Digital Camera Buying Guide

Sample camera layout
Resolution
Compression
Memory and image capacity
Power source
LCD viewfinders
Lens
Focus and exposure
Flash
Display and image erase
Self-timer
Audio recording
Movie mode
Construction
TV connections
Computer connections
Price range

Note: The following article is designed to explain the key features of digital cameras to help buyers make an educated decision about which features they need.

Digital cameras have revitalized photography as a hobby. This year, over 4 million people are expected to make the switch to digital, and with good reason--digital cameras offer a host of advantages over film.

Advantages. Since digital cameras record images on reusable memory cards instead of film, there are no developing costs, so you can take as many pictures as you want and only print the ones you like. Most digital cameras feature an LCD viewscreen that lets you perfectly compose your photo and then check to make sure it came out the way you'd hoped. Because the images are stored as standard digital files, your computer becomes your darkroom, letting you crop, enlarge, and retouch your photos to perfection. To share your photos, you have numerous options. You can e-mail them to friends or post them on a photo-sharing Web site. If you want prints, you can use an online photofinisher or create them at home on a photo printer.

Identifying your needs. When shopping for a digital camera, start by identifying your needs. Will you primarily be viewing your pictures on a computer screen or do you plan to make a lot of prints? Will you be using the camera for professional graphics work? Will you want a zoom lens? Are there specific features you require, like macro ability or movie mode? Knowing what kind of photos you'll be taking most often will help you decide what resolution, storage type, power source, and other amenities you'll need. Check out the specific features below for more details.

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Sample camera layout

Common digital camera features

Resolution

Maximum resolution is one of the most important ratings of a digital camera. Digital images are made up of dots called pixels. Resolution refers to how many pixels make up a photo, and it is usually measured in the horizontal by vertical resolution, as in "1,280 x 960," or as a total, like "1.2 megapixels" (meaning 1.2 million pixels). The higher the resolution, the sharper the picture. Traditional film has a higher resolution than what digital cameras can muster--at least for now. But today's digital cameras are getting closer and closer to the extreme clarity of film.

Today's consumer digital cameras range in resolution from 640 x 480 (0.3 megapixels) to 2,048 x 1,536 (3.3 megapixels). Common digital-camera resolutions include 2,048 x 1,536 (3 megapixels), 1,600 x 1,200 (2 megapixels), 1,280 x 960 (1.3 megapixels), 1,024 x 768, and 640 x 480. The resolution you need depends on what you plan to do with your photos. If you just want to e-mail photos to your friends or put them on the Web, you'll be happy with a lower resolution like 640 x 480. If you want to print your photos, however, plan on having at least 150 pixels per printed inch. If you try to print lower-resolution images at larger sizes, the results tend to look grainy, blurry, or blocky. Megapixel cameras often offer the option of taking lower-resolution photos so that you can fit more photos in the camera's memory. Use this chart as a guide to the largest prints you can expect to create:

Compression

Another factor that affects image quality is compression, the process that shrinks a photo's file size. Most cameras take photos as compressed JPEG files, which allows you to store more images on a memory card. Compression also makes it faster to save and download photos and easier to e-mail photos or download them as part of a Web site. For most uses--e-mailing photos to friends, printing out photos for albums, or posting images on the Web--compressed images are adequate. Compression causes a small amount of data loss, however; if you need the absolute best-quality images, consider buying a camera that takes uncompressed photos. You'll only be able to fit a few uncompressed images on a memory card, but you'll get the sharpest, clearest, most-detailed pictures possible.

Memory and image capacity

Memory, the equivalent of film in a conventional camera, is where pictures are stored as you take them. A camera's memory size will determine how many images you can store. If you anticipate downloading your images often, buying a camera with a large amount of memory isn't as important. But if you plan on taking many pictures without having access to your computer for downloading, you should buy a camera with a lot of included or expandable memory--or plan to buy an extra memory card.

Cameras with internal memory store their images in a nonremovable memory chip embedded within the camera. However, most consumer cameras use external memory--a memory card (CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and Memory Stick are all common types) or even a floppy disk--that you can remove when it's full. You can increase the number of photos you can take by buying additional external memory. Most digital cameras ship with enough memory to take from 12 to 36 shots at full resolution--about the same as one roll of film for a traditional camera.

Power source

Digital cameras use significantly more power than traditional cameras. While typical cameras usually need their batteries replaced every 15 rolls of film or so, you might find your digital camera running out of batteries before you've filled its memory, especially if you use the LCD all the time. Digital cameras use either a rechargeable battery pack or traditional batteries; some come with an AC adapter as well. Consider buying an extra battery pack or investing in rechargeable AAs, and always have extras on hand. Battery life has improved since the early days of digital photography, but limited battery life is still one of the biggest problems with digital cameras.

LCD viewfinders

Most digital cameras come with at least an optical viewfinder--the kind you look through on traditional film cameras--but many digital cameras also come with an LCD screen built into the back, which you can use as a viewfinder as well. The LCD screen is especially useful because you can see what your picture will look like before you take it. It also allows you to look at the photos you've already taken. As mentioned above, using the LCD screen is a significant battery drain, so if you use it often, have extra batteries on hand.

Lens

The length of a camera's lens determines how much of a scene will fit in a picture. Lens lengths vary between wide-angle (used for landscapes and shots in which you want to include as much as possible) and telephoto (used for close-ups and to zoom in on faraway objects). "Normal" lenses, about 50mm on traditional cameras, most closely approximate what your eye sees; anything shorter than 50mm is considered wide-angle, while anything longer is usually considered telephoto.

The image sensor in digital cameras is smaller than the surface of a 35mm negative, so lenses on digital cameras tend to be much shorter than on traditional cameras. Look for the "35mm equivalent" rating to get a better idea of your camera's range. Most fixed-length lenses on digital cameras fall somewhere between wide-angle and normal focal length. Many digital cameras now offer zoom lenses, which take you from wide-angle to telephoto. In addition to this optical zoom capability, some cameras provide digital zoom, which is nothing more than software in the camera that crops the edges off of your image and blows up the remaining information to the size of the original. While digital zoom adds extra close-up power, this comes at the expense of resolution. Some cameras also have macro capability, which lets you focus very close and take pictures of small objects--useful for taking photos of flowers, jewelry, etc.

