While buying a digital camera, which feature should one look for, that is most significant.?

1.Before going into the features and things to watch out for when buying a digital camera you need to ask your self what you need your camera for? Based on your use you'll establish what camera suits you best.

2. the size. There are 3 sizes

A. Compact - They're light, small and GREAT! Digital cameras that fit into the pocket of your jeans are usually referred to as compact cameras.

B.Standard - the most wide spread format and most of the cameras fit into this category.

C. Big/Professional - cameras with a lot of features and gimmicks, mostly for professional use. Cameras that the advanced/pro photographers use with a wide range of manual features and the possibility to change lenses/zooms, etc. Not for the beginner as he might find it very hard to grasp.


3.Digital Camera Resolution

A photograph, whether viewed on the screen or printed, is composed of tiny dots (also called pixels). The more of these dots that can fit in a one inch space, the tinier the dots and the sharper the image. Assume you take an image at 100 dpi that is one square inch in size. It is composed of 100 X 100 pixels. It may look good at one square inch. Now blow it up four times to four square inches. Since it still contains the same 100 X 100 dots, it is now only 25 dots per inch. It will now look grainy. Digital camera resolution is a very important factor to take into account when deciding what camera to buy.

Digital camera resolution is measured in Megapixels. One Megapixel is made of one million pixels/dots. The more Megapixels - the higher the resolution the better quality of the photograph. Therefore when buying a digital camera, resolution is one of the most important things you need to take into account. Obviously if you're not going to print your pictures you need not worry about digital camera resolution that much but still you shouldn't go under one Megapixel.


4. Digital Camera Storage/Memory Cards

Digital camera storage/memory cards are digital camera film, that's where the digital camera stores photos you take. The advantage is of course you can use them over and over again and a lot more photos can be stored (depending of course on the capacity of the card). A lot of different kinds of digital camera memory cards are available. Unfortunately some memory cards only work with certain brands so you should really read this article so you don't make a mistake when buying memory cards as it all can be really confusing.

Compact Flash Cards

Compact Flash Card is the most common format in use for digital camera storage but can also be used by other devices. Comes in two version Type I and Type II. Compact Flash Card Type I max capacity is 256 MB but the Compact Flash Card Type II can store more than 256 MB. Compact Flash is not only the most common but also the most supported format today. It's used by Canon, Nikon, Casio, Minolta and HP.

SmartMedia Cards

SmartMedia Cards are almost the same as Compact Flash Cards, they're not as wide supported and are a little bit thinner than Compact Flash Cards. SmartMedia Card max capacity is still at 128MB. Olympus and Fuji digital cameras use SmartMedia cards but are now making their new models with XD Flash Memory Card that'll soon replace the SmartMedia Cards.

XD Flash Memory Card

The most recent and most advanced memory cards today, XD Flash Memory Card are really tiny and are storing the photos into the memory really fast. Most new models of Olympus and Fuji digital cameras are using XD Flash Memory Card.

Memory Stick

Memory Sticks are Sony's solution to storage, the biggest advantage of Memory Sticks are that they can be used on all of Sonys products as they all use them.

IBM Microdrive is a Compact Flash Card but can store more than 1 GB of photos. A popular and great card that I myself use.

To conclude this article, we've outlined the different memory cards available on the market today. When buying a digital camera you'll get between 8-32 MB of storage. The bigger the capacity of the memory card the more photos you can take.



5. Digital Camera Zoom

With zoom you can switch between close up and a faraway point. There is a very important thing to think about when buying a camera and that is the difference between optical and digital zoom.

Optical zoom measures the ability of the camera's lens and other parts to capture more light, and more detail, from a particular faraway point. That means that you get better-quality pictures taken from a distance while digital zoom works by capturing only the central portion of the entire image received by the sensor. It basically means that the digital zoom is really only a cropping tool, since it cuts off the parts of the image that would be out of the field of view if a longer focal length lens had been used.

As optical zoom is much better and more clear don't get fooled with advertisements of digital zooms, it's the optical zoom you should be watching.

It should feel good in the hand (too heavy and you might not take it with you, too small and I find hard to use).

I would start by comparing cameras at dpreview.com.

Features vary depending on how YOU plan to us the camera. I would get: a) at least 3mp (preferably 5); b) a solid brand (Canon, Panasonic are my favs); c) that fits your budget (leaving room for a small case, spare memory card and perhaps a spare battery); d) with a good lens (fast with a good optical range).

Dodo had some good advice -- unfortunately it is pretty dated (3 years ago, maybe more). Who would buy a one gig microdrive?? (Slow, expensive, less durable than a CF and no more storage than your typical CF). Avoid a coamera under 1 megapixel? Uh, yeah. How about avoiding anything under three.

Good Optics [lense]. True for ALL cameras.