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Choosing a Digital Camera Overview

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You are at your friend’s house and he breaks out pictures of him with his family and other pictures that include you. You look at the pictures and realize how great the pictures look. You wonder how your friend took so good of pictures. He told you he used a digital camera. He goes into his bedroom and brings out his camera for you to see. You look at it with amazement. He shows you how the camera works. You start wishing you had one. At this point you leave his house and head for home, thinking about his camera, wondering how you can get one for yourself. Before you even decide to buy a digital camera, there are many factors you need to consider regarding digital cameras that will help make your choosing one easier. To start with here are some points to ponder regarding digital cameras.

• Why go digital: Digital photographs are in a format that makes them easy to transmit to other people. You can insert a digital photo into a Word document or just email them to your friends. You could even put them on your website for the world to see. Many cameras come with a viewer so you can see the image before and after you take the picture. There is even a way to download your images to your computer.
• Digital Photographs: You know digital photographs come in a format for easy transmission. So just what makes a digital photograph? If you were to put a digital photograph under a microscope, you would see hundreds of thousands or millions of tiny squares called picture elements or pixels. The computer uses these tiny pixels to display the image. The computer does this by placing the right amount of color and brightness based on the information contained in the picture. The computer does this by controlling the pixels. Another term to describe this is bit mapping.
• Types of cameras: There are various types of camera available. These cameras come in a range of types of prices. The fully automatic point and shoot camera with a resolution of 3 to 4 million pixels are usually around or below $500. There are also cameras that have 4 to 5 million pixels. These cameras cost upward to $1000. And lastly there are cameras that costs anywhere from $1000 to $2000 depending on what you get and the features you are looking for. These cameras include:
o Point and shoot cameras – In the past photographers had to deal with 35mm SLR cameras. The only problem with these cameras that they were big and bulky. So photographers just used a point and shoot camera, since these were easy to carry. The pictures from these cameras are not as good but you can take these cameras with you anywhere and capture pictures you normally might miss. The Olympus Stylus camera is an example of this type of camera.
o Prosumer cameras – These cameras have higher resolution and also have a through-the-lens (TTL) feature that helps to focus the camera. These cameras usually produce up to 8x10 size pictures. The Olympus C-5050 Zoom camera is an example of this type of camera.
o Professional cameras – If you have plenty of money to spend and are looking for a classier looking camera, you can always go for a professional camera. These cameras are based on the SLR design a features resolutions that reach up to 12 million pixels. These cameras usually costs between $1500 to $8000.
o Digital video cameras – Digital video cameras can shoot images at 30 frames a second. This means a typical video session can capture up to 1800 images in a minute. The only drawback to video is the resolution is not as good and regular digital cameras. An example of this type of camera would be the Sony DCR-TRV33 MiniDV Handycam Camcorder.
o Specialty cameras – These cameras are usually found in such devices as PDAs and cell phones. The resolution is usually 4x to 1.4 million pixels.

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