If you’re looking for a digital camera, you’re bound to come across all kinds of features and specifications. Here are the key ones you should be looking for.

Megapixels: Cameras with five megapixels once cost well over $1,000, but seven and eight megapixels are the new high-end. Five is still more than enough for great photos that can be blown up to A4, A3 or larger, while more megapixels give even greater detail.

Optical zoom or digital zoom: Zoom allows you to get closer to your photo without having to physically move closer. It’s very useful for composing shots, and for photographing subjects you can’t get too close to. There’s two types of zoom – optical and digital. Digital is pretty much a waste of time, as all it does is crop away parts of the image to achieve the close up (so you get a bigger picture, at the expense of detail). Optical zoom, on the other hand, uses a system of lenses to achieve the zoom, so you don’t loose detail. Look for 3x optical zoom.

Battery life: Most of the latest digital cameras can take well over 250 photos on a single charge, but for serious photographers this isn’t enough. Either look for a camera with extra long battery life on a single charge, one that uses rechargeable AA batteries, or consider buying a second battery for extended photographic sessions.

Memory cards: The digital equivalent of film, today’s standard memory card is usually 1GB and costs around $100, depending on its type, letting you store hundreds of photos before running out of space. Some digital cameras come with a small internal memory, and you’re expected to purchase a memory card, while other cameras come with a reasonably-sized memory card. It really depends on the manufacturer.

Printing photos: Who’d have thought 10 years ago that great photos could so easily be printed at home, for a mere 50 cents or less? And if your regular home printer or photo printer can’t handle the task, photo labs are always there for convenience, with in-store prints more affordable than ever.

Video clips: Many digital cameras have a video mode, which means that your digital still camera is a video camera too that lets you record in a range of settings from webcam through to TV quality. Most can record at 30fps with audio up to the maximum capacity of your memory card. If you have a 1GB or larger memory card, you can happily mix and match photos and video clips.

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Entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 9:57 am under Tips and advice.

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