Understanding The Basics of Digital Cameras

These days, every smartphone user can take good-looking photos with just a few touchscreen presses. It’s now easier to take picture after picture without even considering how cameras work – there’s no need to know about pixels, Compact Flash, and DPI. However, if you need a camera with more flexibility, then you’re going to have to look into the digital camera market. It’s a very saturated place so take a look at our guide to the basics of digital cameras to help you decide which one’s for you.

Digital SLR v Compact

The topic of which camera is best for you normally boils down to whether you go for an SLR (single-lens reflex)or a compact. The relative merits of each can stretch into a long discussion, suffice it to say, SLRs are more expensive and a little less portable than their compact cousins but are the choice of most professional photographers. However, if you don’t see yourself entering any photography competitions, then a compact camera is a great option, especially the newer CSCs on the market.If you’re interested in finding these easy to use, but great digital camera options, you can find the perfect Panasonic camera quite easily.

Pixels

When you’re looking for a digital camera, you’ll hear a lot of talk about how many megapixels a certain camera can shoot at. But what is a pixel? If you zoom in on a photograph, you will see that it is actually made up of millions of tiny squares with different colours – these are pixels. So when a camera is billed as 14 megapixels, an image it takes will usually consist of 14 million pixels. More pixels equals a clearer image that will scale better if you are printing at bigger sizes. If you only print at 4×6 then most 5MP camera will be more than suitable for your needs. More pixels also usually means more expensive, so if you’re in the market for a top-of-the-range Buy Now Pay Later at K&CO can be a great option to keep your budget in line.

Zoom

Unless you’re going for an old, second-hand model, any camera you buy will have digital or optical zoom. The most important thing to consider here is that digital zoom results in a significant loss of quality. The process it uses is similar to cropping a photo in an image editing program. With optical zoom, image quality remains high.

Memory

The type of memory your camera takes is not something to worry about too much, unless you anticipate taking hundreds of photos at once. If you have a reasonably sized memory card, you can re-use it again and again; so the cost of the media isn’t going to matter too much. Most cameras take SD (or microSD) cards or CF (Compact Flash) cards and there’s not a great difference between the two when it comes to performance.

White Balance

White balance is the digital equivalent of shooting with different film depending on the lighting; and makes sure that the white in your pictures always looks white, not yellow or blue. When there were just film cameras, you would buy “daylight balanced film” for taking pictures outdoors and tungsten film for shooting indoors. Now you have the option to change the settings depending on whether you’re shooting in sunlight, shade, fluorescent light, and so on.