Three Things You Should Look For in a Digital Camera

Three features you should always look for in a Digital Camera.

Digital cameras have come a very long way since they first became commonplace in the market about 10 years ago. Now pictures taken on a good digital camera rival those of high quality film cameras and to the untrained eye, there is virtually no difference.

When choosing a digital camera, there are three things you should always look for that will make you happy with your purchase.

They are:

1. You must make sure the camera has a fine, quality lens. If the lens is bad, flawed, cheap or distorted, you will never be happy with the camera because your pictures will never be good quality.

The optics of the camera should be made of glass. Plastic lenses generally do not achieve the same quality levels as finely ground glass and plastic lens focal length can change due to temperature variations.

Also, German made lenses have a reputation for being the best in the world, but Japanese lenses now have come a long way and are almost as good or in many cases equal to the German lenses. You cannot simply rely on a brand name camera to determine if the lens is good or not, since many brand name cameras outsource their lens manufacturing to other companies for their lower end products.

2. Easy ability to download the pictures to your computer.

The camera needs to be able to provide you with a system of downloading to your computer that does not require an enormous effort. Two common systems of downloading to your computer are using a usb cable that connects directly from your camera to your computer and the ablility to remove the memory card from your camera and put it in an appropriate slot on your computer.

Both methods are simple to use, but since there are a lot of different brands of both computers and cameras, one size does not fit all. Make sure you either have the kind of memory card in the camera that fits one of your slots, or make sure you have a USB slot.

Beware of having to load all sorts of software just so you can download your pictures. This always complicates what should be a simple and quick process.

3. Make sure you are happy with the picture results when the camera is on fully automatic settings. If the camera takes good pictures when on fully automatic default settings, then you know that no matter what manual settings you chose later on you can always return to quick and fast pictures that you will be happy with.

The best way to find out is by comparing the output of the camera from several different cameras in the same price range, all using the automatic, default settings.

Posted in: Look For in a Digital