Focus and exposure

Fixed-focus digital cameras have a nonmoving lens that is preset to focus at a certain range. Higher-end digital cameras usually have autofocus instead, which automatically focuses the camera at your subject's distance.

Most cameras automatically determine the correct exposure for the lighting conditions. Sometimes, however, the scene will appear too dark or too washed-out. In these cases, it's handy to have a digital camera that offers manual exposure compensation, allowing you to set the exposure a few stops brighter or darker. A digital camera's ISO-equivalent rating lets you know how light sensitive it is; a camera rated ISO 100, for example, has about the same light sensitivity as a traditional film camera loaded with ISO 100 film. Higher ISO ratings mean the camera is more sensitive to light and can take pictures in darker settings.

Digital cameras work just like traditional cameras when it comes to aperture: the maximum aperture rating of a camera lets you know how much light it can let in. Aperture ratings represent ratios; the lower the aperture rating, the more light sensitive the camera is and the better it can take photos in low light.

Flash

Most digital cameras come with a built-in flash. Basic flash modes should include automatic (senses when to use the flash according to lighting conditions), on (for all photos), and off. Some cameras include additional features, such as red-eye reduction or night portrait mode. Red-eye reduction is ideal for photographing people or animals--it fires a series of short flashes before the final flash and exposure, making your subjects' pupils contract and preventing them from having glowing red eyes in the final photo. Night portrait mode sets your flash to go off at the beginning or end of a long exposure, letting you take portraits set against a night scene, such as a cityscape. However, you should find something steady to set the camera on; the long exposure needed for low light will turn any shake of the camera into a blurry spot in your image.

Display and image erase

If your digital camera has an LCD screen on the back, you'll be able to view images stored in memory. Some cameras even let you display pictures on the LCD screen in thumbnail format, usually 9 or 12 to a screen. Most cameras also let you select pictures to erase; this handy feature gives you the chance to edit out the photos you don't want in order to free up memory.

Self-timer

A self-timer sets your digital camera for a delayed exposure, usually giving you about 10 seconds before it takes the picture. This feature is useful for getting yourself in the photo and can also be used to take low-light photos, preventing the camera shake caused by pushing the exposure button.

Audio recording

A few digital cameras have the ability to record a few seconds of audio with each shot, letting you add a personal sound bite to your photos. This feature tends to eat up battery power rather quickly, so if you use it often, be prepared with extra batteries.

Movie mode

Many digital cameras now include movie mode, a feature that lets you take short film clips with your camera. To keep from instantly filling your memory card and overwhelming the camera's processor, the movie's resolution is usually much lower than the camera's maximum resolution, and the total length is typically limited to 10 to 90 seconds. It won't replace your camcorder, but it's a fun additional feature.

Construction

The first digital cameras were heavy, clunky boxes that could hardly be called stylish. But today's digital cameras are on a par with the sleek, lightweight form of traditional point-and-shoots, and many feature stainless-steel casings for added durability.

TV connections

Some digital cameras include a video-out function that gives you the option to hook them up to a TV to display your pictures. With this feature, you can also record your pictures onto a VHS tape.

Computer connections

Most high-end cameras have software and connections for both Mac and PC computers, but make sure the digital camera you want is compatible with your platform before you buy it. All consumer digital cameras come with the software you need to download your pictures onto a computer. Most also include image-editing software--which lets you crop, adjust, or add special effects to your photos--and the cables and/or cards you need to connect to your computer. Connecting and downloading pictures from a digital camera is easier than you might think; the software and cables are straightforward to install and use.

Digital cameras can use a variety of different interfaces. Most use a serial or USB interface, which plugs into a port on the back of your computer. Others come with a PCMCIA interface, which can be inserted directly into a notebook computer. Certain cameras use 3.5-inch floppy disks as memory or provide a floppy-drive adapter for the memory cards.

Once you've downloaded and edited your images, most e-mail programs will let you attach them to messages. You can also upload them to your Web site or copy them onto floppy disk or CD-R to give to your friends and family. Some color printers have slots that accept your camera's memory card and let you directly print your photos; otherwise, you can use the printer hooked up to your computer. One of the advantages of using a digital camera is that you can make copies of your photos whenever you want, without having to hunt through negatives and send them out for processing at a lab. You can also make calendars, greeting cards, collages, and enlargements easily and inexpensively at home.

Price range

The first digital cameras were meant for professionals and cost more than $10,000. Current technology makes it possible for manufacturers to offer high-resolution, full-featured digital cameras at a price many consumers can afford. Today's digital cameras run anywhere from $200 to $1,000, depending on resolution and features. While the initial expense of a digital camera is still higher than a traditional point-and-shoot, you may find that the added convenience and savings in film and processing costs are worth it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_2156292_1/002-7722076-6439236?ie=UTF8&docId=554&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=06VT8Y3WDD5AEXE9CTCC&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=197423601&pf_rd_i=554#Samplecameralayout

Best Digital Cameras:

Review on What to Look For in a Digital Camera

Are you considering a digital camera but are not sure if the time has come? Have you already gone digital are looking for the Best Digital Cameras and Reviews on them?

The following article will help. But before we begine, also be aware of our digital camera calculators - they make the job of finding the best digital cameras easy and fun. You can also visit our digital camera comparison charts to search and view cameras by price, brand, or features. Now on to the good stuff!

If you are looking for the best digital cameras - or trying to see if you are ready for digital - first ask yourself a few questions. The following questions and subsequent pages will act as your very own digital camera buyers guide. With it, you will find your way through the labyrinth of decisions necessary in selecting the camera that's right for you.

The First Big Question - To Digital or Not To Digital

The Canon 10D Digital SLR Camera

You have to first ask yourself how important time is in your imaging endeavors. If you highly value the time and money involved in film and developing, you will certainly benefit from a digital camera.

