Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide

Welcome to Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide. Here at Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide we have a single minded purpose and that is to provide you with the information you need in order to make a wise purchase of a digital camera. We want you to get the most camera for the money you spend.

Here you will also find our digital photography store. Our store provides digital cameras, photo printers, and books about digital photography. If you are a digital photography enthusiast, you should find our store interesting.

We also provide a chat room about digital photography. Our chat room is intended for the digital photography enthusiast and allows for an unlimited number of simultaneous users. All we ask is that the conversations stay within the realm of digital photography and related topics.

Up front, we must say that this site is not designed for the professional photographer who is seeking to buy a relatively expensive digital SLR (single lense reflex) camera. Information provided here is for the individual who simply would like to purchase a basic digital camera and is not interested in the special single lense/viewfinder optics and lense interchangeable chracteristics of a digital SLR camera.

Here, at Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide you will also find a daily updated news component, providing any and all news from the world of digital cameras. This news should be interesting to both the professional photographer and the casual digital camera user.

There are currently, as of this writing, 200 brands of digital cameras on the market. Most stores, online and brick-and-morter, only carry a fraction of this volume. When buying a digital camera you first must ask yourself what you are going to use the camera for.

If statistically you are like most people, you want a digital camera in order to make some prints, post an image to a website or blog, or send some images via email. If this is the case, at current prices, you could easily find what you need for under $250.00.

There are other digital camera buying guides online with the same objective as we have here at Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide, but these buying guides I believe get to deep into numerous other techno factors. A bunch of mumble jumble really does not help the consumer. If you are a digital camera enthusiast these sites are great. But they really do not serve well the normal consumer. Hence the need for Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide.

This guide cuts right to the meat and lets you know what really is important. So lets cut right to the most important part of Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide, that is what should you be looking for when purchasing a digital camera.

Digital Cameras - A Buying Guide -Three Most Important Factors to Consider When Buying a Digital Camera

• Number of Megapixels:
  This is simply the resolution your digital camera can produce. The greater the number of pixels per unit space, the greater the resolution.

  If you plan on increasing the size of your pictures, having a greater number of pixels per unit space will maintain your high resolution. So, the higher the number of megapixels the better. Today 4 megapixels is considered standard. (by the way, 1 megapixel is one million pixels.

• Memory:
  The memory in a digital camera most frequently, but not always, is in the form of Sandisk flash memory. The pictures you take are stored in this memory. After taking pictures, you can store them in your computer.

  So the memory storage inside your camera is important if you want to hold onto many pictures inside the camera itelf before transfering them to your computer. The higher the memory capability, the better. The most important point to remember about memory is this. The memory provided in most digital cameras is extremely small. Typically, digital cameras come with around 10 to 15mb of memory. This is basically useless because this amount of memory can only hold around 6 to 8 pictures, assuming the camera has around 6mp resolution.

  The higher the resolution, the fewer the number of pictures that can be held in memory. What does this mean. When shopping for a digital camera, you need to budget an additional $30.00 to $50.00 dollars to buy a decent amount of memory. Usually people buy around 500mb to 1gb of memory. Depending on your resolution, 1gb can hold around a few hundred pictures.

• Optical Zooming:
  Optical zoom measures the ability of the camera’s lens to capture more light, and more detail, from a particular distant point. You want the zooming capability to be as high as possible.

The above three factors should be considered when buying a digital camera. The more money you pay, the greater the megapixels, memory, and optical zooming capability. But it is also important to remember that the pre-installed memory within the camera is not to important because you need to buy memory any way. Also, if you want more features, you will then need to pay more money.

There is one more feature that I consider just slightly less important then the above three and that is the size of the LCD screen on the camera. In terms of this physical feature, the larger the LCD screen the better. There are what I consider less important factors such as size of the digital camera itself, it’s shape, and it’s style. But for some people this is important.

When buying a digital camera, you are better off if you buy a well known brand. The following companies produce high quality digital cameras.

There are many in the digital camera industry who feel the number of megapixels is not as important as the industry wants you to believe. Sort of like the max number on the speedometer of your car.

Point being, a very high number of megapixels really is not neccessary and that a high number is overkill in terms of resolution. For the average digital camera user, very high megapixels is not needed. Again, it comes down to to the reason you are buying a digital camera.

The price of digital cameras has gone down trememdously. The beauty of a digital camera is that you never will need film, and because the image is digital, there are many things you can do with this image using your computer.

Another important feature of a digital camera is that when you take a picture and you do not like it, you can erase it from the memory. So digital cameras are a quatum leap in technology compared to film cameras.

The best way to buy a digital camera is to go to Costco, Best Buy, Circuit City, BJs, or any of the electronic stores, find one that looks good and has the features you like, write down the company name and model number and go home and find it online. Your online purchase will usaully be cheaper, but not always.

I once found a digital camera at BJs for $200.00 and the lowest price online was $240.00 not including shipping. But generally speaking, the Internet stores are very competitive and many offer free shipping.

Given Costco’s lenient return policy, you could buy one at Costco, try it out, return it and buy it online. Keep in mind that the grape-vine news among Costco employees is that Costco’s lenient return policy will be changing. This is from a seasoned employee who works in the electronic department at Costco.

So if you are thinking about buying a digital camera, there really is no better time then now to make your purchase. Camcorders are nice, but there are times when you really want to have static images. A digital camera is the way to go.

To conclude, when buying a digital camera, keep in mind number of megapixels, budget in the need to buy more memory, and look at zooming capability. Keep these factors in mind and you will be satisfied with the purchase of your digital camera.

The following is our digital camera buying guide news component. Our digital camera news component consists of topics such as digital camera reviews, new products, additional buying tips, information on digital camera unit sales, stock information on digital camera companies, digital camera company news, and just about anything and everything that has to do with digital cameras.