on one CD and take it anywhere. You can create your own home web page also. So much, why the hell people are still using film cameras? Main reason, digital camera are not as flexible in terms of modes and special effects. Real SLR digital have just been introduced and are way expensive, and digital camera need pixels, which should be very high to match a high speed film and may not match at all to 800 or 1200 ASA unless its a cool CCD which are beyond our reach. I still love film camera. But I am looking for a good digital camera for day to day use. reason? I already mentioned.

So what are the things to be considered? Lets go through one by one.

1. Resolution. very important. Need minimum of 1.3 Mega Pixels to get reasonably well prints. Better will be to have a~2.1 Mega Pixels resolution. A camera with high resolution and an option to switch to lower resolution is more handy in many situations. Higher resolution takes more memory space, so better to keep around 2 Mp, unless you need higher pixel number, like in closeups. Higher resolution will add to the cost of camera.

   
   




2. LCD display(liquid crystal display). This adds to cost, so look for a camera with reasonable size of LCD. It should not be very small to trouble in viewing and not very big also, as it will make camera expensive and bulky. LCD do come with options like swinging hinge etc, but all those things make camera more expensive, so look for a simple small display.

   
   




3. Storage media. required to store images. The most common way is to use storage media card, which are small cards and are replaceable. They are available in size of 4mb, 8mb, 16mb, 32 mb, 64mb, and 128 mb. I have not seen bigger then this yet. The size means storage capacity and not the physical size.A card of say 32 mb, roughly can store~70 images of 2 mega pixels resolution.You can carry more than one card to take more pictures. There have been camera with floppy drive but to me they are not useful. they are bulky and expensive and how many images one floppy can take? May be 4-5 only. Another good option is CDRW drives with small 170MB CDs. These CDs can be played in normal CD drives also. They will remove the need of computer interface also. But camera with these drives are expensive.

   
   




4. Transferring the images. various ways, there are card readers, but thats additional investment. The floppy and Cds do not need anything except the respective drive. Another way is through serial port, USB port and Firewire port(IEEE1394 port). Avoid camera with serial port option, they are too slow. USB port is ok in speed(100Mbs/sec) and will do. USB 2 is not yet that popular and most of the existing computers have not adopted it, although its faster than standard USB(400 Mbs?sec). recent trend is of firwire port, which are real good speed(~400Mbs/sec)and there future versions will be 3.2Gbs/sec. So look out what you can find and rule of thumb is to avoid serial port. Look for USB port minimum. If you go for Firewire port, remember there are two kinds, 4 pin and 6 pin. If you computer has 6 pin and camera has 4 pin, get a cord which has one end as 6 pin and other as 4 pin, or do it accordingly as the ports are available. There are 6 to 4 pin adaptors also available which are 8-10$ in cost. But if you lookout in advance no need to worry about that.

   
   




5. RAM. its needed to worry about if you have to use your camera for fast photography. If you want to use your camera for fast photography like sports, your camera have to write previous picture on storage media before its ready for next, so for multiple shots you need more RAM.For day to day use you need not to worry about it.

   
   




6. Optical features. These made your camera expensive, so choose wisely. An optical zoom of~3X is enough for daily use with a digital zoom os~3-6X. You can lookout for features like wide angle, option for closeup lens attachment etc. A real SLR camera is 1000$+. But still you can good features once you cross the limit of~400$.

   
   




7. Software. not an issue. all camera comes with it, . but look for compatibility with your operating system, it specially important for those who has 2000 or Xp versions or are using Apples. Although these operating softwares have there own integrated picture editing softwares. Companies also try to provide patchups for operating system upgrade.

   
   




8. Other are general things like flash, red eye reduction(although you can do it with software also). But batteries may make difference. Look out for AA battery option. LCD display takes battery, if you have AA batteries, you can take Ni-Cd rechargeable batteries and save big time money.

   
   

Some recommended companies and models to start with are

SONY Mavica and cybershot

Olympus D series

Kodak DC and DX

Fuji, I dont remeber the model, but I have seen one which was hard 3.5X3.5 inch and real handy.

Try to get one good company, becuase that ensures the software quality and ensures patch avalabiltiy if you upgrade your operating system in copmuter