I'd like to buy a beginners' digital camera - what are the features that I must expect in one such camera? (With the camera being an economical one). Could you please explain in layman's terms? It should have a optical zoom at least 3x, this is the zoom that is achieved using the lens... You would probably get a digital zoom, which is zooming into the picture of about 4x-10x...
It should have about 5 different shooting modes, like under different light (room, sun, night etc)... It should allow you to change the flash mode, i.e automatic, force, red eye reduction (very important) as it prevents the red eye when you take shots at night caused by the reflection of the flash from the subject's eyes. These days you can get a beginners camera that has a auto-shutdown to save battery life. It should be able to record voice with video at at least 320X480 resolutionn but you should be able to get one with 640x480 (bigger picture).
I'm not that clued up but I think thats about it, and its what my camera as (Canon Ixus 500). 1. Atleast 3X optical zoom which do not reduce the image quality.
Digital zoom 2-4X which however reduce the image quality.
2. Atleast 4-5 mega pixel for good resolutin. Lower than 2 is only for e-mail or web publishing.
3. In built flash.
4. Optical as well as LCD view finder.
5. Video and sound recorder in MEPG-4 form (30/15 frames per second).
6. Different scene modes in which you can take stills in different conditions like beach, children etc.
7. Close up atleast upto 0.5 ft.
8. Good conectivity to your computer like USB 2 or 2.0
There are lot of websites which teach you about digital cameras and they review models from different brands.
Read about Sony S600, W5, Nicon L1 and Kodak C533 and C643.
You can try www.epinions.com or Steeve's guide.
Good luck. Plenty of good advice here. Consumer Reports in last months issue rated and reported on digital cameras. | 