The most important piece of equipment when it comes to taking good pictures has nothing to do with anything you can buy at a store. It’s actually your own two eyes and your brain. Being able to see what you want to take a picture in your mind is the first step to taking a great picture.
How do you distinguish the flood of technical specifications between important features, and marketing hype? Knowing what to look for and what to ignore can help ease your buying decision. And save you money.
First things first. Let me just say, that megapixels (MP) don’t mean a damn thing anymore. I know, I know. The biggest print on the digital camera ads and packaging next to the manufacturers name is the number of megapixels the camera can store. The first thing some salesman is going to tell you about, is the number of megapixels.
They were shown a dozen or so beautiful and artistic photographs. Their task was to determine which photographs were taken by some very expensive SLR cameras, and which were taken by some very inexpensive point and shoot cameras. The end result? Their success rate was about as good as if they had just randomly guessed.
In fact, cramming too many megapixels into a camera with too small an image sensor can seriously degrade your image. You end up with too much noise in your pictures. In addition, more megapixels means you need bigger memory cards, and more room on your computer to store your pictures. That’s just an added expense for you the consumer. Image sensor size (CCD) would be a better specification to judge your buying decision on, but your going to have to dig through the fine print to find that.
It doesn’t really matter. What does matter, is that you make a decision, and start taking pictures. The more pictures you take, the better your next set of pictures will be.
In the spirit of saving batteries, and keeping your costs down, make sure your camera has an optical viewfinder. That way, you don’t have to use the LCD screen all the time. Many LCD screens don’t work well outside in bright sunlight anyway. A lot of digital cameras these days (especially the least expensive) exclude the viewfinder.
Take your time looking around, and you’ll be sure to find plenty of cheap canon digital cameras. Online prices can be very competitive, but sometimes it’s nice to hold on to a camera before you buy it.
If your a little more ambitious with your photography, then start with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi SLR camera. For under $600 you’ve got plenty of room to grow. That’s it, go get one, and start taking pictures. Your not getting any younger.
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