Getting Started
Buying a digital camera can be a daunting task. There are hundreds of models, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Your best bet to finding the best digital camera for you is to decide what will best suit your needs. This guide will help you do that.
Types Of Digital Cameras
- Point and Shoot This type of camera is user friendly and good for anyone who wants a step up from a camera phone but doesn't want to spend a lot of money. It's small, with its lens fitted to its body, and is usually designed for automatic operation. It's good enough to use for social media and every day photos.
- Compact Megazoom This type of camera is also user friendly and good for anyone who wants a step up from a camera phone, but it is a step up from a point and shoot camera. It has better zoom and is more capable of taking pictures of quickly moving objects. It's small and designed for automatic operation along with some manual operation.
- Megazoom This camera is intended for people who really like to use the zoom feature. It's good enough to shoot close ups as well as individual player's faces from the nosebleed section. It's big and has equivalent photo and video quality as the point and shoot.
- Enthusiast Compact This camera is best for people who do enjoy photography and like to have a lot of settings to mess with, but want something unobtrusive. It's small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. This camera produces photos and videos good enough for people to sell, but it's not so great when it comes to action shots.
- Entry-Level Interchangeable Lens Camera These are for those who want something better and faster than a compact camera, but still want a small camera. It has interchanging lenses as well as a range of sensor sizes. It has comparable photo quality to an entry-level dSLR and better video quality than compacts and point and shoots.
- Entry-level dSLR These are for those who want better speed and quality than a compact and prefer to shoot using an optical viewfinder. It's large with interchangeable lenses. It has comparable quality to an entry-level interchangeable lens camera, but differs great when it comes to video quality.
- Prosumer ILC This type of camera is meant for people who enjoy photography and videography and want a quality camera, but also want something unobtrusive. It's small enough to fit into a pocketbook with interchangeable lenses. This camera has photo quality comparable to a prosumer dSLR but varies greatly when it comes to video quality.
- Prosumer dSLR This camera is for advanced photographers who need speed and quality, but are also on a tight budget. It's big, with interchangeable lenses and a TTL optical viewfinder. It takes good quality photos, good enough for those who would like to sell their photos. Video quality varies.
- Pro dSLR These are for people who need the highest quality camera. It's durable, reliable, and delivers high quality photos. It's big with interchangeable lenses and an optical viewfinder. It takes good enough videos and photos to sell to knowledgeable buyers.
Features
Some features that should be considered when buying a digital camera are zoom, image stabilization, face recognition, focus modes, viewfinders, and flash. The rule of thumb when it comes to digital camera features is that more advanced cameras usually have better features. Most digital cameras have basic features, but they get better the more advanced the camera. The exception for this is face detection. These are usually only found on basic cameras as they're not needed on the more advanced cameras.
Brands
There are many different types of digital camera brands. Some include Canon, Casio, Kodak, Nikon, Olympus, Samsung, and Sony. Different brands tend to have different features, such as Canon having the best point and shoot cameras and Nikon and Olympus have the best SLRs.
Shopping Tips
- Decide your price range
- Decide which type you'd like before going shopping
- Determine what you'll use the camera for
- Research brands and find one that fits you
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