Buying Your First Digital Camera

Without a good understanding of all of the different features and technologies available, it might be hard to make a good choice when buying a digital camera. You want to be able to make a purchase and feel good about it, not confused by the myriad of options.

Price

As with most purchases, the number one factor in making a decision is price. It doesn't matter if it fulfills every need if you cannot afford it.

In general, you will find that price will increase with resolution, so a 5MP camera will generally cost more than a 3MP camera. Storage and features like the ability to adjust the shutter speed comes in to play as well.

Resolution

Resolution should probably be the next deciding factor. Your photos will suffer during the printing process if you decide to skimp in this area. If you are only targeting email and your computer for viewing your photos, then it is less important, but if you plan on ever printing your pictures, realize that the higher the resolution, the better they will look when printed (and the bigger you can print them without seeing ugly dots and artifacts).

The image to the right suffers from a resolution too low for the size it needs to be displayed (or printed) at. Notice the blocky pixels.

Optical Zoom Range

Many times, you will hear about a camera's digital zoom and its optical zoom. The optical zoom is the stat you want to pay attention to because the digital zoom simply multiplies pixels, something that you could do on your computer anyway.

Digital zooming results in pixelation of the image, optical zooming does not. An example of a pixelated photo is shown above in the resolution section.

Don't forget to look for features such as the delay between shots, flash types, download options, storage capacity, camera size and weight, and manual features in Part 2.