Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Tips for Buying a Digital Camera

Knowledge required can be acquired atleast to an extent that you can make a wise decision for investments on buying your gadgets. I am listing below the most useful features that should be taken care of before you decide on buying a particular digital camera. 


1. Resolution: the game of Megapixels  A “pixel” is simply a tiny dot of colored light. The more dots of light a camera can capture when you click the button, the larger and more finely detailed a photograph can be displayed or printed without distortions. To put it in familiar terms, a 3 megapixel camera will produce an 8 x 10 inch sized photograph with good clarity. Printed on any larger format and the print will be grainy at 3 MP resolution. The greater the number of megapixels, the finer the resolution and the greater the files size used to store the captured image on the flash memory card and hard drive in your computer. 


2. Lens - the eye of camera As megapixels are important for resolution and size of an image, the quality of lens decides about the quality of the image. Lens alone is the costliest factor of the camera. The difference in the quality of picture in two same megapixels cameras is due to the lens only. Normally these lenses are not interchangeable. 


3. Zoom – In and Out There are two zooms which normally we are not aware of, these are – Optical Zoom and digital Zoom 
a. Optical Zoom - Optical zoom lenses are expressed by a number and the letter “X”. It refers to the number of times closer the lens brings you to the scene. Most digital cameras start at 3 times or 3X optical zoom. It is the feature of the camera that allows you to capture a scene and show close up detail without physically having to stand close to it. 

4. Flash Memory Sticks or Cards One of the nicest features of digital cameras is that no film is required for taking snaps. Because a digicam captures light with a chip the image is stored in digital form as a data file, just like we store data in our computer. These data cards also known as flash memory that are postage stamp sizes are detachable and reusable. XD Memory Cards and Memory Sticks are most common data cards. The type of memory used in the camera will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer based on which format / strength memory cards they provide with the camera. All formats would not be compatible with all cameras. So be careful while finalizing about your camera, understand clearly the memory card format of that camera. You can buy higher memory cards as add-ons alongwith your camera or later on. 5. Battery – the power behind the pix Earlier we used to buy enough number of films before starting for a long journey. This is replaced by batteries now a days. And if you are using rechargeable batteries don’t forget to take extra batteries and the plug adapter as per the country you are visiting. 6. Aesthetics, Look, Feel, Comfort Factors Take care of these small but very important factors that not become the irritation points later. a. Size of the camera b. LCD required or not (LCD cameras consume batteries at a very fast rate but assist you to see what you are capturing) and the size of LCD c. 7. Price: set your budget Once you decide on features, visit different good brand stores and do a survey to get the price range. Then set your budget, fix on to a brand and buy it. 8.  Where to Buy – Online or Local Dealer – You have two options – either go to an internet store and buy it, else buy from a local dealer near to you house or office. I will prefer to buy it from a store near to my area of work or house. But I will ensure that I buy from an authorized dealer only.


2. Lens - the eye of camera As megapixels are important for resolution and size of an image, the quality of lens decides about the quality of the image. Lens alone is the costliest factor of the camera. The difference in the quality of picture in two same megapixels cameras is due to the lens only. Normally these lenses are not interchangeable. 


3. Zoom – In and Out There are two zooms which normally we are not aware of, these are – Optical Zoom and digital Zoom 
a. Optical Zoom - Optical zoom lenses are expressed by a number and the letter “X”. It refers to the number of times closer the lens brings you to the scene. Most digital cameras start at 3 times or 3X optical zoom. It is the feature of the camera that allows you to capture a scene and show close up detail without physically having to stand close to it. 
b. Digital Zoom - While using digital zoom, we normally reduce the quality of the image from the original resolution. This may be a problem if your camera is a low resolution camera say only 3MP a 3X digital zoom will reduce the image quality by three times to 1MP, which will not be good at print and only could be shared on web. 


4. Flash Memory Sticks or Cards One of the nicest features of digital cameras is that no film is required for taking snaps. Because a digicam captures light with a chip the image is stored in digital form as a data file, just like we store data in our computer. These data cards also known as flash memory that are postage stamp sizes are detachable and reusable. XD Memory Cards and Memory Sticks are most common data cards. The type of memory used in the camera will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer based on which format / strength memory cards they provide with the camera. All formats would not be compatible with all cameras. So be careful while finalizing about your camera, understand clearly the memory card format of that camera. You can buy higher memory cards as add-ons alongwith your camera or later on. 


5. Battery – the power behind the pix Earlier we used to buy enough number of films before starting for a long journey. This is replaced by batteries now a days. And if you are using rechargeable batteries don’t forget to take extra batteries and the plug adapter as per the country you are visiting. 


6. Aesthetics, Look, Feel, Comfort Factors Take care of these small but very important factors that not become the irritation points later. a. Size of the camera b. LCD required or not (LCD cameras consume batteries at a very fast rate but assist you to see what you are capturing) and the size of LCD.


7. Price: set your budget Once you decide on features, visit different good brand stores and do a survey to get the price range. Then set your budget, fix on to a brand and buy it. 



8.  Where to Buy – Online or Local Dealer – You have two options – either go to an internet store and buy it, else buy from a local dealer near to you house or office. I will prefer to buy it from a store near to my area of work or house. But I will ensure that I buy from an authorized dealer only.



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