How do you know what kind of camera to buy?

Question

I want to buy myself a birthday present and i really need a new camera. the thing is i never know what's good and what's not. what should i look at when i look at cameras?

Answer 1

Well first you have to know how skilled you are with cameras, if you are really skilled , and know how the lighting works on a camera, and what all the ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and all that means, then you should get an SLR.

If you don't know much about all that, and just simply want to point and shoot a picture, then get a point and shoot.

Most people use a digital camera, film is too expensive to process, and in the long term, it is cheaper to get a digital camera radder than a film camera.

Next is knowing what you are going to do with your pictures, just look at them on the computer, or print them out, if you are printing them, then how big? The standard number of Mega Pixels a camera should have is 6MP, that gives you good 5x7 pictures, and can give you good enough 8x10 pictures. if you are only looking at them on the computer, then the standard is 4MP.

Now they usually don't sell anything lower that 6MP, if it's new, so if you want anything lower, a used camera would be a lot cheaper, and that is always better.

Now if you want the camera to do the work for you, then look for what modes the camera has, and what modes you really need! there are lots of modes, like beach mode, fireworks mode, night portrait mode, landscape mode, portrait mode, even underwater mode (although you would need an underwater casing to take those), etc.

If you buy an SLR, then you would have to buy lenses, which the full prize for a camera ends up to be at a minimum of almost $1000, if you buy cheap lenses, and cheap camera, it could be up to $600 if you are lucky!

Yes there is a lot of things to keep in mind!, I really recommend for a point and shoot camera, a canon, because the pictures turn out like an SLR camera's, and the videos it takes are really good quality!

For an SLR, I recommend a Nikon, it is really good quality, and it's not over prized like the canon SLR cameras!

Keep in mind that buying a camera also means buying a memory card, 1GB should do enough, 2GB should be more than enough!

Other than that, cameras now come with a special battery, and also comes with it's charger, so no need to buy extra batteries!

Good luck on buying a camera, the first one is always the hardest to choose!

Answer 2

The all time winner bargain compact digital camera is the Canon 7.1 megapixel PowerShot SD1000 [not the IS] 7.1 with an added 2- gig memory card which when set in the manual mode for "Vivid" colors and videos at 30 fps in 320 dpi format provides killer images and videos. It currently sells for $160 at Sears:

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605...

Good luck!