What digital camera features should I consider?

I am majoring in architecture so I will be taking lots of pictures of buildings, parks, etc both during the day & night, indoors & (mostly) outdoors. Mostly things far away so it would be nice to be able to get good zoom and detail as well.

To be able to do all that, what megapixels, zoom, etc should be the minimum?

I was told Sony's Cyber -shot W120 was okay and for a good price - $200 (starving college student here, this is my ideal price). Would this be a good camera for what I need to do?

Any help is much appreciated :]

For $200 you're much better off with a film SLR camera for architecture photography. I suggest a Nikon N75, N65, or N60 and a Nikon 35-135mm lens (http://cgi.ebay.com/Nikon-Nikkor-35-135m... ), you should be able to get that combination for under $200

Look for a camera with a wide angle lens. You won't really care for one with super zoom lens since you will be taking pictures of buildings and landscapes anyway. 6-8 MP would be adequate for your needs. Look for a camera with proprietary battery pack never AA because it will be expensive.

canon a570 IS. It's a great camera, very popular, full of great features, and in your case, inexpensive! Great brand name too.

One important feature you should be looking at besides camera image rank, megapixels, and other criteria would be "Barrel distortion". There are many good cameras under 200$ but they have this problem regardless of whether they are from Sony, canon, Nikon, fujifilm or any other company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_disto...

If u can tolerate barrel distortion problem then go for Fujifilm S5700 or Fujifilm F40fd since they have better image quality than Sony W120.

One major problem in architectural photography is avoiding the "falling backwards" look - where the top of the building is smaller than the base. This becomes especially troublesome when photographing tall buildings. It is a result of having to tilt the camera up to capture all of the building. Ideally, you should keep the film or sensor plane parallel with the building.

If you use a wide-angle, often the image of the building will be too small to show much detail and you'll likely include a lot of extraneous foreground which is distracting. Get closer and you have to tilt your camera - and the building looks as though its falling backwards.

You can overcome this, to some extent, with a medium telephoto lens but then you have to be concerned with the "compression effect".

Ideally, the center of your lens should be at the center of the building.

Buy the Sony and do the best you can. Take time to really READ & STUDY the Owner's Manual for your camera.

I seem to recall reading about editing software that can remove or at least minimize the "falling backwards" look.

Successful night/low-light photography will require a tripod and a camera that allows you to take control - it must have a Manual Mode. I recommend the FotoSharp (fotosharp.com) Day & Night Exposure Guide. For flootlit buildings/fountains it suggests:

ISO 100
f4 @ 1 sec.
f5.6 @ 2 sec.
f8 @ 4 sec.
f11 @ 8 sec.

ISO 200

f4 @ 1/2 sec.
f5.6 @ 1 sec.
f8 @ 2 sec.
f11 @ 4 sec.