Digital camera buying guide for beginners

There is a big variety of affordable digital cameras on the market, so picking the one that fits your needs best can be a hard choice. This guide tries to mention the most important features and spoils a big myth.

There are alot of digicams in the price range of about $80-$250, but are they worth buying? First of all most advanced cameras have alot of features you don't need for everyday photography. There is no need for a high end camera if you only need it for family photos or your holidays. Keep in mind that advanced digital cameras are often larger and require additional accessories. For home use you'll want one that easily fits in a handbag and doesn't have too many options, so you can take spontaneous photos without having to configure you camera for minutes.

In contrast to what most people think, megapixels are not really important, if you don't want to make giant posters from your pictures. Even 3 MP would be enough for an average sized photo. The quality of the photo processing chip does not depend on the megapixels. This myth was created almost a decade ago, don't let anyone fool you with just a big number.

Much more important is the zoom, since you'll want to take photos of persons that are far away, e.g. on holidays. I recommend at least 10x optical zoom, 3x-4x is not good for anything far away. Don't mix it up with digital zoom, which is worse than original optical zoom and only inflates pixels instead of zooming.

Most other features, like red eye correction, contrast correction or similar features are already the standard, almost every camera has them.

Don't buy a camera with internal memory only, since you don't want to delete pictures in order to take new ones. Memory cards or sticks can always be replaced when you run out of memory.

Sam Stark is an expert on various technology topics, he is a big fan of Samsung TVs and personally has a Canon Sx200IS camera from the powershot series.