The difference between a 5 megapixel camera and a 13 megapixel camera is barely visible even if you are printing your photos as posters. Even if you plan to print 8 x 11 prints of partial photographs, an 8 megapixel camera should have more than enough resolution. Many cheap cameras have a substantial time lag between pressing the button and actually taking the picture. If you're going to take photographs of your kids, sports games, or people performing fast actions, find a camera with a lag time of 0.2 seconds or less. If this will be the primary purpose of your camera, consider an SLR camera with a continuous shooting mode, which will allow you hold down the button and take a whole series of photos at once. The continuous frame rate tells you how many photographs the camera can take per second; for a camera used for fast-paced situations, this number should be at least five frames per second.  Note: be sure to look up or ask about the camera's internal memory buffer as well. This tells you how many photographs it can store during continuous shooting mode before it has to pause and save them to the memory drive. A high frame rate won't help much if the camera can only take a half second of continuous photos at a time. A zoom function allows you to adjust the distance of focus by the amount specified, for instance 4x or 50x the normal focal length. This specification isn't as simple as looking at the number advertised, however. Optical zoom alters the arrangement of the lens itself to focus on more distant objects, producing a high quality image. Digital zoom only enlarges the center of the image electronically, cropping out the rest of the photo without focusing further. Digital zoom results in a much lower image quality, and since the photo can be easily cropped later with image editing software, digital zoom is only useful for helping you find a distant object to photograph, not for taking high quality photos at a distance. If you plan on zooming in on distant objects frequently, consider a camera with "image stabilization." This helps keeps your image steady even when focusing on a tiny, distant area, and reduces the chance of blurring. Many cameras use proprietary batteries, rather than standard AA batteries. Someday, the battery that comes with your camera may stop working or get lost, in which case you will need to obtain a replacement. Find out how to obtain one, and keep a back up battery charged and ready to use if possible. While your camera may already come with a memory card, you should find out which type of card anyway in case you need to buy a replacement. SD or Secure Digital cards are the most popular card format in consumer cameras, but the SDHC and SDXC varieties may not work in the SD slots of older models. These can come in standard, mini, and micro size. CF or Compact Flash drives are more commonly found in higher-end, DSLR cameras.  If you do need to purchase a memory card, consider how many images you need to store. This online calculator will show you how many photos each memory card will store based on your camera's megapixels. Typical users enjoy having a camera that can store around 400 photographs, but keep in mind that video uses up much more space. If you do not have a memory card reader of the correct type, or a memory card slot of the correct type on your computer, you do not necessarily need to buy one. Most digital cameras come with USB attachments or other ways of transferring photos from the camera to the computer using common attachment methods.
لا تعتمد على الميجا-بيكسل Megapixels فقط في تقييم الكاميرا. فكر في السرعة التي تحتاجها. قارن بين قدرات كل كاميرا على التقريب. خذ نوع البطاريات في الاعتبار. تعرف على نوع بطاقة الذاكرة.