| Almost everyone agrees that digital cameras offer | | | | optical zoom that relies on the lens for it's |
| plenty of advantages over film cameras, and | | | | magnification, and the other is the digital zoom that |
| consumers are voting with their wallets as they | | | | enlarges the image already captured by digital means |
| continue to buy digital cameras in record numbers. | | | | instead. The optical zoom is far more preferable than |
| Some of the advantages of digital cameras over | | | | the digital zoom as it will produce sharp and clear |
| their film counterparts is the ability to immediately | | | | zoom shots throughout it's entire focal range. The |
| see the images you have taken instead of waiting to | | | | digital zoom is only magnifying the resulting image and |
| have film developed first, and also being able to | | | | so it can produce less sharp, grainy pictures instead |
| transfer your image files to your computer where | | | | when used at the higher end of the focal range. So |
| you can edit, print and store them as you see fit. But | | | | try to get a camera that has as much of the zoom |
| what should you look for when buying a digital | | | | range that you want being handled by the optical |
| camera? | | | | rather than the digital zoom. |
| Well, first of all decide how you plan on using the | | | | If having the best image quality is important to you |
| prints that you will make. Will they mostly be 4 X 6 | | | | then you want to look for digital cameras that save |
| snapshots, or do you plan on making enlargements | | | | their files in TIFF, GIF and RAW formats as these do |
| on up to 11 X 14 or so? This will determine how | | | | not sacrifice any image quality when compressing the |
| much resolution that you need to buy when you get | | | | image file for storage. On the other hand, the JPEG |
| your digital camera. For snapshots, a 4 -6 megapixel | | | | image format that many cameras use will cause |
| camera should do the job just fine, but if you want | | | | some loss of image quality in the file compression |
| to make larger prints you may want to look for a 6 - | | | | part of saving the image file. |
| 8 megapixel camera instead. And if you plan on doing | | | | When deciding what digital camera to buy, much of |
| lots of photo editing that can involve zooming in and | | | | your decision will revolve around how you plan to use |
| cropping a small portion of the image, you may even | | | | the camera and the resultant image files, and what |
| want a 10+ megapixel camera for that kind of heavy | | | | features are most important to you and the way |
| duty work. | | | | you shoot your photos. The tips given above should |
| Most fixed lens digital cameras come with a zoom | | | | help you though to be more informed about how to |
| feature, but you should know that there are two | | | | select the digital camera that fits your photo style |
| different types of zooms that are used. One is an | | | | best. |