Buying a digital camera has never been harder

FOR THIS Yule season, digital cameras can be divvied up into four different types - junk, still pictures, good enough, and consumer overkill. I bought my first digital camera back in 1997, a one-megapixel Kodak DC-120 that devoured AA batteries but captured still pictures good enough for either web site or print use. Today, I'm on my third "generation" of digital camera and my latest is good enough for just about anything most mortals need.

I've got five rules for buying digital cameras for 2004 - you may disagree, especially if you are a shutterbug - and you know who you are with that stash of lenses and three flashes in your tote bag.

Rule One: Spending more than $500 for a digital camera is overkill unless you are a die-hard shutterbug.

Some people need, want, and/or desire the ability to swap lenses, switching from their wide-angle to their telephoto for the best nature photos and whatnot. "Prosumer" gear to compete with the analogue style 35mm SLR gear starts at around $800 on up for 35mm camera replacement bodies. For example, Canon's EOS Digital Rebel is a beautiful camera for the "shutter bug" that wants to control every single aspect of their picture taking. I confess that I do covet the Canon for its ability to continuously take 2.5 frames per second - a must for sports and other action photography - but I don't lose sleep over not having it.

Rule Two: Optical zoom is good. Digital zoom is bad. Multiplying the two together for "Total Zoom" is useless marketing crap.

Optical zoom describes the ability to use glass lenses to "focus in" on a subject, and typically runs the gauntlet between 2x (times) and 4x in the $300-500 price point. Digital zoom basically makes pixels "bigger" and degrades image quality as it is used. In order to make a "bigger" number, marketing wonks multiple optical zoom with digital zoom to get total zoom like this = 3x (optical) x 4x (digital) = 12x total zoom. Ignore total zoom, ignore digital zoom, get a camera with (at least) 3x optical zoom. Bonus points if you can disable/turn-off digital zoom. Anything without optical zoom is not worth bringing home to put under the tree.

Rule Three: 4 Megapixels is more than enough, unless you are a hardcore consumer junkie.

With four megapixels, you can print out pictures up to 20 by 30 inches. At 3.5 megapixels, you can print out pictures up to 11 x 14 inches with some cropping. A typical picture "print" is 4 by 6 inches and a typical ink jet printer can print out around 8 by 10 inch photos, give or take. So, 4 MP is sufficient to cover anything coming out of your off-the-shelf inkjet printer or might get down at the local drug store. Yes, 5 or 6 or 7 megapixels sounds better, but it's overkill once the smoke clears.

Rule Four: Picture capture speed and burst speed count. Look for them.

Cheap and earlier generation digital cameras take an agonizing l-o-n-g time to capture an image once the time the button is pressed. This is very awkward when you are trying to take a picture of anything involving motion. Further, the time between shots can be agonisingly awkward on lower-end cameras. You want to get a camera that takes pictures anywhere between 1.2 and 1.6 seconds from the time you hit the button and preferably a model that has a burst capability of taking multiple pictures in sequence. There are a number of cameras in the $300-400 range that will take 4 to 6 pictures in a "burst" to capture action shots.

Rule Five: Standard removable media is Good. Proprietary media = Evil.

This is my own personal prejudice, but I can't stand xD and Sony Memory Stick. Most digital cameras use stamp-sized SD memory these days. You can find name-brand SanDisk 512MB SD for under $50 after all the rebates are applied. Buying more than 512MB SD might be a waste - at 4 MP, a 512MB SD card will hold around 392 pictures. That's a lot of pictures between visits to a hard disk for downloading.

Other things to think about
I have a slight prejudice for cameras that use standard-size AA or AAA batteries over rechargeables. In a pinch, I can buy fresh batteries or raid them from another device. Rechargeable batteries require management, either via a standardised evening visit to the charger or in the form of carrying a charged-up spare battery in the back picket. It's annoying.

Cameras come with a variety of interface options, including docks for printing and recharging, USB ports for moving over pictures, and even specialised PictBridge software to allow you to print directly from camera to printer over USB cable. Given the price of printing photos, it makes more sense to slip out the SD card or other removable media, review and edit pictures, and then print them off. Slipping out the card also means you don't burn battery time on the camera. µ

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