Digital Camera Reviews

There’s a good chance that you either already own a digital camera, or are considering buying one at some point in the foreseeable future. Before you throw down the cash, do yourself a favour — don’t buy a point-and-shoot digital camera based only on the number of megapixels.

The megapixel arms race between camera manufacturers lent credence to the notion that more megapixels meant a better camera and better photos. It turned out to be a fabulous marketing ploy because it was a simple benchmark that any consumer could understand. But the real truth was that the megapixel count really wasn’t all that important.

I should preface the rest of the article by saying that megapixels do carry more weight with digital SLRs for a few reasons. First, the optical zoom is usually much higher and clearer, especially if you’re using a good zoom lens, and higher megapixel counts make those shots easier to crop. Second, megapixels do come in handy when you plan to crop a lot out of a wide-angle photo. And third, the high-quality JPEG and RAW file formats used in DSLRs take up a lot of space on a memory card because of all the visual information embedded in them. You can’t shoot with those settings in a point-and-shoot.

How Megapixels Work
Let’s put it in perspective. You’re likely to see no difference in quality between a typical 4 x 6 print taken from a 5-megapixel camera or an 8-megapixel camera. Actually, a solid 4 x 6 print can even be taken with a 3-megapixel camera, and it’s hard to see how its output would be improved by five more megapixels. It’s even likely that 8 x 10 images would bear no difference in image quality with either megapixel count.

Megapixels are dots of visual information that make up an image, and each number in a megapixel count translates into a million dots. So, 8-megapixels would mean eight million pixels, for example. These pixels usually expand horizontally rather than vertically when the megapixel count goes up, which means that a typical photo could get wider but not necessarily taller. One way to measure that is with a 5.1-megapixel camera as an example. It has a resolution of 2608 x 1952 whereas an 8-megapixel has a resolution of 3264 x 2448.

Not much of a difference, really. And zero difference in a 4 x 6 photo, which wouldn’t be able to fit that resolution anyway.

However, you will see a difference if you need to crop out much of the original photo because of the extra visual information. That’s not to say that you’ll have a whole lot more room to work with, but it’s enough to at least make some kind of a difference.

Lens and Sensor are the Keys
It’s the lens and the image sensor, or rather the relationship between the two that ultimately makes or breaks a digital point-and-shoot camera. The lens views the visual image and the shutter button captures it. The sensor interprets the visual information and displays it on the screen on the back of your camera.

Now, if the sensor has a hard time picking up the information, then you get images that are blurry, pixilated, noisy, overexposed or underexposed. This also has a lot to do with your habits in snapping photos. Shaky hands, which is very common, is less of an issue now that image stabilization is embedded in most cameras.

But there are times where it won’t matter. Try taking a photo in the night setting holding the camera with two hands to keep it steady. Chances are, it will come out grainy and blurry. Try it by just placing it on a flat surface and on a timer and you get a much better image without any hands holding the camera.

My point in all this is that you need to test out a camera and its features before taking the megapixels into account. You need a good lens and sensor, period. Some digicams might have a decent sensor but not a great lens, or vice versa. This is exactly why you would see some 7-megapixel cameras outperform 10-megapixel models.

Things to Look Out For
Since most retailers give you a chance to play around with a digicam in the store, here are a few things to look for when shopping for one:

1. Feel it — If it doesn’t feel right in your hands, then it’s probably not for you. Unlike a pair of shoes, a camera should feel right very quickly in your hands.
2. Startup Time — This is taken for granted, but see how long it takes to go from turning it on to snapping a photo. If it’s quick, that could be good for you in moments where you won’t be fiddling or waiting when something happens and you want to snap a quick shot.
3. Explore the Menus — Digicams have plenty of features, but what’s the use of paying more if you only have basic needs? Explore the menus and see what’s on there. Do you think you’d have a hard time getting used to how it all works? If you feel confidently that you can and you don’t struggle much with it early on, then you’re in good shape.
4. Take Test Shots — Snap away as much as you can at different settings to see what the camera can do in different conditions. Is the indoor shooting good, while the macro shooting is sub par? Does it matter to you? Take shots of people, objects and whatever else you can find around you to gauge. Zoom in on photos after capturing them to see how good they are.
5. Pick Their Brain — The next time you visit an electronics or photography store, it would probably benefit you to ask a lot of questions about the features that will actually make your pictures better, as opposed to the numbers that only make you think they do.