If, on the other hand, you simply want to get images into your computer for various reasons, and especially if you want to print big images, you may be happier using a film or flatbed scanner rather than a camera.

The reason is simple: a camera is like a scanner except that it only has a split second to get all the information. A scanner, on the other hand, usually has a minute or more to soak in the information needed to make a high quality, large print. A digital camera is like a scanner on the go; its value lies in its instantaneous capture, the money saved on film and developing, and its ease of use.

The Next Big Questions for Finding the Best Digital Camera

The Nikon Coolpix 5700 Digital Camera

Okay, you've made it this far... you are definitely interested in buying a digital camera. The next step is to figure out which digital camera will best meet your needs. The following questions will help you get a better idea of which digital camera will be best for you:

• What are you looking to accomplish? What are your goals? Do you want to simply document the life and times of your family, for example, or do you fancy yourself become a digital artist?
• Do you want to print your images? In large sizes? (Look for high resolution)
• If you are going to print, what kind of output device (i.e. printer) will you be using and what are its resolution requirements? (Again, look for resolution)
• Do you only see yourself publishing your images on the Web or emailing them to friends? (You don't need much resolution - don't worry about it)
• Will you be taking this digital camera to Europe or around the world? (Look for lots of storage)
• Do you own a laptop? (Look for a CompactFlash or other PCMCIA storage device)
• As taught in our Top Ten Tips, the cardinal rule in photography is to move in close to your subject. Will you always able to get very close to your subject? (If not, be sure to get a digital camera with a good telephoto zoom lens)
• Will you be taking pictures of small items like stamps, coins, bugs, flowers, etc? (Look for a digital camera with a macro feature)
• Do you already own Photoshop or Photoshop Elements? (Then you might want to just get a camera with a Photoshop plug-in)
• Do you prefer shooting digital photos over reworking them on the computer? (Then you might want to go for a camera with a popular, easy-to-use software program)
• Do you foresee yourself shooting at night, at concerts, indoors, or in other low-light situations? (Then get a camera with flexible over sensitivity or ISO equivalents)
• Do you foresee yourself shooting sports, fashion, or anything else that moves quick? (Then get a camera with a fast burst rate)
• Do you want to make sure that the money you save on film and developing doesn't just end up getting spent on batteries? (Then you might want to get a camera with rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries or some such similar set-up)
• How much money do you have to spend? (Look for a bank that will refinance your home...)

http://www.betterphoto.com/digital/buying-best-digital-cameras/01-intro.asp

New digital camera? Know how, where you can use it

Digital cameras were one of the hot gifts these holidays — the first one for some people, an upgrade for others. Cell-phone cameras are everywhere too, and sites like Flickr and Buzznet — not to mention photoblogs — make it easy for anyone to share the zillions of photos they're taking.

With all these cameras snapping around us, I started to wonder about the laws regarding using them. Where can you shoot? What can you shoot?

A blogger I know shot a picture in an office building. One of the tenants had boxes of medical records sitting around in an unlocked office, visible from the hall. He published a picture of the boxes, which started a little brouhaha: He didn't have permission from the building's landlord, someone said, so he wasn't allowed to take or publish the photos.

That turns out not to be the case.

What I discovered is that a lot of people have ideas — often very clear ones — of what is legal and what isn't, based on anything from common sense to wishful thinking to "I always heard…"

Trouble is, they aren't always right. If you've got a digital camera and like to shoot in public, it pays to know the real deal.

So I went looking for it. I checked with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and found its Photographers' Guide to Privacy.

The Missouri Bar has a terrific Journalists' Right of Privacy Primer by attorney Mark Sableman.

Bert P. Krages, an attorney in Portland, Ore., and author of the Legal Handbook for Photographers, has a short but excellent PDF document called The Photographer's Right.

I also had e-mail conversations with both Mssrs. Sableman and Krages (who were both careful to point out that they were only speaking in general terms, and not offering legal advice).

Finally, I got some background from the American Law Institute's A Concise Restatement of Torts on the Harvard Law website.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer; in this case I'm a researcher. But lemme tell you: All these sources jibed, which I take to be a good sign. Just don't take this as legal advice; it's one columnist's researched understanding of the law.

If you can see it, you can shoot it

Let's get the easy stuff out of the way. Aside from sensitive government buildings (e.g., military bases), if you're on public property you can photograph anything you like, including private property. There are some limits — using a zoom lens to shoot someone who has a reasonable expectation of privacy isn't covered — but no one can come charging out of a business and tell you not to take photos of the building, period.

Further, they cannot demand your camera or your digital media or film. Well, they can demand it, but you are under no obligation to give it to them. In fact, only an officer of the law or court can take it from you, and then only with a court order. And if they try or threaten you? They can be charged with theft or coercion, and you may even have civil recourse. Cool. (For details, see "The Photographer's Right.")

It gets better.

You can take photos any place that's open to the public, whether or not it's private property. A mall, for example, is open to the public. So are most office buildings (at least the lobbies). You don't need permission; if you have permission to enter, you have permission to shoot.

In fact, there are very few limits to what you're allowed to photograph. Separately, there are few limits to what you're allowed to publish. And the fact that they're separate issues — shooting and publishing — is important. We'll get to that in a moment.

You can take any photo that does not intrude upon or invade the privacy of a person, if that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Someone walking in a mall or on the street? Fair game. Someone standing in a corner, looking at his new Prozac prescription? No. Using a long lens to shoot someone in an apartment? No.

Note that the limits have nothing to do with where you are when you take the shots; it's all about the subject's expectation of privacy. You can be on private property (a mall or office-building lobby), or even be trespassing and still legally take pictures. Whether you can be someplace and whether you can take pictures are two completely separate issues.

Chances are you can publish it

Publishing photos has some different restraints, although they're civil, not criminal. Break one of these "rules" and, while you won't go to jail, you could find yourself on the short end of a lawsuit. (Although, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, "the subject's remedy usually will not include the ability to bar the publication of the picture.")

Revealing private facts about someone is a no-no. As the American Law Institute put it, "One who gives publicity to a matter concerning the private life of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the matter publicized is of a kind that A) would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and B) is not of legitimate concern to the public."

