Digital photography employs a camera just like film photography, but instead of capturing the images to film, digital media stores the photos for retrieval with a computer or for display on a television set. Some digital cameras can be connected directly to a printer device negating the need to view photos on screen. Some printers and computers accept memory cards from your camera so the pics can be printed or viewed without needing to attach the camera.

Here, we provide a few pointers on what to expect from digital cameras, photos, and why you should be interested. These are for the novice or somewhat serious amateur photographer, not the professionals out there who might use expensive digital camera equipment and lighting.

What to Buy

Digital cameras (digicams and SLRs) are available for a hundred dollars up to many thousands of dollars. For most people, the cameras that are below $1000 are the only ones to consider. At the present time, there is little to gain by spending more than that unless you're a real professional.

Shopping for digicams can be a daunting task. Many have very similar features. Some have manual exposure controls allowing more creative flexibility. Most pocket-size cameras shoot movies ... in varying file formats and resolutions. Some have optical viewfinders, while others have only the LCD screen on the back for composing your shots. Many have optical or digital image stabilization. Cameras vary in image resolution, typically measured in megapixels (five to seven megapixels seems to be the sweet spot for quality output). To help increase your knowledge before purchase, we recommend visiting camera review websites, comparing features and prices, and looking at sample photographic output. Digital Camera HQ is a highly effective resource for helping to choose the equipment that's right for you.

How They Work

Most digicams save images to a flash memory card and use compression to maximize the number of photos that can be stored on these cards. Consider how many photos can be stored without switching cards, whether it is enough, and whether you can afford additional memory cards. If you are planning a long vacation and don't expect to have access to a computer, this becomes an issue. Will you be able to take all the pictures you want without running out of memory? We don’t pretend to be experts on all the cameras available, so shop around and compare features. For instance, you may want a zoom lens but not care how the camera goes about storing images.

We highly recommend buying a camera that has an optical viewfinder. It’s very cool composing your photos with the LCD screen on the back of the camera ... until the batteries go dead on you, or you're out in bright sunshine and can't even see the screen. Digital cameras use batteries like speed boats use gasoline. With an optical viewfinder you can extend the battery life by turning off the LCD.

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