PICTURE QUALITY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Another important factor to consider when buying a digital camera is the color quality of the images.  This topic is complex since you are already dealing with exposure, color purity, color balance, lighting condition, etc., not to mention the output device you use to view the picture, the printer you have at home or the office and the kind of paper that will receive the print.

Probably the best way to keep it simple is to rely on your biological lens (read: your eyes -- get it? ) to judge if the color quality is worth the price of buying that digicam.  If it's possible, download a copy of sample pictures taken from the camera and print them.  Pay attention to the highlights (light areas) and shadows (dark areas) of the sample output.  Under- and over- exposures are trouble spots to watch out for, since you tend to loose image data in those two extremes.

Here is a sample illustration of picture quality gone bad.

UNDEREXPOSED « « REFERENCE PICTURE » » OVEREXPOSED

In doing some of my informal tests, I found that it's better to have an underexposed picture rather than an overexposed one, since I can use my photo-editing program to do the adjustments without loosing too much detail and color.  Nothing much I can say for overexposed images, though.  Since the highlights were already washed out, no amount of editing will bring those colors back.

REFERENCE PHOTOGRAPH

UNDEREXPOSED VERSION

EXPOSURE CORRECTION

Of course, I'm NOT saying that you should get a digicam that underexposes pictures all the time.  Just because you can adjust the exposure through software doesn't mean that you'll get good results as compared to a correctly-exposed photograph.  If you take a closer look at the reference and corrected photographs above, you'll notice that the corrected picture is a bit desaturated.  You can correct the colors, though, but should you go through this process every time you take a photograph?

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