Here the private property issue comes a bit more into play. Publishing a recognizable photo of someone at an AA meeting could be a problem, even if that meeting is open to the public. (An elected official, perhaps, but not of Joe Citizen.)

You also can find yourself in civil court if you publish a shot that places a person in a false light. That might be more of an issue with the caption than with the photo; running a shot of the mayor and his daughter labeled "Mayor meets with porn star" could land you in hot water. (Assuming his daughter isn't a porn star.)

Finally, you can't use someone's likeness for a purely commercial purpose — using a photo of someone in an ad, for example. That isn't to say you can't publish a photo in a commercial environment, such as a newspaper or a blog that accepts ads. If the photo is being used in a news or artistic sense as opposed to a commercial one you're OK.

Risk factors

The fact that taking a photo and publishing it are separate things might go against some folks' common sense.

Let's say you're banned by the local mall for taking photos there, but you go back anyway and take more. Now you're trespassing. But unless the photos you take violate someone's expectation of privacy, your taking photos isn't illegal — only being there.

That said, if you're arrested and convicted, a judge might use the fact that you were taking photos to increase the penalty, but shooting on private property isn't a crime in and of itself. As one lawyer told me, "I don't see why the act of trespass would turn something that occurs during the trespass into a tort if it wasn't one already."

There are some other risks to taking and publishing 'problematic' photos. But, as you'll see, they're easy to avoid.

Trespassing is an obvious problem. If you're not supposed to be someplace — you see a sign or you're told by the property owner, for example — you can get arrested. Sure, you might be able to publish the photos you take, but Web access from jail is limited. (Trespassing is almost always a misdemeanor, by the way.)

You might be charged with your state's variation of intrusion — using technology (e.g., a long lens, hidden camera, or parabolic microphone) — to access a place where the subject has an expectation of privacy.

Beyond trespass, the major risks you run are civil, not criminal. You can lose an invasion of privacy lawsuit if your photographs reveal private facts about a person that are offensive and not newsworthy when the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Ditto if they place the person in a false light, or inappropriately use the specific person's image for commercial purposes, e.g., stating that the mayor endorses a product by publishing a photo of him using it.

All of this should be good news for amateur and professional shutterbugs. Carry your camera, shoot to your heart's content, and know your rights — and your risks.

Andrew Kantor is a technology writer, pundit, and know-it-all who covers technology for the Roanoke Times. He's also a former editor for PC Magazine and Internet World. Read more of his work at kantor.com. His column appears Fridays on USATODAY.com.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2005-12-29-camera-laws_x.htm

The Inside Picture Of A Digital Camera

Electronics greatest technological breakthrough in this modern age is the digitization of analog signals. Digital information, which is represented by 1s and 0s, is formed upon successful conversion of analog information, which is represented by a fluctuating wave. This conversion of analog to digital has made the world of science and technology make great advances into the field of computers, Internet, satellites, and space research.

On the consumer domain, the benefits of this technological breakthrough can be witnessed in consumer electronic products like TVs, computers, cameras, camcorders, CDs, DVDs, etc. Digitization gave rise to microchips, which could be programmed to perform any task. With the utilization of the microchip, the digital camera was born.

In a digital camera, the lens focuses the image, the shutter allows the entry of light reflecting from that image into the camera, for a fraction of a second, and the aperture determines the quantity of light allowed inside the camera. When the light enters the camera, it does not fall on a photographic film as it does in a conventional camera, rather it falls on an image sensor.

The image sensor is an electronic device, a semiconductor, made up of photosites that measures the light intensity. The photosite can only measure the intensity of light and cannot recognize any color. To overcome this, each photosite is covered with a color filter of red, or a green, or a blue color according to a pattern known as the Bayer pattern. Since the human eye is twice sensitive to the green color, the number of photosites having green color is twice the number of photosites having red or blue color. Millions of photosites are covered by this Bayer pattern. Each color occupies a single photosite, which is known as a pixel.

The more the number of pixels, the greater is the amount of detail that can be captured. The detail of the image is called as resolution, which is determined by the quality of the lens and the number of pixels in the image sensor. High-end digital cameras have about 12 million pixels, whereas professional digital cameras have about 20 million pixels.

The information of the pixels is recorded as electrical analog signals, is amplified, and then is fed into a converter, which converts the amplified analog signals into digital binary numbers, with respect to the color information of each pixel. These digital binary numbers are then fed into a computer chip residing inside the camera. The computer chip analyzes the digital binary numbers that have been made as per the color of individual pixels. This information is known as RAW data. For analysis, the computer chip subjects this RAW data using a technique known as demosaicing.

In this technique (demosaicing), the pixel color is determined as per the color of the neighboring pixels. For example, if a red color pixel is surrounded by blue and green pixels, then that red color pixel is treated as white color, since the color white is a combination of the colors, red, blue, and green. After demosaicing is complete, the image is further subjected to the photographer`s settings of the camera, like adjustments made for brightness, color saturation, contrast, etc.

High-end digital cameras usually do not do anything more to the image thus produced. However, professional digital cameras have a sharpening algorithm, which heighten the sharpness and clarity of the demosaiced and settings adjusted image. Professional digital cameras also have the option of saving the image in its RAW data before any demosaicing or adjustments are made by the computer chip. This is to give control to the professional photographers to make changes to the RAW data as per their own choices.

The image can be saved in an uncompressed format like TIFF or a compressed format like JPEG. Uncompressed formats preserve greater information; thus, the detail of the photograph is much more than a compressed format, where detail is less, as lesser information is stored. Hence, compressed formats are also known as lossy formats, since details are lost. An uncompressed format increases the file size, whereas a compressed format reduces the file size. Depending upon the need, the image can be saved either in an uncompressed or a compressed image format, as bits and bytes in a memory card. The stored image can be viewed on the digital camera`s display screen as a digital photo.

This digital photo can then be transferred from the digital camera to the computer`s hard disk via the serial port or USB port or FireWire port or Bluetooth wireless using Wi-Fi connectivity. RAW data and uncompressed data like TIFF take a longer time to transfer than compressed data like JPEG or GIF.

