Digital Cameras - The Tough Decision. Review on Buying a Digital Camera

Lately I decided to get myself a digital camera and you know what I came up with.. A whole lot of options to choose from. So I thought why not share some of the info that I stumbled upon with my fellow mouthshut folks.. So here it is..

First of all you have to understand what kind of photographer are you. The species can be broadly classified into 3

1) the anytime casual photographer who wants to carry around the camera all the time or the one who doesnt want the camera to be a liability when going for a picnic. ie he just wants to take pictures. you just know what you want to shoot but not how it should look

2)the trying to be a serious photographer who has a fair enough idea about what all things should be in a frame, where all it should be and how should it look. he is ready to take pains to carry around a heavier camera weighing around 0.5 Kg and the additional accesories like lenses, adaptors, filters etc along with him when he's out on the prowl. but this fellow isn't sure whether he wil be able to get a fair enough income from the photographs that he takes.

how u can make money using a camera? I guess u all know so leave it

3)the established photographer who goes to the extend of ignoring a chance to dine with a sweet lady so that he can capture the moment he has been waiting for 2 years now.

Now the question is who are you?.. The first 2 categories are the ones who usually fall into a dilemma and I just fall into the 2nd one. So I thought I might be of some help if I share some info that I picked up in the last few weeks.

Please refer to https://steves-digicams.com/digi_dictionary.html to get through the usual jargons associated with digicams.

If you are looking for a compact size camera you can chose from a range of cameras costing 5000 to 20000 Rs. It all depends on several factors like Brand, Zoom, Memory, Modes Available for shooting, Size among many others. One thing you can keep in mind is that it's best to go for brands like Nikkon, Canon or Kodak plain because they are the frontrunners in manufacturing digicams. Other makers like Sony and Olympus can also be considered with fair amount of conviction.

Try to get yourself a camera with around 5 Mega Pixels and Optical zoom of 3x. Do not waste your time over digital zoom.. it's not worth. Find if the camera has features like portrait mode, beach/snow, landscape mode, backlight mode, burst mode, night mode, timer etc. There might be settings like exposure control and whitebalance which might be useful for guys who like a little bit of manipulation of the image. A camera with most of the features above specified might cost anything around 15k as per this day. Make your choice

I had been looking for a prosumer digicam which is intended for people in the 2nd category. I made a lot of research and it seems there is an ever increasing array of cameras to chose from.

One of the criteria that I used to cut down the numbers was - how long has the particular camera series here.. Older the series was lesser I wanted to posses one. just because it runs the risk of being discontinued by the manufacturers which might lead to nonavailability of accesories and worse to find any replacement in case anything goes wrong. So 'Later the better' . Wait - don't pick up a camera just because it was premiered yesterday..

I finally shortlisted some cameras costing around 20k - 30 k and they were SONY CYBERSHOT DSC H1, NIKON COOLPIX 5400, CANON POWERSHOT S2 IS, Panasonic DMC-FZ20, Kodak EasyShare P850 and Konica minolta DIMAGE. All were 5 - 6 MP cameras with powerful optical zooms, options ranging from idiot proof mode(where all the required settings will be done by the camera's inbuilt processor) to complete manual controls to shoot the image exactly the way you want. All these models offer add on oaccesories like lens adaptor, telephoto lens,wide angle lens, lens hood, filters and tripod to be bought as separate units. Usualy the package consists of camera, case, batteries, battery charger.

I had to drop Konica and panasonic because of non availability of dealers in my town.

( - (( Bad because Panasonic was one worth a try . I dropped Nikon since it was here for some time and I dont know whether it is still in the production line or discontinued.

Comparing the remaining three ie SONY CYBERSHOT DSC H1, CANON POWERSHOT S2 IS and Kodak EasyShare P850 I found that dsc h1 offered almost all the functionalities offered by the canon powershot and that too at a lesser price a. . One of the most unfortunate thing with sony dsc h1 is that it doesnt offer a hotshoe to fit an external flash to be used in poor lighting conditions.

Now the most interesting thing is the new kid in town 'Kodak EasyShare P850' - since she have all the featuures along with RAW and TIFF support which are two uncompressed file formats used to represent images. This feature is one usually seen only in proffesional cameras costing more than 50k Rs. The normal file format JPG is a compressed format and it contains data manipulated by camera software built in by the company. The uncompressed format is the exact reproduction of the image that falls on the sensors. So Photoshop users may enjoy more while working with TIFF and RAW formats. But I have heard that these RAW and Tiff images coming out of Kodak is not that as powerful as one u find in proffesional cameas.

Another advantage - kodak p850 sports a hotshoe for holding external flash and moreover you can use any memory card available on the market. But sony has made it such a way that you have to buy the propreitary ones which right now costs 300 Rs more.

Kodak easyshare P850 has been released only january 2006 and is yet to hit the shops in our city.. It is bound to be here this week.

Let me check it out .

Now that I saw these cameras let me tell you - Sony kills you by looks.. Maybe hmm maybe I'll soon have her in my pocket.. (;-)).

PS: I have read in a review on P850 that this was the only camera that got it's software hung and needed to be restarted to get going again, among all of the cameras specified above. Maybe kodak is still working on it....