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Gadget’s Guide to Buying a Digital Camera
-By Shawn ‘the girl’ Murray
Hey there! Shawn the Gadget Girl here again, and as promised I’ll be giving you the scoop on Digital Cameras. Let’s face it, as much as we love our film cameras, digital fits into today’s lifestyle so much easier. No film to develop, no prints you don’t want, and best of all, you can view what you’ve done right away. So, if you’re like most college students are, and you don’t have lots of cash to be throwing around- you need to be an educated buyer. Well, I’m here to help!
When it comes to cameras, a lot of it is all opinions. I can tell you what I personally prefer, and I can tell you what is in the top ten, but that won’t help financially. The technical workings, once understood, are give and take with any model so the big step is picking out what fits you and your budget.
MegaPixels and Myths.
Your average camera user only needs about 3.2 MegaPixels (MP). An MP is simply a measure increment for a regular pixel. Pixels are the little dots of color that make up your image. An MP is a million of these. Obviously the more MPs your camera has the higher the resolution, but buying some resolution monster isn’t necessarily for you. The higher the resolution, the more memory the picture takes up on your memory card, the less pictures you can fit. You also want to keep in mind that 3.2 MPs will give you an 8x10 picture or smaller. Unless you’re making posters, the higher resolution is just for fun.
Zoom-zoom!
Ok, the zoom on a camera is totally up to the user, but here’s how I can help you avoid some buyer’s remorse. When looking at a camera, the zoom they will underscore is going to be the over all zoom: the optical times the digital. The zoom you want to pay attention to is the Optical. That is the actual zoom of you lens, where the digital is zooming in on the image itself. In other words it’s blowing the image up, which degrades the resolution. This is fine on the higher-end models where you have a whole 12 MPs to play with, but if you’re playing with 3.2 eventually you wont know who it is in that picture.
Memories…
I’ve provided a chart to help you pick out the right size card for your camera. Other than that, I have just one tip on memory. Buy a camera that takes SD (secure digital) or compact flash memory because these are the two more popular types and you’ll be able to find them in more places at more competitive prices.
Alright! Now I’m sure we all feel a lot savvier and can take on those register jockeys with confidence. This is the Gadget Girl signing off, until next time when I take on MP3 Players!
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Collecting memories instantly... Gotta love technology!
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