Tips for picking the right camera

By Nigel Atherton Editor, What Digital Camera

When looking to buy a new digital camera, you should first of all have a think about how it will be used.

Is it just for family snaps and holidays, or would you like to photograph specialist subjects such as wildlife and sports?

The ideal camera will depend on the type of pictures users will take - as will range accordingly from a small point and shoot device, to a bigger camera with manual control and the option to change the lenses.

Below are pointers on some of the main features to consider before making your purchase, with newer functions thrown in purely for fun.

Mega pixels
These are not as important as they once were. Virtually all digital cameras now have more than enough pixels for prints up to A3 size.

Sensors have reached saturation point and now, in many cases, adding more pixels actually degrades the quality. Image quality is determined more by the physical size of the sensor than the number of pixels on it. Larger sensors tend to mean larger cameras.

Lens
Do you need a big zoom lens? People are often a attracted to long zoom lenses but they tend not to use them as much as they think they might, and in fact a zoom that starts with a more wideangle field of view is probably more useful than one that extends to a more telephoto perspective.

A wideangle lets you get more in shot. Good for views, group shots, interiors. Long zooms good for candid shots of kids and animals, as well as wildlife and sports.

JARGON BUSTER Megapixel - translates as one million pixels (tiny dots of colour) and is a useful guide to a camera's ability to capture details. ISO - the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light. Memory - this is the amount of space for saving photographs on a memory card SLR - stands for 'single lens reflex' which means the image on the viewfinder is what will be captured

LCD screen
The size of the screen is only one factor to consider. Look at the brightness, colour and sharpness; the angle from which it can be viewed clearly; the quality of the anti-reflective coating.

Some cameras have touch-screens but these can sometimes be at the expense of screen quality. A few cameras are starting to introduce high-resolution LCD screens which improve viewing, both when shooting and playing back.

Viewfinder
Some people struggle with LCD screens. Long-sighted people and those with generally poor eyesight may find it difficult to see the picture clearly on the LCD, especially in bright sun. These buyers should look for a camera with a viewfinder that they can put their eye up to, whether optical or electronic based.

Image Stabilisation
Helps produce sharper pictures by reducing camera shake, especially when shooting in low light or using zoom lenses. Well worth having.

High ISO
Some cameras feature high ISO settings and modes for taking pictures in low light without flash. Very useful for those who use their camera at parties, live venues etc.

Battery Type
Cheaper cameras use AA batteries rather than rechargeable Lithium Ion types. This can be a good thing, since you can buy AAs anywhere, but it does tend to make the camera a bit bigger and heavier, and also more expensive to run unless you invest in rechargeable AAs.

Shutter lag
Some cameras take a long time to switch on, suffer a long delay between pressing the shutter and the picture taking, and then between shots (while the camera saves the previous one to memory).

Intelligent Auto
Detects the type of subject you're photographing and sets the image parameters accordingly. Works well and is better than straight point and shoot modes.

Face Detection
Not a make or break feature, and most cameras have it now anyway, but this also improves pictures of people, because if the camera sees a face in the shot, it can set the focus, exposure and colour for that face, rather than the background.

Manual Controls
The ability to override the camera if it gets things wrong, and to apply settings to obtain a desired result is a pre-requisite of more advanced camera users. With some cameras these controls may be buried in the menu, others make it easy to change settings.

• Try before you buy - qualities like the shutter lag, LCD screen quality, general handling and button placement etc can only be determined by trying the camera out in a shop. I recommend buying from a specialist camera shop, because they'll be able to offer the right advice to ensure you make a wise choice.
• Digital cameras tend to be upgraded every few months, often with only subtle changes. The outgoing models are then often discounted to clear stock. So a good money saving tip is to look out for clearance sales of the older model, or models reaching the end of their shelf life, as they tend to get cheaper as they get older.
• If you intend to get serious about photography or think you could do in future consider a DSLR (or hybrid). The much larger sensor and superior processing gives you massively better image quality, they're much faster (with little or no lag) so better for action, there's a lot more creative control over things like depth of field, the option to change lenses, add flashguns etc add to creative possibilities and also increase image quality.

The development of face detection enables a real improvement in picture quality because if the camera can see that there is a face in the shot, it can set the focus, exposure and colour for that face, rather than the background.

Smile Detection
Pioneered by Sony, the camera can recognize a smile (by the widening of the mouth - teeth not essential) and can take a picture when it sees one. More a gimmick than a genuinely useful feature.

Blink Detection
Similar, but the camera sees when the subject (or one of several subjects) has blinked and gives you a warning so you can take another shot.

Tagging
With face recognition the camera not only recognize a face but identify who it belongs to. You pre-program the names and faces of up to six friends on the camera, then when it recognizes any of them in your shots. It also prioritises them over other faces in shot and tags them so you can search and find pictures of specific people and view just the pictures of them.

Party Photographer
Sony PartyShot is an accessory onto which you attach a compatible camera, which it then takes control of. It uses motion sensors to look for people in a room and then rotates and tilts to frame them up in the frame. It then uses the camera's face detection to achieve the optimum composition and smile detection to fire the shutter at the 'optimum' time. It will keep taking pictures until the memory card fills up, the battery runs out or you turn it off.

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