Selecting a Digital Camera
- What kind of pictures do you like to take?
- Snapshots of family and friends
- Scenery pictures to print out and frame
- High quality photo art with nice detail and tonal
gradations.
- Telescopic or microscopic photos
- What size of a camera do you want?
- Pocket size, easy to have along
- Handful, but with lots of features
- Big handful, with a bigger lens and more adjustments
- Hefty, with interchangeable lenses and other attachments
- Really heavy, but capable of wonderful quality
- Lens
- Fixed focal length or zoom?
- If a zoom, what range of focal lengths?
- How large should the maximum aperture be? Bigger
apertures (smaller F number) means faster shutter
speeds in low light situations.
- Can you increase the range of focal lengths?
- Are lenses interchangeable?
- Viewfinder and LCD monitor
- Does the camera have an optical viewfinder? Does it
work when you use attachments?
- Does the camera have a LCD monitor?
- How fast is the LCD monitor?
- Can the LCD monitor be rotated independent of the
camera orientation? Useful for taking pictures from
unusual angles.
- How clear and high resolution is the CLD monitor.
Is it clear enough to reliably judge the quality
of the picture?
- Built-in flash
- How powerful? What is the range of distances
over which the flash works?
- Can the flash be used with other attachments, or do
they get in the way?
- Can you use an external flash?
- Storage media
- Which type: Compactflash, MemoryStick, SmartMedia
- How much storage space on the media that comes with
the camera, how expensive is it to get more media?
- How easy is it to handle the media? Is it so small
you are afraid you will lose it or break it? Is it bigger
than you want to make space for in your camera bag?
- What accessories will you need to download the images
from the media? Digital film reader? USB cable? Etc.
- Exposure value choices.
Most cameras have a range of sensitivity
settings, usually expressed in ASA numbers (i.e., 100, 200, 400).
The higher the number, the greater the sensitivity. The lower the
number, the better the image quality.
- What is the range of available settings?
- How good is the image quality at each setting. The
Highest sensitivity settings have a tendency to be
"grainier". Take a look a sample original photos in
Photoshop.
- Power
- How long will a battery charge last?
- Are the batteries a common type, or are they only
only available from one source, and probably more
expensive?
- Does the camera accept standard non-rechargable
batteries, in case your charger dies while you are
on vacation?
- Can the camera operate on a plug-in power cord?
More
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