Buying A Digital Camera by Yisroel Goodman

I found most of these tips in Digital Camera Magazine in an article by Arthur Bleich and have added some of my own comments.

1. Resolution For photos to display in an auction or on a website, even 640 X 480 is enough. Monitor resolution is only 72 to 96 dpi and does not require the high resolution of print photos. For family and vacation photos, 1 megapixel is a bare minimum. 2 megapixels will give you about 6 X 9 inches of printable photo, which leaves you a little room to crop and still have a good picture.

2. Features Familiar things are best. Look for the features you are already familiar with in your regular camera, such as fast start up and fast shooting and recycling time. If you have a zoom camera now, you will want an optical zoom (one with a zoom lens). Do not get a camera with just a digital zoom (where the lens doesn't zoom but the camera uses built-in software to blow up the picture). First, digital zoom is not as sharp. Second, with a digital zoom, you can't use the viewfinder and must use the LCD screen, which often doesn't work well outdoors. Don't waste money of features you don't particularly need, like time lapse, movies and sound. Don't get a camera that has only an LCD screen and no viewfinder.

3 Storage Storage should be 1) standard 2) durable 3) high capacity 4) fast. Falling into this category are smartmedia cards, compactflash cards, securedata cards, multimedia cards and maybe even compact CDs. Avoid non-standard items like Sony memory stick. They command a premium price, only work on a small range of cameras and aren't compatible with most readers you may find when vacationing. Avoid floppy disk based cameras because they violate THREE of the FOUR RULES. They are not durable. Floppies go bad at the drop of a hat. Do you want to shoot your vacation and come home to find that a sector error ruined all your photos? Floppies are not high capacity. They only hold 1.4 megabytes. A high quality photo is about a megabyte in size. How does the camera fit a few photos on to one floppy? With heavy compression. As you should be aware, the greater the compression, the lower the quality of the resulting photo. Floppies are about the slowest way to save data. In addition, floppies are much larger then smartmedia and compact flash cards. Adding the floppy drive to the camera makes it bulkier and heavier. The floppy drive often fails after about a year, a repair that can cost you $150. It seems silly to spend a significant sum on a digital camera and get a slow, bulky, error-prone camera that takes sub-quality pictures for the dubious "convenience" of using a floppy.

4 Power Make sure your camera doesn't use some non-standard battery. AA batteries are good because they are easy to find and you are best off getting high power Nimh batteries which can be recharged hundreds of times. Even the proprietary LI-Ion batteries used in many cameras (Kodak, Fuji, Toshiba, Ricoh) are easy to locate (hint: look right on this site) but make sure you have at least two and a charger. A charger that works off a car cigarette lighter is also a nice thing to have. You can also get an external power pack that resembles a beeper and hangs off your belt. It works with almost every digital camera out (and many other items such as walkmans and MP3 players), provides hours of power and can be recharged easily. Another advantage is that it makes the camera several ounces lighter because it does not need batteries.

5 Transferring Images The camera should have a USB interface and so should your computer. If your computer is a desktop and does not have USB but does run Windows 98, you can add 2 USB ports for about $30. If you don't have USB on the camera, you can buy a USB reader, a PCMCIA reader or a parallel port reader for about $25. Do NOT use the serial port because it is just way too slow.

6 Flash The proper flash plays a very important role on a digicam. I was happy with outdoor shots using the Toshiba PDR-M70 but indoor shots always seemed a little dark if the subject was not three feet in front of me. Then one of my distributors offered me a deal on the Casio QV-3000EX, a camera almost identical in specification to the M70. I noticed that it has a larger flash. Sure enough, photos taken with this camera were much brighter. The problem was they were a bit too bright and sometimes the subjects seemed pale and colors washed out if I stood too close. A harsher flash also causes more reflection and red eye. I had to back away and use the zoom lens to get the right balance. Part of the problem is that the camera adjusts focus and apeture based on the available light, while the flash is off. Then the flash fires and renders the camera's settings imperfect. Just recently I purchased the Toshiba PDR-M81. This is a 4.2 megapixel camera. Now I didn't really expect to see much of a difference in the quality of the photos taken with the M81 and the 3000EX. My first subjects were some flowers that my son was using in a science experiment. The flowers had an orange center with yellow petals. I took the same photos with both cameras set in automatic mode at the highest quality. I was surprised to find that the harsher Casio flash washed out the color so that the flowers appeared to be completely yellow. The Toshiba flash, though smaller, worked better. It fires twice. This lets the camera set the correct focus and apeture based on the light which will be available with the flash on. The photos clearly showed the yellow petals and orange center. My family stood around the PC to vote on the results and we unanimously chose the Toshiba photos. I really don't think the extra megapixels had anything to do with it. I believe it is solely the result of a better flash design. You can see some sample photos from different cameras at Photos page.

7 Printing What would be the point of getting a good digital camera and printing to a low quality printer? Epson has good photo printers starting from $100. Use good paper. Glossy photo paper is best but at about 40 cents a sheet, it can get expensive. You can also get a slightly lower grade of coated photo quality paper for about 15 cents a sheet that works nicely. You can then laminate these or put them in a clear plastic page. There are also services on the Internet which will print your digital images on Kodak paper for 49 cents or less.

