How Will You Use the Camera?

Yes, we know most people usually consider boring stuff like budgets and price first, but if you don’t know what you’re going to be using your new camera for, how are you going to know how much to spend? First, figure out which type of shooter you are and start looking for the camera to match your wants, needs and sweaty desires.

Strictly recreational — If you’re just keen on taking snapshots of your pals to post on Facebook and or your Tumblr blog but you want better photo quality than those crappy pix you snapped with your cell phone, a basic semi-compact, point-and-shoot camera is probably good enough for you.

Freaky-styley — If you like to hit the town and want to capture paparazzi-like photos of all the celebs you rub elbows with at the club (even if they’re just your friends), a slim and sexy style camera may be the right model to slide in your back pocket.

On the road — If you’re a budding travel photographer but don’t want a big, bulky (and expensive) digital SLR to stuff in your pack, a high-end compact camera with built-in lens with a wide focal range (28-200mm is ideal) is probably worth your hard earned cash.

Play like a pro — If you’ve graduated from small, all-in-one cameras and want to start learning what it’s like to shoot like a pro, a digital SLR and an interchangeable lens (or two or three or more lenses) is what you should be aiming for.

How Much Do You Want to Spend?

Ah, the $64,000 question; though you really should be spending much less than that on your camera. (Unless you’re into 3D astrological/underwater surveillance photography.)

$80 to $100 — If have less than $100 to drop, don’t panic. You can still find some very decent, no-frills semi-compact models in that price range that are stylish enough (think camera-color options but stay away from purple) that won’t get you thrown out of your next house party. And since these are lower-priced models, they’ll have a few less pixels that you actually don’t need, since too many on a small sensor makes your photos look like ass in low light. (More about this later.)

Prime examples: Canon Powershot A495, Casio Exilim EX-Z16

$100 to $200 — If you have between $100 and $200 burning a hole in your pocket, you’re in luck. You can find some pocket-friendly ultracompact cameras with 4x+ optical zoom lenses that are fast enough for candid photography — you know, the shots that aren’t corny and posed — and capable of recording short standard definition movie clips. (Sorry, HD video is still at the higher end.) On the downside, most of cameras in this category have similar designs — a small rectangle body with a lens in the middle — so you won’t win too many style points here.

Prime examples: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP1A, Kodak EasyShare M380

$200 to $350 The sweet spot for point-and-shoots is the $200 to $300 range and if you’re flush enough with cash to hit that $350 mark, you can find a pretty sweet, feature-rich camera that’s still small enough to fit in a pocket of a coat or your jeans. There’s also a wider range of cameras in this price category and along with some severely stylish models with 5x zooms and gorgeous 3-inch LCD screens, you’ll find tough, shock-resistant rugged models that you can take underwater.

Prime examples: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX5V, Pentax Optio W90

$400 to $600 — Your options widen significantly, in more ways than one. If you like taking photos of birds or other wildlife, or if you’re just a peeping Tom, you can get a superzoom camera with a built-in lens with an insane focal length. You’ll be able to go as wide as a mountain range (24mm) and get as zoomed in as one of those giant pro lenses (400mm) you see on the sidelines of a football game. This price range can also buy you a pretty good, entry-level digital SLR with an interchangeable kit lens.

Prime examples: Panasonic LUMIX DMC-LX5, Panasonic Lumix G10

$600 to $1,000 — You can get a very solid consumer digital SLR, some of which will even let you shoot HD movie clips. If you know a little bit about taking pictures but want to get serious about photography, this is a good slot. Quality DSLRs with a mix of easy-to-use automatic functionality and more creative manual control abound from well-known photo manufacturers like Nikon, Canon, Olympus and Pentax and consumer electronics companies such as Sony. Also be on the lookout for small cameras that use interchangeable lenses but have no mirror as on DSLR. These so-called EVIL (electronic viewfinder, interchangeable lens) cameras from Sony, Samsung, Olympus, Panasonic and others offer the portability of a compact with the image quality of a DSLR.

Prime examples: Canon EOS Rebel T2i, Olympus EP2

$1,000 to $1,600 Aspiring pro shooters should expect to spend more than a grand on an advanced DSLR and a couple lenses. DSLRs in this category are tougher than their entry-level counterparts — most have rubberized grips and are gasketed and sealed to repel moisture — and are made from tough magnesium alloy to withstand unexpected drops. High-end DSLRs are also incredibly fast, capable of firing off multiframe bursts so you’ll know that at least one of your basketball photos is in focus.

Prime example: Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Which Brand Do You Want?

