Many of you will be buying a digital camera for yourself or for someone else as a holiday gift. There are many choices. Possibly too many. This mini-guide will help you sort through the muck and get the digital camera you want.
We’ll start with a few things that have nothing to do with the camera itself but rather where it’s bought.
1. The industry treats point-and-shoot cameras as disposable electronic items.
This has been going on for some time now and isn’t going to change any time soon. "Disposable" in this context refers to an electronic item that nobody would ever bother fixing when it breaks.
For example, if the clock radio on your nightstand decided to bust, chances are very likely that you’d just go out and buy another rather than fix the busted one.
Does the industry treat a $100 point-and-shoot camera the same as a $10 clock radio? Yes.
What it also means is that there is no service after the sale. Once bought, it’s yours. If it breaks, the vendor doesn’t care what happens to it.
2. Beware of restocking fees.
Restocking fees are evil; everybody knows this. If you buy a point-and-shoot camera and you or the person you gave it to doesn’t like it, you’ll want to return the item and get your money back. Brick-and-mortar retailers like Target and Wal-Mart will take items back and refund you fully with no questions asked. Online retailers usually do not. In fact, you’ll be slammed with not one but two charges. First is the restocking fee that can be as high as 15% of the original purchase price, and the cost to ship the item back to them.
If the camera you want only costs $10 more at a brick-and-mortar retailer, go there to get it instead solely for the reason that the return process is hassle-free, should you decide to return it.
3. Buy in the first or second week of December.
If you bought something – no matter the vendor – on Black Friday, that day was November 27. Thirty days from that time is December 27.
Point-and-shoot cameras usually have a 30-day return policy on them. December 27 is the last possible day you could return one if bought originally on Black Friday.
December 25 lands on a Friday this year – but you probably won’t know if somebody doesn’t want their gift until Monday the 28th. But that’s one day too late to return the item you bought on Black Friday, so now you’re stuck with it.
If you buy just a few days later during the first week of December, this will give you more time for returns, assuming you have to take anything back for a refund.
The only way around this if you bought on Black Friday is if you get word of whether someone didn’t like your gift on Saturday, December 26, because then you’ll be able to get the item, get into the store you bought it from on Sunday the 27th and get your money back.
But you know the store you bought it from will be mobbed from people trying to return stuff that Sunday. Expect it. In addition, the store will be short-staffed and the return lines really, really long.
For next year, try purchasing stuff the first or second week of December instead to give you more breathing room for returns.
Now we’ll concentrate on camera-specific stuff.
4. Don’t fear AA batteries.
Point-and-shoot cameras are powered in three different ways. The first way is the traditional AA alkaline, the second the rechargeable AA and the third the proprietary rechargeable lithium ion.
Li-ion batteries always outperform and outlast alkaline AAs. The camera bodies that use li-ions are also slimmer because the battery is physically flatter. But even with these advantages they can also prove to be decidedly inconvenient.
Inconvenience #1: When a li-ion battery dies, no more picture-taking.
At the point the li-ion is drained, you’ll have to charge it. And when it dies will follow Murphy’s Law and occur at the most inconvenient possible time.
Inconvenience #2: They cost more. A lot more.
A single li-ion for your camera, such as Li-42B, will cost at least $10 – and that doesn’t include tax or shipping.
Inconvenience #3: Li-ions are proprietary.
Your local convenience store doesn’t carry these things – but they always carry AAs.
How to determine which is the better of the two is determined by the user rather than the camera itself.
If the camera is intended for a child, AAs are better because kids always lose things. If they lost a 10-dollar li-ion battery, that wouldn’t exactly make you feel rosy. If they lost two AAs on the other hand, that’s not a big deal.
For adult users, the li-ion camera is the better choice because these users are (usually) more responsible with their electronics.
5. Point-and-shoot camera reviews by "pro" users are worthless.
If you see any review that contains something like this:
I usually use a [insert super-expensive DSLR here], and when I used this [insert point-and-shoot here], it was terrible.
That’s a worthless review because of course the guy who uses the DSLR is going to hate the point-and-shoot.
The reviews to pay attention to are by amateur users. Ones written by pros do not take into consideration the people who would actually buy the thing to begin with.