1. Resolution	For photos to display in an auction or on a website, even 640 X 480 is enough. Monitor resolution is only 72 to 96 dpi and does not require the high resolution of print photos. For family and vacation photos, 1 megapixel is a bare minimum. 2 megapixels will give you about 6 X 9 inches of printable photo, which leaves you a little room to crop and still have a good picture.
2. Features	Familiar things are best. Look for the features you are already familiar with in your regular camera, such as fast start up and fast shooting and recycling time. If you have a zoom camera now, you will want an optical zoom (one with a zoom lens). Do not get a camera with just a digital zoom (where the lens doesn't zoom but the camera uses built-in software to blow up the picture). First, digital zoom is not as sharp. Second, with a digital zoom, you can't use the viewfinder and must use the LCD screen, which often doesn't work well outdoors. Don't waste money of features you don't particularly need, like time lapse, movies and sound. Don't get a camera that has only an LCD screen and no viewfinder.
3 Storage	Storage should be 1) standard 2) durable 3) high capacity 4) fast. Falling into this category are smartmedia cards, compactflash cards, securedata cards, multimedia cards and maybe even compact CDs. Avoid non-standard items like Sony memory stick. They command a premium price, only work on a small range of cameras and aren't compatible with most readers you may find when vacationing. Avoid floppy disk based cameras because they violate THREE of the FOUR RULES. They are not durable. Floppies go bad at the drop of a hat. Do you want to shoot your vacation and come home to find that a sector error ruined all your photos? Floppies are not high capacity. They only hold 1.4 megabytes. A high quality photo is about a megabyte in size. How does the camera fit a few photos on to one floppy? With heavy compression. As you should be aware, the greater the compression, the lower the quality of the resulting photo. Floppies are about the slowest way to save data. In addition, floppies are much larger then smartmedia and compact flash cards. Adding the floppy drive to the camera makes it bulkier and heavier. The floppy drive often fails after about a year, a repair that can cost you $150. It seems silly to spend a significant sum on a digital camera and get a slow, bulky, error-prone camera that takes sub-quality pictures for the dubious "convenience" of using a floppy.
4 Power	Make sure your camera doesn't use some non-standard battery. AA batteries are good because they are easy to find and you are best off getting high power Nimh batteries which can be recharged hundreds of times. Even the proprietary LI-Ion batteries used in many cameras (Kodak, Fuji, Toshiba, Ricoh) are easy to locate (hint: look right on this site) but make sure you have at least two and a charger. A charger that works off a car cigarette lighter is also a nice thing to have. You can also get an external power pack that resembles a beeper and hangs off your belt. It works with almost every digital camera out (and many other items such as walkmans and MP3 players), provides hours of power and can be recharged easily. Another advantage is that it makes the camera several ounces lighter because it does not need batteries.
5 Transferring Images	The camera should have a USB interface and so should your computer. If your computer is a desktop and does not have USB but does run Windows 98, you can add 2 USB ports for about $30. If you don't have USB on the camera, you can buy a USB reader, a PCMCIA reader or a parallel port reader for about $25. Do NOT use the serial port because it is just way too slow.
6 Flash	The proper flash plays a very important role on a digicam. I was happy with outdoor shots using the Toshiba PDR-M70 but indoor shots always seemed a little dark if the subject was not three feet in front of me. Then one of my distributors offered me a deal on the Casio QV-3000EX, a camera almost identical in specification to the M70. I noticed that it has a larger flash. Sure enough, photos taken with this camera were much brighter. The problem was they were a bit too bright and sometimes the subjects seemed pale and colors washed out if I stood too close. A harsher flash also causes more reflection and red eye. I had to back away and use the zoom lens to get the right balance. Part of the problem is that the camera adjusts focus and apeture based on the available light, while the flash is off. Then the flash fires and renders the camera's settings imperfect. Just recently I purchased the Toshiba PDR-M81. This is a 4.2 megapixel camera. Now I didn't really expect to see much of a difference in the quality of the photos taken with the M81 and the 3000EX. My first subjects were some flowers that my son was using in a science experiment. The flowers had an orange center with yellow petals. I took the same photos with both cameras set in automatic mode at the highest quality. I was surprised to find that the harsher Casio flash washed out the color so that the flowers appeared to be completely yellow. The Toshiba flash, though smaller, worked better. It fires twice. This lets the camera set the correct focus and apeture based on the light which will be available with the flash on. The photos clearly showed the yellow petals and orange center. My family stood around the PC to vote on the results and we unanimously chose the Toshiba photos. I really don't think the extra megapixels had anything to do with it. I believe it is solely the result of a better flash design. You can see some sample photos from different cameras at Photos page.
7 Printing	What would be the point of getting a good digital camera and printing to a low quality printer? Epson has good photo printers starting from $100. Use good paper. Glossy photo paper is best but at about 40 cents a sheet, it can get expensive. You can also get a slightly lower grade of coated photo quality paper for about 15 cents a sheet that works nicely. You can then laminate these or put them in a clear plastic page. There are also services on the Internet which will print your digital images on Kodak paper for 49 cents or less.