The Beginner Buyer’s Guide To Digital Cameras.

Posted on January 29, 2008
Filed Under Technology |

The most important part of buying a digital camera is making sure that the one you select meets all of your needs. Better digital cameras uses a chip called a “Charged Coupled Device”(CCD) instead of film. Light enters the camera, through the open shutter, and strikes the CCD where it is converted to digital data before being stored in the camera’s memory.

While that is the simple description, things can get pretty complicated from there.Megapixels & Resolution is a measure of how many pixels are used to make a digital copy of an image. Pixels are tiny dots of light that make up a digital image.The quality of a digital camera’s image is usually measured in’Megapixels’ where each megapixel represents one million pixels.

Here’s how to determine how many megapixels you’ll need depending uponthe type of photos you will be taking and what you intend to do with them.

1 Megapixel - Almost obsolete, you might still find these in cell phones, PDAs, anddesktop “web” cameras. They’re OK if you only intend to email picturesto other people and those people aren’t going to be printing them.

1.1 to 2 megapixels. Only slightly better than the 1.0, this resolution is OK for an average 4×6 snapshot, but it isn’t going to be a production quality image.

2.1 to 3 megapixelsThis is the beginning of the decent camera range. You get very good 4×6 images and reasonably good 5×7 images. These cameras are low cost andprovide a good platform for beginners.

3.1 to 4 megapixelsYou are qualified to say that you have a “pretty good” camera. You get professional quality 4×6 images, real good 5×7 and 6×9 shots, andsome what decent, but not great 8×10 images.

4.1 to 5 megapixels and upPeople will be saying “Hey, great pictures!”. You can count on professional images all the way up to 8×10’s. Of course, as the megapixel count goes up, so does the price.If you are only going to be viewing your pictures online, such as posting them at a photo site or using them on your web pages, keep your money in your pocket and pick yourself up something in the 1.5 megapixelrange.

If you will be shooting pictures that will be printed at a print house,such as for brochures, postcards, etc, then you will need at least a 5megapixel camera if not higher. Of course, you’ll also need to have a fat wallet or a lot of open to buy on your credit card because, even thought prices are steadily falling, these puppies aren’t cheap!Once you’ve solved the megapixel puzzle, the rest of a digital camera’sfeatures, such as lens types, storage capacity and shutter speed are pretty routine and easy to understand. You shouldn’t have a problem deciding on those features.

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