Once the data has been transferred to the computer`s hard disk, any photo editing software can manipulate and adjust it, as per the individual tastes and requirements of the photographer. The digital photo can then be printed on photographic paper, specially coated paper, or any other paper via a color inkjet or laser printer. Utilizing a plotter, it can be printed in larger sizes, in any other medium like canvas, acrylic, vinyl, etc. The digital photo can be saved on a hard disk, pen drive or a CD, for archival purposes.

With passing time, more and more features are being introduced in a digital camera. Nowadays, audio-video recording is also fused with the still image capturing capability of the digital camera, making them small camcorders (camera + recorders).

This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.

http://www.articles-hub.com/Article/159115.html

Canon PowerShot SD900 Digital Camera

The Bottom Line

The Canon PowerShot SD900 digital ELPH camera is an advanced digicam that produces amazing pictures. This is the perfect camera for someone seeking a step up from the typical point-and-shoot, featuring an impressive 10-megapixel CCD, pure titanium body and face detection technology.

Pros

• 10 megapixels
• Face-detection technology
• Made of pure titanium

Cons

• Optical zoom is just 3x
• Manual controls are limited
• More expensive than your typical point-and-shoot

Description

• Large 2.5-inch LCD display screen
• Shutter speed as fast as 1/2000th of a second.
• Continuous shooting up to 2.1 frames per second.
• Shooting modes include Portrait, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Aquarium, Underwater, Kids & Pets, Macro and Stitch Assist.

Guide Review - Canon PowerShot SD900 Digital Camera

There is very little bad to say about the Canon PowerShot SD900 digital camera. This 10-megapixel compact camera is a hard worker, and yet is still comfortable to handle and easy to use. The design is well thought-out, and the features are impressive.

Canon PowerShot SD900 and Portraits

One of the best reasons to get this camera is the ability to take dazzling pictures. The camera features the amazing face detection technology. This means that by simply depressing the button halfway, the camera will automatically focus on the nearest face.

It also performs well in low-light situations, even boasting a potential ISO 3200 if you sacrifice image size. This can be a tremendous benefit to allow shooters to avoid capturing dreaded red-eye caused by a flash. With image stabilization and a fast shutter speed, this is a great camera for capturing people in images.

The Powershot SD900 Build

This camera's titanium body not only looks slick, but is durable. You can also purchase an optional waterproof case to convert the SD900 into an underwater camera (another great application of the low-light and image stabilization capabilities).

What You Don't Get with the PowerShot SD900

While this is a wonderful and feature-rich point-and-shoot, there are certain things that must be sacrificed. Since it's compact, the optical zoom is a minimum acceptible level of 3x. While there are manual controls, they are limited and will be insufficient for the most advanced users (but they should consider getting an SLR anyway). This is also not the camera if compact and cute is your only goal, as there are others that are smaller.

Canon PowerShot SD900 in Summary

This is the highest megapixel level of a digital ELPH, and it's got some impressive features. This is the right camera for the photographer who wants to take pictures to the next level.

http://cameras.about.com/od/advancedcamerareviews/gr/canonsd900.htm

Beach Pictures - A Tutorial in Beach Photography

How to Take Great Beach Pictures

A beach close-up detail picture can look artful enough to frame, and capture the atmosphere of the beach.

Marco Recuero

Beach pictures could be the most common images captured by photographers. Beaches set the scene for family vacations, weddings and intimate getaways. There is a reason beaches are so photographed. They are beautiful. But there are many common mistakes made in beach photography. Follow this tutorial to find out how to take great beach pictures that are creative and impressive.

Cliche beach pictures

Have you noticed all beach pictures look the same? There's the standard sunset shot, or the posed family members with shadows blacking out their faces? Avoid some of those beach photography pitfalls.

Think outside the LCD box

First of all, really gaze slowly around you. Look down, look up. Are there unique details or small items you can capture? You could spend hours simply on macro beach photography, capturing seashells, crabs or small toys on the beach. How charming would a close-up of your child's sand castle be, paired next to a photo of your child at the beach?

http://cameras.about.com/od/cameratips/ss/beachpictures.htm

Digital Camera Travel Tips

Travel Photography Tips, Storage Advice and Protecting Your Camera

One of the best reasons to get a digital camera is to take it along when you travel. Here are some digital camera travel tips, including photography advice, tips on storing digital photos while traveling and how to protect your camera on the go.

Travel Photography Tips

• Take Better Vacation Photos - Each year, millions of families hit the road, airport, trains or boats for family vacations, with most bringing a digital camera along to capture the memories. And each year, common rookie photog mistakes get made. Don't let that be you.
• Shooting Great Pictures of Fall Foliage - Fall is one of the prettiest times of the year to take photos, with Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations about and the leaves showing us their magnificent shades of reds and yellows.

Storing Your Images While Traveling

• Storing Your Images While Traveling - You are on vacation, and shooting up a frenzy. The only problem. Where do you put all those pictures? A memory card can only hold so much, and your computer is at home. There are tactics for storing images while on the fly, however.
• Portable Photo Storage Devices - Portable digital photo storage devices are a wonderful way to back up and save images, especially if you're shooting pictures while traveling.

Protect Your Camera While Traveling

How to Avoid Digital Camera Theft - You've spent your hard-earned money on that cool new digital camera. You are traveling in a strange city, hoping to get great pictures for your photo album. Be sure you return home with the camera, and those pictures, intact.

Protect Your Camera from Heat, Cold and Rain - You invested hard-earned money into a digital camera. When the weather's bad, be it hot, cold or raining, you don't want your camera to be damaged.

Top Camera Bags for Point-and-Shoot Cameras - It is important to protect your digital point-and-shoot camera from LCD scratches, dings and other general abuse. A great camera bag can do that.

Top Camera Bags for Digital SLR Cameras - Digital SLR cameras are versatile and they shoot amazing pictures. They are big, though, and have detachable lenses. Finding a bag that protects and holds everything well isn't so simple.

http://cameras.about.com/od/travelphotography/a/traveltips.htm

Stop, Camera Thief!

