Digital cameras: what to look for

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Digital cameras are quickly coming down in price, but this does not necessarily make choosing one any easier.

This area of technology is advancing so rapidly that whatever you buy today will soon become obsolete.

For example, I'm now shopping around for my second digital camera, but I'm not expecting to trade in my present one for much.

Three years old, this camera would be virtually worthless now - even if I hadn't carelessly left it unattended in the presence of the kids one day.

However, the camera continued to serve me quite well even after it was held together with elastic bands, and the experience I gained with it should help me in my second purchase.

Apart from a sturdy case perhaps, the first thing I'll be looking at on a digital camera is its resolution.

This is a measure of how detailed the photos a camera can take, and it is usually expressed in megapixels, or the number of millions of dots in the best image produced by the camera.

Generally speaking, the higher this figure the better, but the watershed point seems to be about one megapixel.

Below this threshold, digital photos are only good for sending by e-mail or quite small prints.

If you print low-resolution photos at ordinary print size, say 10cm by 15cm or more, you will start to notice that straight edges in the subject have become jagged.

Although I managed to obtain surprisingly good results with my 1.3 megapixel camera, I will be looking for two or maybe three megapixels next time around.

A couple of years ago this sort of resolution would have been prohibitively expensive, but now we are starting to see 2 megapixel-plus cameras such as the Kodak DX3500 retail at about $1000.

Another important consideration is the lens system, especially the optical zoom. A 3 X optical zoom, which is roughly equivalent to a 35-105mm lens on a conventional camera, will greatly increase a camera's versatility but add to its price.

Some cameras - notably the Nikon Coolpix 995, retailing at about $3000 - may also be fitted with a range of interchangeable lenses for special purposes, like wide angle or close-up shots. However, ignore any digital zoom because this simply enlarges an image at the expense of the all-important resolution.

Finally, the type of the batteries used is a detail likely to be overlooked on a first purchase, but after you have spent a while using a digital camera you will realise how important this is.

Digital cameras go through juice faster than mobile phones, so a single battery such as the lithium ion type is preferable to the array of four AA batteries more common in the cheaper cameras, and it is more convenient to have a battery that can be recharged within the camera.