Unless you’re shopping for a digital SLR and already have some old compatible lenses, your brand options for cameras are wide open. In the past, the conventional wisdom was that manufacturers with a traditional photographic lineage (Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax etc.) made the best digital cameras. While this still may be true in some specific cases, such as for high-end lenses for DSLRs, it’s not true in a general sense. Manufacturers with consumer-electronics backgrounds, such as Panasonic, Sony, Samsung and others, make great digital cameras packed with cool features, such as Sweep Panorama, a function that stitches together wide-landscape photos just by pressing the shutter and sweeping the camera in front of you.

If you don’t know where to begin when it comes to brands, go to a store and lay your mitts on some of the cameras in person. Brand status means nothing if you don’t like the way a camera feels in your hand. Also, test the shutter on a camera and see how fast it takes a picture. There’s nothing worse than a slow camera with hideous shutter lag that makes you miss the shot.

How Many Megapixels Do you Need?

There’s been so much misinformation over megapixels in digital cameras in recent years, it’s no wonder everyone is still mega confused. Truth be told, if you’re just sharing your images online or making prints at up to 8.5 x 11 inches in size, you don’t need much more than six megapixels in your camera. The problem is most new compact cameras have more than double that resolution. While more pixels means you can blow your images up big and still retain detail — who doesn’t want a picture of their cat on a billboard? — the extra resolving power can spoil image quality, particularly in low light.

The problem lies in the pixels themselves; try and fit too many onto an imaging sensor the size of a pinkie nail and you’ll have some very small pixels that don’t absorb much light. The result is digital fuzz or “noise” in images you shoot in low light without a flash. Recently, some manufacturers have (mercifully) begun to dial back the pixels in their cameras. Two top-of-the-line compacts, the 10-MP Canon PowerShot G12 and 10.1-MP Nikon Coolpix P7000, have fewer pixels than their recent predecessors. Whether this is minor blip in the megapixel wars or part of a growing trend remains to be seen.

Don’t Forget Sensor Size

While megapixels are important in a digital camera, sensor size is, arguably, even more important. The larger the sensor, the larger the pixels and the less noise you’ll see when shooting in low light. Though big sensors were once the domain of digital SLRs and medium-format cameras, they’re now appearing in compacts with interchangeable lenses, such as the Sony NEX-5 and Olympus EP-2 (see our recommendations below). So remember, when it comes to digital cameras, sensor size does matter.

Other Important Features

Zoom — We touched a little bit on cameras with built-in superzoom lenses earlier but it’s good to revisit. First off, don’t be confused by zoom factors that are described as 4x, 5x or 7x on the packaging. Always look for focal length, which is rendered in terms of “35mm equivalent,” or what it would be comparable to in a 35mm film camera. Also, concentrate on optical zoom, not digital zoom, which degrades image quality.

Then ask yourself, is it more important to have a camera that can shoot wide or shoot long? If you’re into capturing landscapes, street scenes or family reunions (eek!), wide’s the way to go and you should look for a camera that has a lens that can go as wide as at least 28mm equivalent. (Though, ideally, we prefer 24mm equivalent.). If you like to photograph birds or touchdown passes, look for a long zoom that can extend optically to 200mm or even 400mm. Though superzoomers can help you get close to the action, they’re not going to produce the same razor sharpness you’d achieve with a quality interchangeable telephoto zoom on a digital SLR, just so you know.

Fast (or bright) lenses — Compact cameras with fast (also known as bright) lenses are part of growing trend in digital photography and one we wholeheartedly endorse. Along with letting you take sharper photos in low light, a camera with a fast aperture lens (one with a low f-stop number) will let you subtly blur out the background in your portraits, making that photo of your girlfriend look like it’s from a magazine spread. (She’ll like this!) Several compact cameras now have lenses with apertures of f/2.8, which is not bad, and there are even a few that are as fast as f/2.0 or even f/1.8, which is great. That’s as bright an aperture as you’ll find on pro glass for DSLRs at a fraction of the cost.

HD video — Most digital cameras have some flavor of video recording these days and more and more are featuring high-def capture. If you’re interested in shooting your next HD masterpiece with a compact camera or a DSLR, don’t get too hung up on whether its 720p or 1080p resolution: Both will look pretty damn good on YouTube or Vimeo (or up on your HDTV, for that matter.) It is worth noting that as with still capture, you can get a lot more creative shooting high-def footage with a DSLR, since fast aperture lenses will give you a variety of professional looks, including shallow depth of field.

3-D — Cameras that can capture images that can be played back in 3-D are slowly starting to enter the market. Personally, we think this technology is not quite ready for prime time — you still need to wear those dopey glasses and have a compatible TV or display — but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. Who knows, in five years it could be as standard as HD capture has become.

Authors: Dan Havlik

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