Protect Your Digital Camera While Traveling

You've spent your hard-earned money on that cool new digital camera. You are traveling in a strange city, hoping to get great pictures for your photo album. Be sure you return home with the camera, and those pictures, intact.

I live in a city that has a very high tourist season and I see travelers daily make mistakes that probably will, one day, cost them their camera.

If you’re planning on a taking a vacation, then I’m assuming you’re planning to take your camera with you. I’m also going to go out on a limb here and assume you’re planning on bringing your camera back with you.

During my time on the French Riviera, I have seen countless cameras that are vulnerable to theft. Cafes line one side of the street where Joe Tourist is sitting sipping on his drink trying to figure out family what to see next.

Joe and his family seem to be having a good time enjoying the sights and the weather, but what Joe doesn’t know is that a thief across the street is checking out his brand new Canon 10D.

You see, Joe wasn’t really thinking about his camera when he sat down at the table. He just put the strap of his camera on the back of the chair and now his camera is dangling there like a worm waiting for the fish to come and take it. Twenty minutes later Joe and his family are getting up to leave. They’ve made their decision on what to see next. Joe reaches for his camera and grabs a nice fistful of sea air. Gone. Bye-bye, brand new camera.

Another goof I see daily is the camera dangling by the strap that’s just over the shoulder of the tourist. Now here is Joe again walking with his family with that camera dangling and a thief walking a few yards behind them watching and waiting. Then the thief begins to run towards the camera. As the thief reaches Joe, he grabs the camera without losing a step. Joe feels the tug on his arm maybe knocking him down or at least off-balance, and within seconds poor Joe is watching his camera go for a run with a total stranger and pretty sure he’s not gonna see either one again. Wave bye-bye Joe.

Both of those thefts could’ve have been avoided if Joe took a few simple precautions:

• Don’t advertise your camera. Keep your camera in a bag, preferably a plain old run of the mill one, not the one that has Nikon, Canon or Kodak plastered all over it. It's much safer for the camera anyway.
• Keep it on your body whenever possible. If it’s a book bag type you can sometimes keep it on you while you’re eating at a restaurant, or you can sit the bag down between your feet and put the chair leg through the back straps to give your bag a little more protection. (Just don't forget it when you leave!)
• Don't just leave it dangling from your neck, either. A quick cut of a knife and the strap is worthless, the camera is gone.
• Be aware of your surroundings. I always give a quick look around before I pull my camera out. Even then, I wrap the strap around my wrist a couple of times before the camera leaves my bag.
• Insure it! All the prevention in the world cannot thwart the craftiest thieves. Your homeowner's or renter's insurance probably offers "scheduled coverage" for an added fee (your insurance otherwise will not cover it once you leave your home). Travel insurance policies also provide coverage, although read the fine print first to be sure the coverage is as valuable as the camera. If you're camera is quite valuable, or you are a pro or serious amateur with a lot of equipment, check into policies specifically for cameras and photo equipment.
• Secure your images. No policy can replace those great shots of the family posing at the Grand Canyon, and imagine the expense to return later. While you are traveling, you can back up those images even without a laptop on hand. Look for hour-photo shops that will convert those images on your memory card to CD. Keep that CD somewhere safe.

Just remember you’re on a vacation trying to have some fun and enjoying the time with your family. Don’t let your vacation make a thief happy, too.

http://cameras.about.com/od/cameratips/a/theft.htm

Framed and Exposed: Buying a Digital Camera, Part 1

When buying a digital camera you're confronted with what seems like a gazillion choices -- and none of them obvious. In this first part of three columns, Ben Long spells out what you need to know when purchasing a camera. First up: price and resolution.

There's really only one critical difference between a digital camera and a film camera, and that's the fact that a digital camera has a silicon image sensor sitting on its focal plane instead of a piece of film. Sure, digital cameras can also be really weird shapes, and they have LCD screens and so on and so forth, but it's that image sensor that makes digital a dramatically different technology than analog photography. Becuase the physics of light stay the same whether you're shooting digital or film (thank god), the science of digital photography is mostly identical to the science of analog photography.

When you buy a film camera, you don't have to worry about the quality of the images it will produce because you'll select your imaging technology later when you select a film. So, when you buy a film camera you spend your time looking for features, feel, and lens availability, and only later worry about the imaging properties of a particular film. With digital, you've got to consider all of these at the same time.

In this column, we're going to begin a very detailed discussion of all of the issues and considerations you need to make when hunting for a digital camera. The good news is that nowadays, digital camera shopping is not as complicated as it used to be simply because the technology has matured to the point where there are lots of really good cameras out there. With just a little diligence, you should have no trouble finding a camera that yields very good images, delivers the features you want, and is reasonably affordable.

Before you begin shopping, though, there's one important fact that you simply have to accept: The camera you buy will be replaced by an "improved" model within a year. Of course, this is true with most things digital, and it can cause a lot of people to feel that they should wait because something better is going to come along. Years ago, when the next generation meant a step up from 1 megapixel to 2 megapixels, then next-generation envy was a reasonable concern. But these days, the next generation is not necessarily going to be dramatically improved. For the most part, new models pack changes in feature sets and body designs, and occasionally improvements in image quality. However, in something of a positive sign about the state of digital camera technology, it's important to recognize that new models sometimes yield inferior results to their predecessors.

Because of the general high quality of the current technology, it's now possible to hedge your bets against obsolescence by picking a camera that has the features you need for the type of shooting and output that you require. That way, although spiffy new features may be a nice tease, they won't necessarily be a requirement.

How Much Can You Pay?
Obviously, as with making any kind of choice, choosing a camera is a process of winnowing down the available models until you arrive at a -- hopefully -- obvious conclusion. The digital camera market is huge, with new models arriving all the time, so any step you can take to eliminate candidate cameras is a step in the right direction.

Whether you're looking for a cheapo point-and-shoot or a pro-level SLR, the first step to take, then is to come up with some idea of what you're willing to pay. Once you've come up with an amount of money that you're comfortable with, your goal is to find the best camera that you can for that price.

