How to Choose The best Digital Camera For you !

How to Choose The best Digital Camera For you !

This is a buying guide for a digital compact cameras or the point and shoot cameras. Today's compact camera market holds lots of brand names and products. and most of the same range products looks similar in specifications but there are noticeable differences , So if you buying a digital camera for the first time then the selection can be tough and selecting the best one can be tricky so lets analyze step by step about what you need to consider and let's define your needs . 

 Consider your budget

most probably this is the first thing to do before buying anything . Knowing how much you are willing to spend will prevent you from buying a wrong camera that you don't need .There are many cameras for different price rages so it's important that you have a budget first , then only you can focus on a particular range.

 Ask your self “what you need “

( DSLR or Compact ?? )

you have to have an idea of what you going to do with the camera , you might like shooting portraits , Landscapes or else you might be using it for mostly in out doors or you are going to using it for indoor usage ... etc so having know what you going to do will help you to choose the right camera for you , for example if you love doing macro photography then you need to consider a camera with good macro functionality and with very low minimum focus length . and if you interested in doing wildlife photography then what you need is a digital camera with large zoom range . and you should understand the different between a DSLR and a Compact camera , DSLR cameras are more used for professional stuff or when needing a very high resolution and quality and it can give you splendid field of depth , and also you can interchange the lenses of a DLSR but all these are costly , so knowing your ground is important , if you looking for mega zooming camera then you don't always have to look for a DSLR with a long tele lens but you can get 30x or higher zooming camera for much lesser price . 

Resolution or the Mega pixels  can trick you 

Most of the Digital camera manufactures tend to market there product in terms of Mega pixel value , and they wanted consumers to believe that MP value is everything.so you go on and on looking for the camera with the highest MP value.but this is not always true .

Nearly all digital cameras use CCD's as the sensing element. This is what takes the place of film. The resolution is the number of pixels in the captured image. Computer images are divided into little dots called pixels. The more pixels, the more detailed the image can be. Here is a guide to choosing resolution, estimating the size print you can make from each:

1.3 Megapixel = 1280x960: Great 4x6's, acceptable 5x7's.

2 Megapixel = 1600x1200: Pretty good 8x10's.

3 Megapixel = 2048x1536: Great 8x10's, good 11x14's.

4 Megapixel = 2272 x 1704: Great 11x14's, and acceptable 16x20's.

5 Megapixel = 2560x1920: Pretty good 16x20's.

6 - 10 Megapixels = At this point you are usually limited by the lens, not the pixels.

Casual photographers are satisfied with bigger prints from each size, while those who like to look at 8x10's from a distance of three inches think I am being too generous in the above evaluations.

( source - http://users.wfu.edu )

and there are compact cameras with 18MP and on the other hand we have expensive DSLRs with the same 18 MP or similar so what's the different ?

DSLR cameras uses a large sensor when comparing to a normal point and shoot camera it's a sevaral times larger , so the field of deapth and image quality is very high in a DSLR . any way since we are not talking about DSLRs here what you should know is image quality is not totally depend on the Mega pixel value .

Lens quality / Zoom range / Focal length /aperture 

(Mega zooming digital camera )

in almost every compact camera zoom range is marked as ( 4x , 6x...etc ) it's the pure zooming capability of the lens and in a mega zooming compact cameras can have zoom ranges up to 30-40x , equaling nearly 600mm in a tele lens ,and you should checkout the quality of the lenses too, because lot depend on the quality of the lens, Focus length is the distance between the center of a lens or curved mirror and its focus.

The aperture of a lens is its maximum opening. The bigger the aperture, the more light is gathered, and the less light you need to take a good photo. This is the most overlooked lens specification, but it very important, especially if you like to take photos indoors without flash or from a reasonable distance.

Lens aperture is measured in f/numbers, such as f/2.0 or f/3.5. An aperture of f/2.0 literally means that the lens opening is half the focal length of the lens. Thus, smaller numbers mean bigger lens openings. You would rather have a lens that is f/2.0 than a lens that is f/4.0. but in most cases people don't even look for these numbers.but it'll be good to bare it on your mind, 

Do not fascinate about the Digital zooming.

Digital zooming is not done by the camera lens , it's just cropping the image . so image quality is highly reduced , so when buying a camera simply ignore the digital zoom number . 

Shutter lag 

In photography, shutter lag is the delay between triggering the shutter and when the photograph is actually recorded. This is a common problem in the photography of fast-moving objects or people in motion. The term narrowly refers only to shutter effects, but more broadly refers to all lag between when the button is pressed and when the photo is taken, including metering and focus lag.you can check the shutter lag buy taking some test shots with the camera and for digital camera it's good to have a minimum shutter lag between 0.1 sec to .2 sec  

Build quality 

everyone would like to have a more stylish and a sleek design , so it's up to you to compare the build quality of the models you looking for , and if it's made up with metal and have less plastic on it , it's better ,and check out the LCD as well size resolution , quality. importantly if it's has a hard body then it'll be last long.

Recommended brands 

when buying a camera , you should read the full manufacture specification , and you can find specs on

DP Review, and then you can compare models from each brand or from the same brand , and also you should not go for lesser famous brand names , brand names like Canon , Nikon , Olympus, Fuji, Sony, Samsung , has a good range of compact products ,you can compare cameras from  SnapSort  

Make a list , take time and review each camera

you can have a list of the models in your price range and you can sort this list by price , features , build quality , etc , what's important is you should always have to look for the cameras that suit your needs then you can shorten the list by eliminating the unnecessary ones.after you have 3-4 cameras on your list go to DPReview and read the specs , take your time , never be hurry to pick a one but be patient and pick the best one, after that you can even go for few shops to have a look by yourself or else you can use hands on review videos on YouTube ,