BEGINNERS GUIDE TO DIGITAL CAMERAS

Understanding Digital Cameras

By: Roberto Sedycias

Capturing beautiful moments and making them accessible quickly is no longer a rich man's forte. Most of us have access to our memorable moments in just a click away. Digital cameras save you a lot of time. Once the photo has been taken, you can just download those images in a computer and make them accessible on the net in various ways. Digital cameras record and store photographic images in digital format. Capturing pictures is usually accomplished by use of a photo sensor, using a charged couple device (CCD.) After transferring the pictures to your computer, you can edit and save them in a compact disc or hard drive.

With digital cameras you can instantly seize the picture you would love to keep forever. Delete unwanted pictures easily. No hassle of buying films. You don't have to print every picture; you have complete control of the final print after editing on computer. No worries of negatives getting spoiled or lost. You can store many images without having to change or buy films.

There are many brands of digital cameras available in the market today. These include: Sony, Canon, Olympus, Nikon, Kodak, Minolta and Fuji. These are a few famous brands worldwide. Even basic digital camera models have plenty of features, levels and menus. This makes it difficult for beginners to select the right camera meeting their needs. Digital cameras are available in all price ranges depending on the amount of features they have. Before you start comparing the features you should decide for what purpose you would like to use your digital camera. The best way to start your search is to log on to the net and visit all the sites that offer feature and price comparisons for different types and brands of digital cameras.

Almost all digital cameras today have live-preview functionality, where a screen is provided in the camera to see the preview of the image that you just clicked. The most commonly compared feature in digital cameras is the "mega pixel." This means the amount of pixels in millions. Therefore, a four mega pixel camera would have four million pixels. The other important features to compare include optical and digital zoom capacity; connectivity with other devices such as computer, printer, etc.; the internal storage space as well as compatibility with external storage devices; memory cards; batteries; and image file formats.

Many digital cameras offer connectivity through USB port, FireWire port, USB PTP mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. These days, many cameras are offering PictBridge mode that allows direct printing from the digital camera without the mediation of a computer. Though all cameras have some amount of internal memory, external memory cards are required to save more pictures. These include Micro Drives or Compact Flash memory cards that are generally used for high-end professional cameras. Memory Stick by Sony is a proprietary flash memory card. SD/MMC, Mini SD and Micro SD cards are the ones used mostly for commercial digital cameras.
If you are an amateur photographer, then you should select a camera with automatic settings and features. This will help you in getting the right pictures based on the amount of light and scenes without too much effort. But if you are looking for a professional camera then you should pick the one that allows you to select all shooting modes manually. There are many shooting modes available in the latest models of digital cameras including landscape, portrait, panorama, action settings, night mode, beach mode, snow mode, and sunset/sunrise modes.

The common formats in which you can take out the image output include JPEG, TIFF, DNG, etc. For videos, the most common formats are AVI, DV, MPEG, MOV, WMV, ASF, and MP4.

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