By David Gewirtz
This week, we're kicking off a series of short articles about buying your first digital camera. I recently had a discussion with a friend who was buying a digital camera as a gift. From that discussion, I realized that digital cameras are still quite a mystery to many folks.
Let's start with the most common question I get from friends: are under-$100 digital cameras any good?
The answer is simple: no. Anything in that price range is a toy and, in my opinion, not spending on. The image quality sucks, and there are so many compromises that there's really nothing good, other than having a novelty item. I would STRONGLY not recommend it. You can get a good digital camera in the range of about $250-$400, but below that, in my opinion, you're just wasting your money.
That said, digital cameras are a lot of fun. I've personally held off buying a high-end one for myself. I'm a photographic artist (you can see my work at http://www.gewirtz.com) and I demand very high image resolution, very fast shutter times, and interchangeable SLR (Single-Lens Reflex) optics. These features are definitely available in professional digital cameras at prices above $2,500, but I just haven't seen the need, yet, to get rid of my trusty old Nikon film camera for art shoots. In concert with the 35mm film camera, I use a negative scanner, and can then manipulate my images in Photoshop very nicely.
However, I also have a $300 camera that's great for snapshots, fun pictures, and eBay stuff. The nice thing about the digital camera is you can reuse the "film", very quickly get a preview of your pictures, and send fun snapshots to your friends. When I moved, I took pictures of the new layout here and sent it to my friends to see. That was incredibly easy with the digital camera and something I wouldn't have done, had it been necesary to wait for film processing. If you're thinking about getting an inexpensive ($200-$400) digital camera for snapshots or eBay postings, I think you'd enjoy it, maybe send pictures to your friends and family, and generally have a good time with it.
Think of the sub-$300 and sub-$400 digital cameras as exceptionally nice Instamatics, and the ones that are $700-$1,500 as appropriate for the more descerning amateur, and those from $1,500 up (and they go way up) as professional grade. The more costly ones are also much more of a hassle to deal with; they're heavier, require much larger memory cards, and are not something I'd recommend at all unless you're a pro. You'd never see the benefit.
There are some minor downsides to digital cameras. Images take a breath or two of time to actually record after you press the shutter. The much higher end cameras don't have this delay, but with less expensive cameras, you're waiting for the image to transfer from memory to your storage card. Also, if you go on vacation and want to take thousands of pictures, you'd need more memory cards, because, like film, there is a capacity to them. Of course, you could bring a laptop or even one of the portable hard drives, and transfer images from flash memory to a hard drive. That means lugging more stuff, but to be fair, carrying 50 rolls of film takes more space and weight than a small laptop.
The really good news, though, is there's no processing cost and you can delete pictures you don't like, upload pictures to your computer, store them on CD, and reuse the memory card over and over. Think of the memory card as a more advanced floppy disk. It's just storage. If you're a very active photographer, the mere savings over film and developing (even on one trip) can often pay for the purchase of a digital camera.
Given all this, it's likely you'd spend about $300+ for something good, and that'd be pretty much all you'd need to spend. If you don't want to spend at least $200, consider a different gift area completely.
We'll talk about specific cameras, printing, service bureaus, and connecting the camera to your computer in the next few weeks. Since I'll be answering some digital camera questions, now's a great time to send them to me. If you've got a "first digital camera" question for the series, sent it to david@ZATZ.com. Remember, almost no question is too dumb so feel free to ask away.