Beginner’s Photography part II

Choosing a Camera.

This series is based on using compact digital cameras. If you already have a camera purchased in the last eight years you need do more other than wait for part III.

Anyone setting out to buy a pocket camera today has every right to feel bewildered given the technical and marketing hype that awaits you. This guide helps you cut through the hype so that you can choose a camera that suits your needs. If you don’t even wish to cut through the hype, simply go to the end of the article for simple straightforward advice.

Why is there so much hype surrounding compact cameras?

Well one reason is it’s an extremely competitive market. Once cameras were the province of photographic companies like Nikon, Canon and Sony (Minolta) and now to a lesser extent firms like Fuji, Pentax and Olympus. However as cameras become increasingly electronic as opposed to optical, electronics giants like Panasonic, Samsung, Casio etc have not been slow to recognise a lucrative new market. Hence competition is stiff. Technical designers and especially marketing people vie with each other in creating bamboozling hype and include zillions of features in their products that you probably don’t need, so they can establish their camera as a brand leader.

One key thing to understand at the outset is that it is you, your creativity and vision that will produce great photographs – NOT your camera.

All cameras are capable of taking great photos! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Virtually any camera you buy today will do the job. I cannot remember the last time I saw a bad camera. Buy a camera from Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji, Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung or Casio and you will end up with a perfectly serviceable camera.

There are two ways to proceed:

Go to your local camera shop.
The advantage here is you can handle the camera and the store should also let you take a few photos. The ergonomics of cameras are important. How does it feel in your hand? How easy was it to take a simple photo? If it doesn’t feel right you are not going to like it. The disadvantage of buying this way is that any advice you get will most likely be highly questionable. What you will end up with is sales speak as they try to sell you stock on which they get the biggest commission.

Buy on Line
This way you don’t get to handle the product, but you end up with a bigger choice and a new boxed camera which hasn’t been mauled by shoppers and of course no sales speak.

However you might argue you know nothing about cameras and are not sure you will make the right choice.

Well you could ask a friend who is an experienced photographer. One problem here is that many amateur photographers are not actually photographers at all. They are camera bores. Instead of taking great photos, they argue endlessly on the web about who makes the best camera, shoot photos of test charts and hunt for ‘hot pixels.’ You’ve met them before in life, they are nearly all men. So if you take a friend proceed with caution.

Magazines can be a good source of information, but their advice is often not as good as it should be and in some cases it is inept.

Without doubt the best place to find advice on cameras is dpreview which can be found HERE

The site can be rather formidable and the language isn’t newcomer friendly but the buyer’s advice (go straight to the conclusion and look at the score) is the best there is.

A good practical site is run by a man called Ken Rockwell who can be found HERE

Amongst photographers he is often highly contentious due to his habit of saying how things actually are as opposed to complying with the mantra of the day; however I have followed his advice for years and have always found it extremely good.

Two pieces of marketing hype you need to look out for relate to mega pixels and zoom ranges. Both are ripe areas for marketing people, who again being mainly men are obsessed with size.

You will often be told that this camera is better than that camera because it has more megapixels.

A photograph produced by a digital camera is a collection of tiny dots. Each dot is called a pixel and the image that you see is created out of millions of pixels: hence, megapixels. The sensor, the device inside the camera that captures your photo is often described in terms of the number of pixels it can capture. Theoretically the more pixels you have the sharper your photo and the more you can blow it up. However, the sensors inside compact cameras are very tiny and there is a finite limit to the number of pixels they can accommodate usefully. This point was reached in many cameras a long time ago. The pixel capturing sites are crammed so close to each other, they can electronically interfere with each other creating noise which is counterproductive to a sharp picture. Why do manufactures do it. Simple! Accountants and marketing people usually hold sway over camera designers.

If your camera has six megapixels you will find it quite adequate.


The other thing to be cautious about is the zoom range of the lens. Again a big zoom range ie how wide a view you can capture, through to how close you can get to something certainly sounds like a good idea. (often described as 3x, 6x, 20x etc. ) However there is a problem. Zoom lenses involve a lot of optical compromises and usually the larger the zoom range the more the optical quality of your camera drops away. One of my favourite cameras that I used until relatively recently was a humble 3x zoom.

A moderate zoom range is best and the cameras are invariably cheaper. Remember unless you are photographing Bengal tigers you can always walk closer.

There are quite a few other features I could tell you about but as most modern cameras have all the essential ones, it is not worth at this point trying to confuse you further.

How much should you spend? Stay comfortably within what you can afford. Cameras are no longer lifetime investments; yours will be obsolete in five or six years even though it will still take good photos!

My advice, and here is the punch line for those who hate hype is: buy a compact camera today from Canon and or Panasonic and you will always get a good camera for your money.