Sorry to sound dense, but could someone please explain the difference between a digital camera and a digital SLR. I'm still very enw to this and eager to learn. Thanks I don't want to get to involved into a technical discussion. It might just be useful to give a very brief overview.
The short answer is an SLR, both film and digital, is a camera that allows you to interchange the lens. This means that the camera body has the ability to hold a variety of lenses. You can swap the lens when you want a different zoom length.
The other type of camera, the point-and-shoot camera (also called digital camera, or digicam, or P&S), are those cameras that have fixed lens. You cannot swap lens. The camera comes with a lens that is permanently attached to the camera body.
The term "digital camera" is often used to lump all cameras that are not film and has a digital sensor into the same category. Most people who are savvy in terminology will distinguish the DSLR (digital SLR) from the P&S by using the correct term. An SLR (single lens reflex) has a mirror in it that redirects the image from the lens to the viewfinder. In other words, when you look through the viewfinder you are looking through the actual lens that takes the picture. When you press the shutter, the mirror swings out of the way and the camera takes the picture onto the film, then the mirror swings back.
Now in a digital camera, in the very cheapest digital cameras the viewfinder is just a little window. In a nicer digital camera you have an electronic viewfinder, like a little video screen. It might be something you look into or a little LCD screen. In this type of camera you are looking at the output from the lens, so it's similar to an SLR anyway. But you can get a real SLR too.
Digital SLRs are usually better cameras, that is, they have more megapixels, better lenses, etc., but they are more expensive, and also bigger and heavier. They often have interchangeable lenses, which is nice, but lenses are expensive too, and non-SLRs usually have zoom lenses that make extra lenses not as important.
I don't think I'd start out with an SLR. I think I'd start with a pretty good camera and move up to an SLR when I really needed one. Cameras today are getting much cheaper and have more megapixels. But 5 megapixels is plenty for pictures up to 8x10.
Most digital cameras today work automatically--they set the f-stop and shutter speed automatically and even auto-focus. If you really wanted to get into photography and learn about it, it would be nice to also be able to set these things yourself, and a nicer camera will let you do that. But the automatic modes are also very nice and very convenient when you want to just grab the camera to quickly get a picture of the dog or something. |