"Best," of course, should be defined by the particular needs of the type of shooting you do. Obviously, if you need the ability to output large, high-resolution prints then you're going to want a high-resolution camera. If you want maximum image quality and flexibility, then you're going to want a digital SLR. If maximum portability is the most important concern, then obviously a small point-and-shoot is going to be the best solution.

Delineating some broad camera parameters -- SLR, small size, high resolution, etc. -- will further slash the field of contenders.

Taking this first step not only pares down the field of cameras, it also possibly shields you from the concern about whether or not you've bought the right camera. Once you realize that "best" is not an absolute term, then you'll be less concerned about where you stand when a new camera comes out with super-resolution, or extra-tiny size. Your concern is to get the camera that will afford the type of shooting you need to do.

What Resolution Do You Need?
After zeroing in on a price range and overall idea about what type of camera you need, you've probably already eliminated a good number of candidates. The next big cut is going to be to make a resolution choice.

Digital camera vendors will try to sell you on a very simple resolution guideline: More is better. Fortunately, for reasons discussed in the last column, this isn't entirely true. Higher resolution does not necessarily yield better images, and paying for pixels you don't need is a waste of money.

Obviously, more pixels means more resolution, which should mean more detail, which should yield a better picture, but this isn't always the case because the quality of the pixels is often as important as the number of pixels. A high-resolution camera with a lousy lens is going to yield a whole bunch of really bad pixels. Consequently, it's important not to get caught up in the resolution wars that many vendors choose to fight.

Instead of simply deciding to buy the most pixels you can afford, it's much better to consider how you might be outputting your images, and select a resolution that supports that type of output. If you need to create 13-x-19-inch prints, then you'll want a high-resolution camera. But if the bulk of your work is smaller prints, or Web output, then you probably don't need to pay for extra pixels. The fact is, there's a lot you can do with just 3 or 4 megapixels.

Because larger prints are viewed from greater distances, resolution (measured in pixels per inch) goes down as you increase print size. In other words, for a 13-x-19-inch print, you can easily get away with 200 pixels per inch, because people will be viewing it from farther away than they will a 5-x-7-inch print, which will need around 300 pixels per inch.

Figure 1 shows relative print sizes, along with the camera and print resolutions that you'll need to achieve good prints at each size.

Figure 1: You can select a resolution class by trying to determine what size prints you'll most likely be making.

Higher resolutions buy you more than just bigger prints, of course. With more pixels at your disposal, you can enlarge parts of your image, and crop to create a full-size print of a smaller portion of your image. However, if your workflow is more snapshot-oriented -- take the picture and get it into production as quickly as possible -- then resizing and cropping may not be anything you'll ever do.

Of course, just because you choose a particular resolution doesn't mean you're stuck with a particular print size. With a capable image editor, you can up-sample your images a fair amount before the image visibly degrades. So you may be able to coax a larger print out of your chosen camera.

Be aware also that a difference of a single megapixel does not necessarily translate into much greater area. A 50-percent increase in the number of pixels in a camera adds only 22.5 percent more print area. That's the difference between an 8x-10-inch print and a 10-x-12-inch print -- not a tremendous increase in size. Of course, the higher resolution camera might give you better detail at the same size than the lower-resolution camera.

Perhaps the best way to decide is to figure out what print size you'll most often be outputting, and then go up one resolution class. This will give you good results at your most-used print size, with an option to print a little larger, and extra pixels for times when you want to crop and re-size.

What's next?
Making price and resolution decisions will do more to narrow the field of possible candidates than any other choice you'll make. From here, you're ready to start looking at some particular cameras and comparing their features and abilities, topics we'll be looking at in the next installment of "Framed and Exposed."

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Framed and Exposed: It's Time to Can Film

Even if you've never shot with a digital camera, it's not hard to see the advantages over shooting with film. Instant feedback, no film processing, speedy transfer to your computer for instant editing, cool new camera designs - all of these factors are obvious to even the most die-hard film fanatic. No, for years now, the biggest sticking point for those considering the switch to digital has been image quality. Can digital compare with film? Up until a couple of years ago, the answer to that question was very simple: no. But these days things are much more complicated.

So, to kick off this new column on digital photography, I'm going to address this "digital-vs.-film" question in the hopes that those of you who are still desperately clinging to that quaint, 19th-century, celluloid-based, analog imaging technology can at last put your digital camera fears to rest.

As Good as What?
As you may have already guessed, the opinion expressed herein is that digital is as good as film, but to really stand by that statement, I need to make a few clarifications. The tricky part about comparing the two is that the "film" end of the question is a little complicated.

If you're using medium-format or large-format film, a professional film lab, and a high-end $20,000 scanner run by a skilled operator, then yes, you'll be getting better results with film than you can expect from today's current crop of digital SLRs and prosumer digital cameras. (When you head into the world of high-end digital camera backs, things get more complicated, but that is a niche-ier market than we're going to deal with in this column.)

But when speaking of "film," most people are referring to shooting with a 35mm camera with a decent lens, having the film professionally processed, and then scanning the results on a reasonably priced ($500-$1,000) scanner, with the goal of outputting to a photo inkjet printer. If this sounds like you, then the time has come for you to consider the switch to digital, because affordable digital cameras can finally yield the type of quality that you're used to.

Megapixel Mythology
For years now, computer vendors have been waging a "megahertz war" -- comparing computer performance by using processor clock speed as their only metric of quality. Processor clock speed is a huge factor in a computer's performance, of course, but so are bus speed, cache configuration, video card performance, as well as many other factors.

Similarly, digital camera vendors are mired in a megapixel war that will probably never end. By focusing on the pixel dimensions of their image sensors, camera makers can wage a very simple PR battle that pits one simple number against another.

The number of pixels that your camera captures is incredibly important to overall image quality. More pixels mean potentially better detail, better sharpness, and the ability to enlarge and crop a small part of the image. But you only have to look at the latest generation of cameras to see that quality of pixels is as important than quantity.

Consider the Sony F828, one of four 8-megapixel cameras currently available. Though it has almost two million more pixels than the Canon EOS Digital Rebel (which has a 6.3 megapixel sensor) the Rebel takes much better pictures.

