Joining the digital world.......

[jbell1981]

I will be pruchasing my first digital camera sometime before christmas and I need some advise on what to look for in a digital camera. I want a good camera that will last a while, but not break the bank. Just browsing at them at wal-mart, I realize I know nothing about what to get. How many mega-pixels? What is digital zoom? One I was looking at was 12x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom and 8 mega-pixes, but I don't know if that is good or not. Any resonably priced camera suggestions? Or what else should I look for or stay away from?

Any help for a digital impaired person would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Josh

[Steve Foss]

Hi Josh:

In reply to your question, people have written whole books!

But the short and simple version is, buy a camera with as much zoom and as many megapixels as you can. If you only want to post pics online, a low-resolution camera of 2 or 3 megapixels is fine, but if you want to make prints, either on a home printer or to take your memory card down to a photoprocessor and have prints made there (some big box stores and a lot of photo shops have gone digital-ready, and can do that) you'll want a higher megapixel count. Reason is, generally, the more megapixels, the better your large prints will be. A 5 megapixel camera can make great 5x7s and up to 8x10s. The 8 megapixel units can make nice prints up to about 12x16.

If you're not into large prints, don't spend the bucks for anything over 5 megapixels. A zoom is a good thing on any megapixel camera, because it puts you closer to the action and can get you better prints of people, because if you can stand back and use a zoom to get good closeups, they forget you're there and act more naturally.

That's the very basic of the basics. Hope it helps.

[MN Shutterbug]

Personally, I have printed some outstanding 8 X 10 photos with my Sony Mavica FD95 at just 2.1 megapixels. It has a 10X optical zoom lens so I never have to do much if any cropping. Some experts claim a minimum of 3 megs for 8 X 10 but I think that only holds true if you have to crop. Digital zoom doesn't mean diddly. Opt for the optical zoom. The lower the resolution the higher the optical zoom better be. If you have a 5 meg or higher res camera you are allowed quite a bit of cropping. Professionally you would want both of course but as a hobby, save the extra bucks. After all, how often are you going to print 11 X 14 or larger? For posting on the web a 1 megapixel is sufficient.

Mike

[jonny_redhorse]

next camera....9 megs...............blowin some pics up to 20"x30" (plus not to much loss in quality during cropping)..............8" x10's are nice but i'm lookin to make some wallhangers...lol!....jonny