Choosing a Digital Camera: Making Sense of the Technobabble
If you’re like most people, you don’t know a megapixel from an f-stop, you just want a camera that works well and takes nice pictures. But the ads and websites are almost drowning you in computer jargon and mysterious numbers.
The good news is that today’s digital cameras are much better than even a couple years ago, and most cameras from reputable brands will do a decent job. So the pressure’s off; don’t worry about your decision too much. Armed with just a little understanding, you’ll be able to find a camera that fits your needs and won’t break the bank.
Here are the things you’ll want to look for, and how they’ll affect your digital camera experience:
1. Megapixels
I’m listing this one first not because it’s really the most important, but because it’s the one the camera makers harp on the most. You’re going to see a megapixel number in every camera ad and product Телевизоры цены listing, so you might as well know what it is.
In a nutshell, the number of megapixels a camera can capture describes the level of detail and sharpness you will get. A 3-megapixel camera divides a photo into three million individual dots and records the color of each one of them. A 10-megapixel camera divides it into ten million dots, so of course it is recording more details.
However, it usually stops mattering after about 6 megapixels. That’s because this is already enough resolution for photographic-quality 8×10″ prints, which are the largest that most people ever make.
Having a larger number of megapixels than that does give you some extra freedom - for instance, you can crop part of your photo away and still have enough for a large, high quality print.
But if you don’t think you’re going to be making poster-size prints, or using photo manipulation software to crop large areas out of your images before printing them, then don’t worry too much about extremely high megapixel counts.
2. Zoom
Zoom comes in two flavors - optical and digital. It’s usually expressed as a number followed by an “x”. A zoom listed as “3x”, for example, can make the subject of your photo appear three times larger. That’s a typical zoom for pocket-sized cameras, but larger digital cameras may have up to 12x or more.
Optical zoom means lenses, just like with film cameras. The size of the image is increased by moving two lenses farther apart from real estate multilist search each other in the camera. If the lenses are of good quality, then the resulting enlarged image will also be sharp and clear.
Digital zoom, on the other hand, is not so useful. Using digital zoom always decreases the quality of your image; no serious
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