What you really need in a digital camera

[JDArt]

Forget megapixels. Forget digital zoom. These are the features that sell digital cameras. But they're not the features that really matter when it comes to taking better pictures. A good photographer can take a three megapixel camera from five years ago and produce pictures that are better than those from the latest eight megapixel wonder - if the camera has what he or she really needs to capture the moment.

--- Fast shutter response

What good is an 8 megapixel digital camera if it requires you to wait three seconds in between pictures? That's exactly the situation that many new digital camera owners find themselves in.

Don't make the same mistake. When you're shopping for a digital camera, see if you can find the specification for how long a digital camera must wait before firing a second or third shot. Typically, the statistic is listed under "shutter lag."

Look for a shutter lag of less than a second. Think about it. Your subject will almost always smile just the right way after you snap a picture. You want to be ready to take the next picture almost immediately. And for capturing fast action, including children playing or dogs running, little or no shutter lag is paramount.

If you can't find the specification for shutter lag - manufacturers often conveniently leaves out this figure - try the camera out, specifically looking for this characteristic.

--- Fast startup

A close second behind shutter lag is how quickly your digital camera will start up. Keeping a camera on all the time will quickly run down its battery. That's why you want a camera that can go from off to on in less than two seconds.

Some very expensive, high-resolution digital cameras take as much as 5 to 10 seconds to start up. Pass those units by.

--- Manual controls

If you're new to digital photography or to photography in general, you won't be for long. All digital cameras have a completely automatic mode so that just about anyone can take a properly exposed photograph. What you want is a digital camera that offers manual control over aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance.

You may not know an aperture from an appendectomy right now. But you will some day. And your ability to control aperture and other manual controls will allow you to get creative with your photography - taking a portrait with the background nicely out of focus, for example, or stopping a fast action sports scene in its tracks.

--- Fast autofocus

Your digital camera's autofocus should never leave you tapping your foot in anticipation. Yet many high-megapixel digital cameras on the market today take too long to snap into focus.

Almost every camera on the market will take longer to lock focus when light levels are low. But in good light, your digital camera should focus almost instantaneously. Anything less, and you'll miss lots of good photographs - and cause plenty of human subjects to lose their patience waiting for you to take their picture.

--- TTL

TTL, short for "through the lens" composition, is a standard feature of any decent old film camera. With TTL, when you look through your camera's viewfinder, what you see there will be what you end up with in your photograph.

The viewfinders of too many of today's digital cameras offer only a "see-through" view. They do not reflect in any way what your lens will actually capture. Better digital cameras, including most interchangeable lens units, offer TTL view finding. So if you put a filter on your lens, for instance, you'll see the difference that the filter makes when you look through the viewfinder.

The rear LCDs found on many digital cameras today are no substitute for TTL. They are slow and imprecise in their depiction of your photograph.

--- Megapixels that matter

So do megapixels not matter at all? Indeed they do. The more megapixels your camera has, generally the larger your prints can be. But even three megapixel cameras are capable of supporting prints larger than a full-sized page, bigger than most people ever print.

But there's more to megapixels than how many your camera supports. It's not just the number of megapixels, but the quality of megapixels that matters. Some of the interchangeable lens digital cameras on the market may not sport as many megapixels as other models, but they can potentially take better pictures, because the quality of the megapixels on their digital sensors is higher.

When you focus on the features that matter in a digital camera, you'll end up with a better unit, one that will satisfy you as you learn and develop your skills. Look for the traits outlined here, and you're well on your way to finding a model that's good for now and the future.

[Paul Shields]

Not sure why no-one picked up on this post previously - I stumbled across it while lurking in the nether regions of the camel. I think it's an excellent summary of what to look for, and actually would have come in handy today when a colleague was asking about what he should buy. Next time I'll just refer him to this thread. Nice work.

[Kevin Barrett]

This rational thinking has got me thinking about a 1DMkIIn rather than a 5D. More responsive, better build, better focusing and not much more money.

[dmacgee]

Originally Posted by Paul

Not sure why no-one picked up on this post previously - I stumbled across it while lurking in the nether regions of the camel. I think it's an excellent summary of what to look for, and actually would have come in handy today when a colleague was asking about what he should buy. Next time I'll just refer him to this thread. Nice work.

I agree great article. I'd like to make a suggestion that a resources section get setup on the board. Only a moderator could post but it would contain valuable pieces like this one. On the regular boards this would eventually get lost amongst all the other posts.

[N467RX]

Sensor size, interchangeable lens, CFI/CFII support, aswell as FAT32 support, RAW.

[scoundrel1728]

I don't think it is necessarily possible for a single list to apply to all photographers. For example, landscape photographers would put a premium on the capability to resolve detail and on color rendition - notice, I didn't say color fidelity; film manufacturers have known for years that photographers want pleasing rather than accurate rendition of colors - but fast startup, fast shutter response, and fast autofocus would barely be on their radar screens. This would also go for studio photographers. If fast operation were a prime requisite for all photographers and all kinds of photography, large and even medium format would have become extinct long ago.

On the other hand, a sports or news photographer would want great speed of operation but might be a bit less fussy about whether the saturation was up to snuff or that the reds were going ever so slightly orange or that there is a bit of pixel noise/grain in the image.

As for TTL viewing, most cameras that a pro would even consider have that feature, be it an actual view of the image through ground glass as on a view camera, the optical reflex viewfinder from an SLR, film or otherwise, or the electronic viewfinder or LCD monitor from a compact, noninterchangeable-lens camera. However, there are exceptions such as the medium-format twin-lens reflex cameras or the auxiliary optical viewfinder on a rangefinder camera. These alternate viewfinder arrangements have their advantages over SLR viewfinders: they are a lot quieter and, because of all the mechanical hoops your SLR has to jump through to get ready to shoot and to re-ennable the viewfinder afterward, generally a lot more reliable mechanically. The SLR also imposes some real limitations on the lens design to allow mechanical clearance for the mirror, which translates into poorer optical performance than would otherwise be tolerated. The way the lens designer has capitalized on the lack of the reflex mechanism in the Sony DSC-R1 is one thing that makes this camera really interesting.

For my own list, I would like a reasonably small size so that I can have my camera with me wherever I go, together with superior low-light performance, the ability to adapt to different color balance conditions at will, good power management/battery life, low maintenance, and low incremental cost per exposure. Of course, manual control is important to a serious photographer and I wish my model were faster in starting up and storing its shots, but mine seems to be a comparatively slow-operating model. Also on my list would be a really good manual focus mechanism, especially one that operates well in low light.