|
Digital Camera Features and Buying Guide |
|
|
|
Home | Digital Camcorders - What Features are Important? | Palm Pilot / PDA | Toshiba Regionfree DVD Players | Digital Cameras | Headphones | Diamond Rio 800 | What is TiVo? | Scanner Features - The Next Best Thing to a Digital Camera | Iomega HipZip | Creative Nomad MP3 | Samsung Yepp MP3 | Sony Clie Accessories |
| Digital Depot | Digital Cameras Buying Guide | Digital Camera Photography |
|
|
|
Which Features
Are Most Important?
Things to
Consider in a Digital Camera Resolution: Megapixels
Megapixels
Camera
Resolution |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Get
Zoom If You Can Afford It Particularly if you'll often be photographing people, you may want to make a point of choosing a camera with an integral zoom lens. The fixed-focal-length lenses used by many models should prove adequate for many landscape shots and family group pictures. Then again, being able to "zoom" in for a tighter shot can be a huge advantage, especially when shooting candids or portraits. A 2x zoom lets you roughly double the size of your subject in the captured shot, while a 3x zoom lets you triple the size. If you have your heart set on a zoom lens, make sure you look for a model with an optical zoom. Many cameras offer digital zoom in addition to or instead of a true zoom lens. The difference, in brief: With an optical zoom, the camera adjusts the lens to focus the tighter image over the entire image sensor array, so that the camera captures the zoomed image at as high a resolution as it can. With digital zoom, on the other hand, the camera simply ignores data collected for all but the intended, tighter image. In other words, when you zoom digitally, you're essentially just cropping part of the image in-camera, without increasing the resolution of the portion of the image you really want to keep. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Interface
and Media: Get an External Card Reader To transfer images to your PC with most digital cameras, you connect an included interface cable to your system's nine-pin serial port. An increasing number of cameras are using a USB interface either as a replacement to a serial-port interface or as an additional interface. Either approach should work well if your system has the appropriate port, but USB's advantages make it a better choice over the long haul. These advantages include faster transfer speeds, support for hot-plugging components, and the ability to provide power to the component through the interface. The FireWire interface should also be available on an increasing number of cameras in time. This interface offers roughly the same advantages as USB but allows faster data transfers still. What storage medium your camera uses may also determine how easily you can transfer images to your PC. The great majority of today's cameras accommodate tiny solid-state storage cards of the CompactFlash or SmartMedia variety. How much storage space you'll need depends partly on the resolution of the images you'll be capturing. Most of today's cameras come with 4MB or 8MB cards, but you can buy CompactFlash cards that hold as much of 96MB of information. Currently, SmartMedia cards are available in capacities as large as 16MB. Sony's Mavica cameras have won fans by storing images to standard 3.5-inch floppies. The obvious downside to this approach is the maximum 1.44MB capacity of each disk, though floppies certainly cost little enough to allow you to carry plenty of spares. Adapters that allow a standard 3.5-inch drive to read SmartMedia cards are now widely available, and other adapters that plug into a parallel port or a PC Card slot can read CompactFlash or SmartMedia cards. These card readers are the fastest, most efficient, and most convenient way to transfer files from the camera to your system. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Opt
for an Optical Viewfinder The LCD panels provided on the majority of digital cameras can be used to frame your shots, but most buyers should make a point of opting for a camera that also provides a traditional optical viewfinder. Using the LCD panel as a viewfinder will often let you frame your shots more precisely—optical viewfinders usually do not show exactly how much of the scene will be captured—but constantly running the LCD panel will also greatly increase your camera's appetite for batteries. Particularly on aggressively priced units, LCD panels often update slow enough to be awkward to use with fast-moving subjects. Another problem: Direct sunlight can wash out the LCD panels of many cameras, making them difficult to use at best. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Macro
Mode In photography parlance, true macro functionality indicates that a subject can be captured at its actual size, which implies the ability to focus at distances of mere inches. Only a precious few professional lenses actually deliver true, 1-to-1 macro capability, but the term macro has come to denote just about any close-focusing ability. Most digital cameras provide a macro setting to let you get up close and personal without losing focus. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LCD
Display Most of today's digital cameras include a small integrated LCD panel, which most often measure 1.8 inches diagonally. Some models depend on these LCD panels as their primary viewfinders, but the LCD panels probably more often prove useful for other purposes. For instance, the ability to view the image you just captured can be a real help. An LCD panel also comes in handy for image management and camera control: With well-designed controls, the built-in display makes it easy to change your camera's settings and to view and manage stored images. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Out
to TV If you want the ability to show off your images to family and friends using a television or other video device, insist on a digital camera that supports TV hookup. (Most do.) Connecting to a television is easy and requires only an RCA-style, composite connector on the TV end. Many cameras let you choose to control the show manually or have the camera cycle through the stored images automatically. TV-out capability can also give you a way to view and show the panoramas and short videos that some cameras let you create. With some cameras, you can load images back into your camera after annotating and editing them on your PC, so that you can use the camera to give more elaborate presentations than would otherwise be possible. Keep in mind that the TV-out feature outputs a standard video signal, so you could also use it to copy presentations to videotape or to output to a video projector. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Software
Many digicams come bundled with third-party or proprietary software that helps with picture storage, editing and manipulation. While this is a bonus that should not be overlooked, it should not be the prime reason for buying a particular camera. The camera-to-computer acquisition software, however, should be considered. A clumsy interface can slow up work or make using the camera less than pleasant. Be sure to research this handshake software carefully by reading magazine or net reviews of the camera before buying. Optional or Interchangeable Lenses As with point and shoot cameras, digicams come in either fixed focal length or zoom lens varieties. You may also see high zoom ratios attained through something called "digital zoom". This can come as high as 48X and higher. While this may come in handy in some situations it does not offer the quality of a true optical zoom lens. Pay more attention to the optical (prime lens) zoom ratio than the digital zoom capability. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
