Choosing the right digital camera to best suit your needs is an important decision. As you consider which digital camera to purchase there are several important factors to consider. This article shows how to choose and buy the right one for you.
All the major camera makers, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, etc make high quality equipment. The brand's not that important. Or the camera either for that matter. After all, the camera just does what its told - the photographer actually makes the picture.
The first step in choosing the right camera is to determine what features are most important to you.
Choose a digital camera body that feels good in your hands. This is a personal matter depending partly on the size of your hands but also on factors that no one can quantify. Expert reviews recommend comparing cameras in person before buying. Note that a camera that feels too small for your hands may feel more comfortable if you add a battery grip, which holds an extra battery, boosting the number of shots you can take between charges.
Megapixels: Instead of film, a digital camera has an imaging sensor consisting of millions of pixels. To record an image, each pixel builds up a tiny charge of electricity in response to the light it "sees." A megapixel is the term used for a million pixels - and the more megapixels an imaging sensor has, the higher the camera's potential resolution.
So if most cameras can deliver the print sizes you need, how do you decide between, say, a camera with 8 megapixels and a camera with 10 megapixels? You may not need to. The difference in resolution between their photos can be difficult to detect, unless you're a pro who looks for the tiniest details, or you plan to make really enormous prints.
With that in mind, you may want to instead consider your photography habits and decide what other camera features are particularly important to you. Do you want extra zoom capability to capture close-ups of your child across the baseball field or wildlife in a distant tree? Are you mainly interested in automatic functions, or do you want to experiment with camera settings on your own? Are you looking for an ultra-slim model that you can easily carry everywhere?
Optical zoom is necessary to view the object in large size. Almost all digital cameras will have this optical zoom facility. Before buying the camera, you must check the optical zoom present in it and you must not afford it if it has the optical zoom less than 2.
Digital zoom is used to increase the size of the picture. Most of the digital cameras offer this digital zoom facility. Check out the clarity levels of the picture clearly when you increase the size of it because some of the pictures will loose their clarity if you apply digital zoom to them.
SLR or POINT AND SHOOT?
SLR's (Single Lens Reflex) are fairly large, more fully featured cameras that permit you to change lenses according to the situation. They also allow use of powerful add-on flash units, offer more controls and more accessories. Also, importantly, you focus, compose and meter exposure using the picture taking lens with an SLR. This allows great accuracy in composing and metering. SLR's are ideal for sports, wildlife and nature photography. They are also a good choice for people photography because they are fast and have good lens choices. I use a digital Olympus SLR system mostly and a film Nikon SLR system occasionally.
Point and shoot cameras are everything SLR's are not: they are small and light, mostly simple to use and inexpensive. Modern digital P&S cameras are rich in features such as exposure compensation, high quality fill flash, white balance settings and metering choices. Lens quality is usually very high. P&S cameras don't allow you to change lenses, have fairly weak on-board flashes and usually do not permit add-on flash. They offer more limited exposure and metering choices than SLR's. You compose through a separate lens resulting in some inaccuracy with close-in subjects; your picture will be slightly to the left/right, or up/down from the way you composed it (with close-in subjects).
Budget: This is a very crucial element that will determine the limit price that you are willing to pay for the camera. A low budget doesn't necessarily mean you will get a bad camera. But, it's very important that you know exactly how much money you are going to allocate in order to narrow down the range of choice.
If you have plenty of time before you need to buy the camera, do some price comparisons. After you've narrowed your list to two or three different options, write down the price and exact model number. Use the Internet to visit various retailers and compare prices on the models. Read through some of the opinions others have posted about the models. Return to the store and see whether it will match any prices you found online.
No comments:
Post a Comment