The Sony DCS-F828 Cyber-shot has an image sensor that measures 8.8 x 6.6 mm. This is a size that's fairly typical for consumer digital cameras. The Canon EOS Digital Rebel, by comparison, has a much larger sensor -- 22.7 x 15.1 mm, just a tad smaller than a piece of APS film -- and yet the Sony packs more pixels. Obviously, Sony is cramming in those extra two million pixels by using pixels that are smaller than the pixels that Canon is using. Unfortunately, a smaller pixel cannot gather light as effectively as a larger pixel. As such, the Sony camera has a worse signal-to-noise ratio, which results in inferior image quality.
Obviously, it is possible to build an 8-megapixel camera that is better than a 6-megapixel camera. What's important to realize is that the mere presence of extra pixels doesn't guarantee extra quality.

Through a Lens, Sharply
Many people assume that film is inherently better than digital because it must have substantially more resolution than the typical digital camera. Film does, in fact, have a lot more resolving power than a 3- or 4-megapixel camera, but resolution is not the whole story when it comes to image quality.

The best illustration of this is at the low end of the camera spectrum. I hear a lot of people say that, although they considered getting an inexpensive 3-megapixel point-and-shoot digital camera, they finally decided to go with an inexpensive point-and-shoot 35mm camera because, even though it's a cheap camera, it's film so it must have much better resolution.

What these people are ignoring is the fact that if you don't have a lens that's good enough to exploit the resolution at your disposal, then it doesn't matter how much resolution you have.

If you ever roasted ants with a magnifying glass when you were a kid (and I want it on record that I never did, though I did routinely scar and weld plastic model airplanes with a magnifying glass to make them look cooler) then you know that positioning the glass nearer or farther focused a spot of a different size. To focus light onto a piece of 35mm film, you need a pretty large spot and that means a fairly large lens. Unfortunately, the longer and wider a lens gets, the harder it is to engineer. Lens engineering becomes much more complex as a lens gets longer and wider because as you add more glass, it becomes harder to build a lens with good sharpness and few aberrations.

The image sensor in a typical point-and-shoot digital camera is substantially smaller than a piece of 35mm film. As such, digital camera lenses can be very short and narrow because they don't have to focus light onto such a large area. Consequently, it's much easier to engineer a very high-quality lens for a digital camera. In fact, even a cheap digital camera can have a very good lens -- better than what you'd find on a cheap point-and-shoot 35mm camera, and possibly better than what you're used to using on a 35mm SLR, if you've been shooting with a cheap 35mm lens.

Lens quality is so important that many people believe that there's no reason to increase resolution beyond 14 megapixels (when using a sensor that's the same size as a piece of 35mm film) because, at that resolution, we're at the limit of current lens technology. In other words, we don't currently have a lens that could resolve more detail than that, even if we had the pixels available.

Better, Smarter, Faster
This is not to say that digital cameras are perfect, or that you can stick a great lens in front of any old sensor and get a great image. A camera has to perform a lot of gnarly computation and processing to yield a good image, but this is another area that has seen a tremendous level of improvement in recent years.

With each generation, camera manufacturers improve the algorithms that calculate and tweak color, sharpening, and compression. Many vendors are now integrating these functions onto a single chip -- such as Canon's DIGIC image processing chip -- which can be migrated into an entire range of cameras, bringing high-end processing into low-end cameras.

With current technology, you can get the sharpness, detail, and color that you would expect to get from a good 35mm camera. While it's true that digital cameras are susceptible to various kinds of artifacts that film cameras are not -- JPEG compression artifacts, oversharpening artifacts, certain types of color aberrations -- these troubles are easily dealt with and don't necessarily show up in print. Balancing out these issues is the fact that good digital cameras yield much lower noise at higher ISOs than do film cameras. (Just as film can be more light sensitive, you can crank up the sensitivity of a digital camera's image sensor to make it perform better in low light. This sensitivity is measured using the same ISO system as film speed.)

Camera performance is also a critical area that has finally reached film camera standards. A few years ago, many cameras were plagued with unacceptable "shutter lag." After pressing the button, the camera would pause just long enough that it was possible to miss the moment you were trying to capture. Meanwhile, on the high end, cameras could not achieve the fast frame rates that one expects from a film camera, making them unusable for sports or nature photography.

Though some cameras still suffer from shutter lag, in general you don't have to look too hard to find a camera with speedy response. At the high end, digital SLRs can now achieve frame rate and burst sizes (the number of pictures that can be shot in one burst) that exceed what you can expect from a 35mm SLR, meaning you no longer have to sacrifice performance to achieve a digital workflow.

As resolution goes up, so does file size, and that means that film-quality digital cameras can quickly burn through storage. Fortunately, with the proliferation of digital cameras, the flash memory market has reached a critical mass that has resulted in a tremendous reduction in memory card prices.

Similarly, the camera market itself has gone through some tremendous price re-structuring. With the release of the Canon EOS Digital Rebel last year, the entry price for a high-quality digital SLR finally fell below $1,000. Nikon and other manufacturers have followed suit with their own inexpensive digital SLRs, and the rest of the market has shifted its prices so that you can now get an 8-megapixel-prosumer camera for $800.

What Comes Next
There is still plenty of room for improvement with digital cameras. Larger image sensors allow larger pixels, which yield a better signal-to-noise ratio, which results in images with better color and less noise. Hopefully, vendors will one day step out of the resolution race, and begin to engineer less expensive but larger sensors.

Image processing, light meters, autofocus mechanisms, storage media, and battery technology -- these are all subsystems that can always benefit from improvement. But when it comes to the core areas of image quality, performance, and price, there is simply no reason to wait any longer to make the switch to digital.

Over the next few installments of this column, you're going to learn the questions and issues that you need to address when choosing a camera. Along the way, you're going to learn a little more about how the guts of a digital camera work.

At that point, if you're still not convinced, then you can shut off your computer, pop your favorite 8-track into your player, sit back in your beanbag chair, and enjoy your life in the 20th century.

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/21600.html