What To Look Out For When Buying A Digital Camera, If You Are A Novice Like Me

I have been thinking of getting a replacement camera for some time now. Not easy, especially for a novice like me. I do not want to spend too much as I hardly use my first camera and am not so sure I am going to take a lot of pictures with the second one.

However, I feel a good camera should be able to capture the pictures that tell your stories, even for a novice. The picture should be your eyes to the world, even if it is blurry, and that is the phenomenon I want with my new simple point and shoot camera. Am I having my head in the clouds?

 

What You Should Consider   

What You Should Consider

• Lens Focal Length (how much you can see) the lower the better for focal length, 28mm or less, a shorter length gives you a wider angle view.

Lens Focal Length (35mm)	Terminology	Typical Photography
Less than 21 mm	Extreme Wide Angle	Architecture
21-35 mm	Wide Angle	Landscape
35-70 mm	Normal	Street & Documentary
70-135 mm	Medium Telephoto	Portraiture
135-300+ mm	Telephoto	Sports, Bird & Wildlife

Apertures (in f-numbers), or f-stops are lens openings that control volume of field. The aperture range indicates how much the lens can open up for light to pass through. E.g. going from f/4 to f/8 increases the depth of image. With aperture priority you are able to keep the foreground sharp while blurring the background, but with greater depth, both objects can be focused. Need practice though. To capture fast-moving subjects, you need the shutter priority to do that. Changing from f/4 to f/2.8 would mean halving your shutter speed from 1/125 sec to 1/250 sec. The smaller the number, the larger the lens opening.  Does your new camera have selections for aperture and shutter priority?

• ISO, or sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO number, the faster the camera sensor absorbs light, but this comes with some drawbacks, image noise or grainy images. So hopefully, the manufacturer of my new camera balances that nicely for me.

• Shutter Speed. How fast your camera starts up and shutter speed lag (the right moment for the right image needs a fast shoot or speedy multiple shots). You should check out how fast the shot is taken, using auto focus mode. You don’t want to miss that spur of the moment shot.

• Megapixels, the higher the mega pixels the higher the resolution of your pictures. This means better pictures but at larger sizes.

• Is your camera too big and heavy for your needs?    

• Is the battery rechargeable and long-lasting?

• Is the optical zoom sufficient for you? Without a higher optical zoom, you won’t be able to take that close-up shoot. It should come with an image stabilizer for a sharper image as any slight shake, and you get a blurry image. Try out the auto focus at full zoom, to check too. Preferably, it should have a manual focus for those special pictures to override the not so flexible auto focus.

• RAW mode, taking ‘raw’ data pictures, without compression. Loss-less quality shots allow you to edit them without losing quality (compressed is fine with some excellent photographers too).

• Check out the storage card format and capacity.

• Will you be taking videos? Can you zoom, or auto focus when taking videos?

• Try out camera; see how it is in low light. Does it have the flexibility of taking in low light? Larger sensors are important for capturing quality images. How does the camera perform in bright sunlight.

All in all, it would depend on your needs and budget. The higher specs may not come cheap and of course it should be a joy to use.
 

My selection for my budget of around RM800 :

Canon Powershot Elph 300 HS

Panasonic Lumix DMC FH5, FH25 or FH7

Panasonic Lumix TZ18

Sony WX9

Sony WX7 (no RAW) rrp RM899