Don't Buy A Digital Point-and-Shoot Without Checking Out These 6 Features
You're ready to go out (or online) and buy a brand new compact camera, but how do you know which features to look for? To some extent, it depends on your preferences of course, but make sure you look at all the specs closely to get the camera that best suits your needs.
Here are six features you should take a closer look at before clicking "add to cart":
Battery Type Many cameras use a rechargeable proprietary battery (i.e. the manufacturer's own brand), and while they work great and usually last for a long time, make sure to buy at least one extra to keep on hand (charged) as a backup. However, if you travel to a foreign country, you might not be able to use your charger, or there may not be any electricity at all, so if you plan to travel to remote areas, I'd suggest investing in a solar-powered charger. AA batteries (alkaline, lithium or oxyride) are also a very common power source for compact cameras, and the great thing about them is that you can find them all over the world, they're relatively inexpensive, and they're small enough to fit in an evening bag. What's not so great is that they usually don't last very long (Oxyrides are your best bet), it gets expensive to constantly buy batteries, and it's not a very "green" choice. Rechargeable AAs (NiMH) are a better choice, and if your camera accepts all types of AAs, it's a good idea to use NiMHs as your regular batteries and keep other AAs on hand as backup.
Optical Zoom The optical zoom is what you want to focus on when it comes to zooming features. Digital zoom does not bring the lens closer to the object, it just enlarges and crops the photo to fill the frame with a "zoomed in" picture. It gets the job done, but you lose quite a bit of image quality this way. Optical zoom on the other hand works like the zoom on traditional 35mm cameras, where the zooming is done in the lens and there is no loss of image quality at all.
Memory Even though all cameras these days accept a variety of memory cards, built-in memory is always an added asset. Imagine standing in front of the perfect shot with full or malfunctioning memory cards: internal memory to the rescue. Many of the compact cameras currently on the market have anywhere from a few MB to several GB of internal memory, so make sure you look for that in the specs when deciding on a new camera.
Megapixels These days, most cameras have enough megapixels for the majority of users. Even if you are making 16x20 prints, a good quality point and shoot will give you nice, crisp results. However, if you are planning to sell your photos as stock, check with the agencies - some have a minimum mp requirement (for stock, you probably also want a camera that can capture RAW files, which can be converted to tiffs, jpgs and more - see below).
Aperture & Shutter Priority Most digital point and shoots produce great pictures in Program or Auto modes, but having a bit more control over what's going on inside the camera can really take your photography to new levels. I almost always shoot in aperture priority, with the lens wide open (f2.8, 4 or 5.6) for a short depth of field, which results in images where the subject is sharp and everything else is blurry. Slow shutter speeds are great for creating dreamlike, flowy photos of moving water and clouds, or to really showcase movement in an image (people, cars at night, Ferris wheels, etc.).
Jpg or RAW? The majority of the compact digital cameras on the market produce jpgs - small files that are perfect for your blog, flickr, and other online sharing sites, and most people are able to open them on their computer. The disadvantages of jpgs are that it is a "lossy" format, and since a bunch of adjustments are done automatically in the camera, you don't have much control over the final result.
RAW has been the file format of choice for SLR users for years, but there are a few point and shoots with RAW capabilities as well. RAW files are not images per se, they are data files, and you do need to do a bit of post processing to turn them into usable pictures. But since they contain all the data you need, completely uncompressed or altered in any way, you get to create a photo from the best possible starting point. You can use Photoshop, the manufacturer's RAW converter, or Lightroom to process your RAW files, and save them in any format you like: jpgs, tiffs, dngs, etc. - 2361
Here are six features you should take a closer look at before clicking "add to cart":
Battery Type Many cameras use a rechargeable proprietary battery (i.e. the manufacturer's own brand), and while they work great and usually last for a long time, make sure to buy at least one extra to keep on hand (charged) as a backup. However, if you travel to a foreign country, you might not be able to use your charger, or there may not be any electricity at all, so if you plan to travel to remote areas, I'd suggest investing in a solar-powered charger. AA batteries (alkaline, lithium or oxyride) are also a very common power source for compact cameras, and the great thing about them is that you can find them all over the world, they're relatively inexpensive, and they're small enough to fit in an evening bag. What's not so great is that they usually don't last very long (Oxyrides are your best bet), it gets expensive to constantly buy batteries, and it's not a very "green" choice. Rechargeable AAs (NiMH) are a better choice, and if your camera accepts all types of AAs, it's a good idea to use NiMHs as your regular batteries and keep other AAs on hand as backup.
Optical Zoom The optical zoom is what you want to focus on when it comes to zooming features. Digital zoom does not bring the lens closer to the object, it just enlarges and crops the photo to fill the frame with a "zoomed in" picture. It gets the job done, but you lose quite a bit of image quality this way. Optical zoom on the other hand works like the zoom on traditional 35mm cameras, where the zooming is done in the lens and there is no loss of image quality at all.
Memory Even though all cameras these days accept a variety of memory cards, built-in memory is always an added asset. Imagine standing in front of the perfect shot with full or malfunctioning memory cards: internal memory to the rescue. Many of the compact cameras currently on the market have anywhere from a few MB to several GB of internal memory, so make sure you look for that in the specs when deciding on a new camera.
Megapixels These days, most cameras have enough megapixels for the majority of users. Even if you are making 16x20 prints, a good quality point and shoot will give you nice, crisp results. However, if you are planning to sell your photos as stock, check with the agencies - some have a minimum mp requirement (for stock, you probably also want a camera that can capture RAW files, which can be converted to tiffs, jpgs and more - see below).
Aperture & Shutter Priority Most digital point and shoots produce great pictures in Program or Auto modes, but having a bit more control over what's going on inside the camera can really take your photography to new levels. I almost always shoot in aperture priority, with the lens wide open (f2.8, 4 or 5.6) for a short depth of field, which results in images where the subject is sharp and everything else is blurry. Slow shutter speeds are great for creating dreamlike, flowy photos of moving water and clouds, or to really showcase movement in an image (people, cars at night, Ferris wheels, etc.).
Jpg or RAW? The majority of the compact digital cameras on the market produce jpgs - small files that are perfect for your blog, flickr, and other online sharing sites, and most people are able to open them on their computer. The disadvantages of jpgs are that it is a "lossy" format, and since a bunch of adjustments are done automatically in the camera, you don't have much control over the final result.
RAW has been the file format of choice for SLR users for years, but there are a few point and shoots with RAW capabilities as well. RAW files are not images per se, they are data files, and you do need to do a bit of post processing to turn them into usable pictures. But since they contain all the data you need, completely uncompressed or altered in any way, you get to create a photo from the best possible starting point. You can use Photoshop, the manufacturer's RAW converter, or Lightroom to process your RAW files, and save them in any format you like: jpgs, tiffs, dngs, etc. - 2361
About the Author:
DeeDee Dobson adores the color pink. On her blog, she talks about point and shoot pink digital cameras and their many different features .
posted by Marcondes Allen at 12:55 AM
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