Buying A Digital Camera
Buying a digital camera is not a simple task. Especially when you have abundant choices available to you and the field is a rapidly evolving one. You have cost factors to consider and the chance of the model you buy becoming one of those forgotten models soon. This is a costly affair. In order to make a sensible purchase for your hard-earned money, it is wiser to ask yourselves some important questions. Well, what are they?
Whenever I purchase anything, this is what I look for the most.
What is my budget?
Obviously, this is the prime driver for any purchase we make anywhere in the world or at anytime.
What is my need? What type would be suitable for me?
· My needs can be like the greatest and latest, use and throw, value for money, etc
· I may need some sharp images taken, printed out in photo-quality paper in my inkjet printer or digital pictures to be shared via the Internet or email.
· You can also be a travelogue writer, sports writer or a professional needing to take sharp-images for the same. You can also be a trend setting picture taker wherein you should be going in for the latest and greatest model.
· Lots of digital cameras can produce video images too. If you are looking for many action specific images, you may as well go for a digital camcorder for twice or thrice the cost of a great digital camera.
· You can also find out if your digital camera needs to be something like a web cam of sorts. These days you can see many cell-phones coming with digital picture options etc. Some of the digital cameras have feature of sending web cam pictures as well (Some great digital cameras have 30 frames per second (fps)) feature.
· You may also need to do editing whilst you are taking pictures too. Some cameras come with 3Dimensional options and special imagery options. You may want to be specific for the same.
Next question. What resolution do I need?
· This is a $300-$3000 question (14-15K Rs – 140-150K Rs). Well, it all sort of bogs down to the type of picture you want to take and the purpose. For example, if you are keen on enlarging and printing photo-frame type pictures, you may want to go for 5 MP (Mega-Pixel) cameras. The latest ones in the market are 5 mega pixels.
· The lower the resolution you go for, the blurrier the image will be, when you try to enlarge the same. Normally 2Mega-pixels should be good enough for a normal home user. As time progresses, the memory and pixel size will be going the route of the computer systems. (Is there a Moore’s law for screen resolution??) .
Next, you may wish to ask yourselves, what kind of lens do I need to have. You can have different types, similar to a normal photo camera, such as
· Fixed-focal lens
· Retractable zoom
· Fixed Zoom
· Removable/changeable zoom lens
Storage options
You may also want to think about the various storage options you may have such as
· Compact Flash
· Floppy disk
· Microdrives
· Mini CD-R/RW
· Secure Digital /Multi Media Card
· SmartMedia cards
· Memory Sticks
Battery needs.
This is also a very important constraint as it may eat up a lot of your pocket money, if you buy a power-hogging camera. There are many types. You have to choose based on the needs and means.
· Universal rechargeable batteries
· Disposables (Most famous ones)
· Model specific ones (Somewhat precarious… as replacements can be very expensive!!)
Lithium-ion and Nickel-Metal Hydride(NiMH) are the most popular batteries for this situation.
After you decide what are all the things you want to look for, the next thing you want to look for is to look for the variety of models to choose from. How to do that?
If you have Internet, all you have to do is to search for the “digital camera comparison” or something like that you will see innumerous sites such as bizrate, mouthshut, e-pinions etc etc. You will have to be common-sensical to evaluate the options you have. By 2010, it is estimated that 99% of all camera users will be utilizing the digital one. How about it? It is an inevitable necessity, I think. How many of us use 5 ¼ floppy diskettes these days, anyways?
When you are on your own, you do not have that ever-confusing salesman taking you for a ride. You can take your time and evaluate the options.
Some good sites are as follows.
http://www.dpreview.com
https://shortcourses.com/choosing/contents.htm
https://pcmag.com/category2/0, 4148, 5, 00.asp
There are gazillion links such as these
What camera do I own?
Just for the information, I used to have a Minolta 300Si SLR camera, before I sold the same and decided to buy a digital camera. After doing my homework, I bought a Nikon Coolpix 5000 (5.24Mega Pixel, 2560x1920 (Aspect Ration/resolution), 3X zoom Opt, 16MB Compact Flash) for $469 from buydig.com (Obviously it was refurbished. I don’t have any problem whatsoever, so far).
What are the top cameras as of now?
Like opinions, this is also varying from site to site and from person to person. My single large resource dpreview decides the following as the top-10. Since I am fairly new and do not own 100s of digital cameras to decide the list, I shall go with their good test results.
Canon PowerShot A70
Canon PowerShot S50
Canon PowerShot G3
Canon EOS-10D
Canon PowerShot S400
Sony DSC-V1
Olympus C-750 UZ
Nikon Coolpix 5700
Nikon Coolpix 3100
Sony DSC-F717
Sony DSC-P10
Conclusion
Any costly purchase needs to be well thought-out. Digital cameras can be a lifelong purchase, if they are saturated. They are not. They are in growth stage. Everyday there is some change. 10 years from now, you will have a lot of good options at a better price and even better performance. If you are one of those types who go with the “hip” and “fashion”, you can spend, as you like. If you are a wise and frugal buyer, spend a day or two, chart out and then buy. Like the Kodak’s moments, you will have many memorable moments with your digital camera. You can make purchase of camera itself a moment.
I hope you liked my debut review. Any comments are welcome.
Kalil