6. There is no cheap point-and-shoot that can take a good night shot, period.
A common complaint you will see in many point-and-shoot reviews is that the camera cannot shoot pictures properly at night. This is something you will see over and over again.
If you want to take good night shots, you must have a larger lens to do it with. Point-and-shoot cameras with smaller lenses simply do not perform well in low-light environments.
I’m not saying you have to go out and spend $1,000+ on a full body and lens to get a decent night shot. But if you go with, say, a FujiFilm FinePix S1500 or a Nikon CoolPix L100 (both of which have really good price points by the way), you’ll have much better luck with low-light photos because of the larger lenses on those models.
Also bear in mind there is an "art" of sorts when taking low-light photos. It’s not something you’ll be able to master overnight – even with the proper equipment.
7. Build quality matters.
One of the most important parts of any review is how well the camera was constructed, both on the outside and inside.
Cheaper point-and-shoot cameras will have a mechanical lens failure sooner than others. An example of this is the PowerShot A480. This is a low-end camera from Canon. While it’s true you save a buck by buying it, you will encounter reviews from more than just a few who say the lens mechanism jams in less than six months, rendering the camera useless and worthless.
It just goes to show that even the mighty Canon can release a stinker every now and then. Read reviews. Read a lot of them. Get informed.
8. Image stabilization matters
Part of the fun of a point-and-shoot is the ability to take photos anywhere with it in a pint-sized package. Digital image stabilization did not exist originally when digital cameras started to become the norm. It’s a technology that’s been slowly trickling its way down into the more affordable models.
What does digital image stabilization mean in plain English? It means that you don’t have to hold the camera perfectly still to get a good shot. It also means you can increase the exposure time (within reason) without blurring the shot.
This is a feature you should specifically seek out.
9. Beware of proprietary USB ports and cables
Sony and Olympus in particular were notorious for this – and possibly still are.
A point-and-shoot should always have a standard mini-USB port on it so you can easily transfer photos from the camera’s card to your computer. Some have a port that looks like a standard mini-USB but it isn’t, and also requires a special cable just to use the port. The camera will come provided with said cable, but if you lose it, your only option is to buy another cable or utilize a USB-based card reader for the camera’s memory card.
10. It’s not all about the megapixels.
The megapixel rating of a camera goes all over the place with point-and-shoots. It can be as low as 5 and high as 15.9.
The range you’ll encounter most at the time of this writing is between 9 and 12.
There are three unofficial rules when it comes to megapixels.
1. Higher megapixels is not indicative of a better quality camera.
There are 12 MP digital cameras that are $60 and ones that are $500+, so you can throw that "high megapixels means good" notion right out the window.
2. When you get down to the decimal level, you probably won’t notice the difference.
Two cameras are roughly the same price. One has 12.4 MP and the other 12.7. Will the picture quality be better on the 12.7?
Unlikely.
Both would probably have a final image resolution of 4000×3000, so your images won’t be any larger. In fact, the 12.7 MP camera probably has less features than the 12.4 does. You have to closely read the specs between models to decide which to go for. Base your buying decision on other features in this instance.
3. Megapixels mean nothing without proper features to take advantage of them.
If given the choice between a 9 MP digital camera with digital image stabilization and a 12 MP without it, I’d take the 9 any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Sure, with the 12 MP I have more megapixels, but then my photos will come out blurry so what I have is really-high-resolution blur. No thanks. I’ll stick with the lower MP’d camera.
Some other things to bear in mind/check out
Does brand matter?
Not particularly, because there will always be people that state that the brand they use is the best.
I personally believe Olympus has the best lenses on entry level point-and-shoots, but then there are Panasonic Lumix users who would disagree with me, along with the Nikon, Canon and other users of different brands and models.
Where’s a good place to see what people are using?
The best place hands down is Flickr’s Camera Finder. They list many, many brands that people are using – and you can see the kinds of photos you can take with them. This is far better than any review you could ever read, because it’s like they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words.
It is unlikely you’ll see brand new models listed, but, you can see a similar model just one generation behind it. This will give you a good starting point of what to expect with the newer model.
Where’s the best place to price compare?
I like BizRate personally, but what say you? Where do you price compared digital cameras?
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