Your Guide To Buying A Digital Camera

Digital Camera Buying Guide





Buying a digital camera soon?

Then be sure to read this "Digital Camera Buying Guide" before spending your cash on any top rated digital cameras!

Almost everyone agrees that digital cameras offer plenty of advantages over film, and consumers are voting with their wallets as they continue to buy digital cameras in record numbers.

Some advantages of digital cameras is the ability to immediately see the images you have taken instead of waiting to have film developed, and being able to transfer your image files to your computer where you can edit, print and store them as you see fit. But what should you look for when buying a camera?


Buying A Digital Camera Tip #1: Consider its Use


First of all decide how you plan on using the prints that you will make. Will they mostly be 4 X 6 snapshots, or do you plan on making enlargements on up to 11 X 14 or so? This will determine how much resolution that you need to buy when you get your digital camera. For snapshots, a 4 - 6 mega pixel camera should do the job just fine, but if you want to make larger prints you may want to look for a 6 - 8 mega pixel camera instead.

And if you plan on doing lots of photo editing that can involve zooming in and cropping a small portion of the image, you may even want a 10+ mega pixel camera for that kind of heavy duty work.





Buying A Digital Camera Tip #2: Understand the Zoom


Most fixed lens digital cameras come with a zoom feature, but you should know that there are two different types of zooms that are used. One is an optical zoom that relies on the lens for it's magnification, and the other is the digital zoom that enlarges the image already captured by digital means instead.

The optical zoom is far more preferable than the digital zoom as it will produce sharp and clear zoom shots throughout it's entire focal range. The digital zoom is only magnifying the resulting image and so it can produce less sharp, grainy pictures instead when used at the higher end of the focal range. So try to get a camera that has as much of the zoom range that you want handled by optical rather than the digital.


Buying A Digital Camera Tip #3: Know Supported File Formats


Important Tip when Buying a Digital Camera: If having the best image quality is important to you then you want to look for digital cameras that save their files in TIFF, GIF and RAW formats as these do not sacrifice any image quality when compressing the image file for storage. On the other hand, the JPEG image format that many cameras use will cause some loss of image quality in the file compression part of saving the image file.


So, when buying a digital camera think about how you will use it, which formats you need to have and what the zoom does. You can then make a more informed choice, rather than to just buy a camera in the store based on the color or groovy design. The tips given above should help you though to be more informed on how to select the digital camera that fits your style!



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