For Beginners

Digital photography is a fun task for virtually everyone. You no longer have to be a professional photographer to get the best images available. Getting instant access to your photos is a whole lot better than waiting for them to be printed from film. Since there are so many digital cameras on the consumer market, choosing the best one for you may be confusing. With a little help, you'll learn how to choose the best camera for a beginner.

Some basic instructions you need to follow first :-

Step1
Decide your spending budget for a brand-new digital camera. This will help to guide you towards the perfect digital camera for your needs. Spending a large amount of money is not a necessity when purchasing a digital camera. There are plenty of budget cameras that are more than capable of taking care of your necessities. If you are not going to use your digital camera on a regular basis, then don't buy one that has an overwhelming amount of features. Sticking to the basics will keep the price lower.

Step2
Consider the size and weight of your digital camera. If you decide to snap images everywhere you travel, then choose a digital camera that is portable enough. You don't want to carry something that is oversized and bulky when traveling to multiple destinations. Having a digital camera with a longer battery life and high megapixels will also help you choose the best digital camera for your beginning stages. Despite these important features, look at the overall rating of the digital camera you are thinking of purchasing.

Step3
Calculate the camera accessories. Some digital cameras have a very low initial pricing, but it soon increases when it comes to upgrading the camera lens and other components. Before purchasing the first digital camera you come across, investigate everything. Compare pricing for the memory, batteries, charger, and the lens. This will help you to figure out if this is the best digital camera for you. Without doing your research first, you will be very disappointed with your new purchase.

Step4
Ask about the return policy. This should be the first question asked when thinking about buying a digital camera. No one wants to get stuck with a device you cannot use. If you purchase your digital camera at a discounted price, it can sometimes mean that this is a final priced item with no returns. Check all paperwork and store signs before making a final decision. Take a few test shots while you are at the store locations to find out about some of the digital camera's features.

Think Its Enough, Ummmmmm............ Not Yet, The Deal Is Not Over,

Check This Out

HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST CAMERA FOR YOU?

How Many Pixels?

Until recently the quality of digital cameras was measured by how many pixels they boasted. Now we have cameras that can produce tens of millions and it has ceased to be the only test of quality. In the real world the number of pixels you need depends on how big you want to print your pictures. If you mainly want postcard size or A5 then I would consider 6 million pixels to be perfectly adequate. Even at A4 size I would be hard pushed to tell the difference between my 6.5 million pixel camera and my 10 million pixel camera. Don't forget though that your cropping in the camera may not always be perfect so you may be enlarging only a portion of the image and so only using a portion of the available pixels.

Although an adequate number of pixels is important, the quality of your picture will be greatly affected by the quality of the lens. When Canon updated the EOS 350D (digital rebel) with 8 million pixels to the EOS 400D with 10 million pixels, the general consensus amongst reviewers seemed to be that the money you needed to spend on an upgrade would be better spent on a better quality lens. So the answer to the pixel question is that we seem to have now reached a point where enough is enough.

There is also a school of thought that we have reached the limit of the number of photo sensors that we can fit on a chip and that a greater number will cause the indivdual cells to be too small compared to the space in between them. Usually though, when someone says something like that, the following week the boffins announce a breakthrough which makes it all nonsense.
You may have seen adverts for cameras, costing many thousands, that have 16 or 20 million pixels. These have sensors that are twice the size of those in the consumer cameras, hence the price. To me, the resolution of a 8 or 10 million pixel camera with a decent lens seems good enough for most purposes and on a par with the quality I used to get from a 35mm film camera.
In the past I have spent a lot of time and money in the pursuit of ultimate quality, I have owned a 5x4inch plate camera, a Hassleblad and two Mamiya medium format cameras, every major brand of 35mm camera and in the end, I would be hard pushed to tell you which photo on the wall was taken with which camera. A fellow photographer once observed that photographers tend to smell pictures rather than look at them, by which he meant that they were more interested in the graininess and sharpness of the image than the actual content of the image itself.

Controlling the photographic exposure and rendering

Camera controls are inter-related, the total amount of light reaching the film plane (the "exposure") changes with the duration of exposure, aperture of the lens, and focal length of the lens (which changes as the lens is zoomed). Changing any of these controls alters the exposure. Many cameras may be set to adjust most or all of these controls automatically. This automatic functionality is useful in many situations, and in most situations to occasional photographers.

The duration of an exposure is referred to as shutter speed, often even in cameras that don't have a physical shutter, and is typically measured in fractions of a second. Aperture is expressed by an f-number or f-stop (derived from focal ratio), which is proportional to the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the aperture. If the f-number is decreased by a factor of \sqrt 2, the aperture diameter is increased by the same factor, and its area is increased by a factor of 2. The f-stops that might be found on a typical lens include 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, where going up "one stop" (using lower f-stop numbers) doubles the amount of light reaching the film, and stopping down one stop halves the amount of light.

Exposures can be achieved through various combinations of shutter speed and aperture. For example, f/8 at 8 ms (=1/125th of a second) and f/5.6 at 4 ms (=1/250th of a second) yield the same amount of light. The chosen combination has an impact on the final result. In addition to the subject or camera movement that might vary depending on the shutter speed, the aperture (and focal length of the lens) determine the depth of field, which refers to the range of distances from the lens that will be in focus. For example, using a long lens and a large aperture (f/2.8, for example), a subject's eyes might be in sharp focus, but not the tip of the nose. With a smaller aperture (f/22), or a shorter lens, both the subject's eyes and nose can be in focus. With very small apertures, such as pinholes, a wide range of distance can be brought into focus.

Image capture is only part of the image forming process. Regardless of material, some process must be employed to render the latent image captured by the camera into the final photographic work. This process consists of two steps, development, and printing.

During the printing process, modifications can be made to the print by several controls. Many of these controls are similar to controls during image capture, while some are exclusive to the printing process. Most controls have equivalent digital concepts, but some create different effects. For example, dodging and burning controls are different between digital and film processes. Other printing modifications include:

* Chemicals and process used during film development
* Duration of exposure — equivalent to shutter speed
* Printing aperture — equivalent to aperture, but has no effect on depth of field
* Contrast
* Dodging — reduces exposure of certain print areas, resulting in lighter areas
* Burning — increases exposure of certain areas, resulting in darker areas
* Paper quality — glossy, matte, etc
* Paper size