Guide To Buying A Digital Camera -- Part 1

This series of articles is designed to help you choose the best camera for your needs. Are you ready to take the plunge into the world of digital photography? Read on!

When considering the purchase of a digital camera, the first question that you need to ask yourself is, why? Do you simply want to post images on the Internet or send snapshots by e-mail? If so, you don't need a high-resolution cornea. However, if you want to print digital photographs, you'll need a camera with more resolution.

Resolution

Digital cameras are rated by the number of megapixels they can record. These millions of pixels, referred to as their "resolution," are the single most important factor affecting the price of digital cameras. Therefore, the more megapixels the camera has, the higher the price.

A computer monitor set to 1280x1024 (which is very large) is only displaying about 1.3 megapixels. Any digital camera rated at about 2 megapixels is suitable for computer images. Images which are only viewed on a computer screen do not need a high resolution.

However, printed pictures are a different story. Professional photo shops usually print photographs at 300 dots per inch, so you would be disappointed with pictures printed at less than this standard. A 4 x 6 photograph printed at 300 dots per inch  needs about 2.8 million pixels in the image. Therefore, digital cameras that are meant to be used for printed pictures should be rated at least 3 megapixels.

Having more megapixels doesn't necessarily mean better pictures. All other things being equal (image sensor quality and lens quality) a camera with more megapixels simply allows you to print larger pictures. There also will be more options available to you for cropping photos and maintaining standard print sizes.

Budget

After you have chosen a minimum megapixel rating, it's time for you to look at cameras that fall within your price range. You may need to forego some of the fancy features, such as video and sound recording, in order to get the best quality images for your money. Concentrate on image sensor quality and lens quality.

Lenses

Lenses are available in either glass or plastic. Glass lenses produce cleaner, crisper images and are superior to plastic lenses. The best cameras will come equipped with lenses by well-known manufacturers such as Leica or Zeiss.

Many digital cameras have a zoom function that allows you to appear to get closer to your subject without moving the camera. There are 2 types of zoom -- digital and optical. Digital zooms, which simply remove the outside edges of an image and interpolate the result over the area of the image sensor, should be avoided if at all possible, because they don't give as good a result as optical zooms. An optical zoom changes the actual length of the lens.

Image Sensors

There are two popular types of image sensors, which are electronic devices that record the images. CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) is cheaper, but the better image sensor is CCD (Charged-Couple Device).

Whatever your budget may be, a camera with a CCD image sensor and a high quality lens will result in many years of pleasing digital photographs.