Camera Buying Tips!

How to Test a Digital Camera So You Won't Buy a Dud one!

David Pix put this fantastic article together- he is a full time photography and teacher.

Here are 5 simple tips written by David on not to buy a Digital camera lemon!

I see a new bunch of students of every age every 8 weeks. All have a new camera in there hand. Everyone is excited about how their new camera will perform however, cameras that all look the same do not perform the same and here lies the problem. So just how can you tell a lemon from a good digital camera? Well the answer is that you can't by just looking at them you have to run a few simple tests and you can do this at the shop. So what are the steps?

• Step 1. Turn the camera on and see how long the camera takes to become 'camera ready'. A slow camera with a slow processor can take up to 2 seconds. A good camera will turn on immediately and be ready for fast action.

• Step2. Now we want to know how long the camera will take to focus. So the simple test is to focus on something close to you and then focus on something far away and then something close again. This is stressing the auto focus to see if it is a fast focus or if it's going to always be slow. A good camera will focus immediately as a poor camera will take up to 2 seconds to focus. Now this is a real problem if you are trying to take a child blowing out candles. You may just end up with dark candles and smoke.

• Step3. The third test is after you press the button to take the photo how long does it actually take to capture it? this is called shutter lag and as in the point above it can be very annoying to keep missing the shots that you actually bought the camera for. A good camera will take the photo instantly. Why some cameras take longer and others are quicker? Well it's all in the maths speed of the processor within the camera. Some cameras let you take low quality video and to do this they sacrifice the quality of the camera processor.

• Step4. You must check your CCD in the actual camera that you are going to buy. The CCD within your camera (which has replaced film) otherwise known as a charged coupling device. Your CCD is a grown crystal of sorts and they do get imperfections which can't be helped. So what are these imperfections? They are missing pixels. Now to test the camera at a camera shop ask to put in a flash card (the card a camera records on) take your own to the shop. They are inexpensive. Take a few photos with the camera and view the photos on a computer screen blown up. When they are blown up you will soon see the missing pixels. Every CCD has them. You won't see them in a 6x4 inch print however when you blow your images up or if you had to shoot in low light that's when you will see them. If you are happy with the result buy the exact camera that you took the photos with as another camera exactly the same will have missing pixels in a different sequence. If you decide to do my course you will get a lot more info on how your camera works and how to get the best out of it.

• Step5. Only buy a camera that is 6 megapixels and above. Also make sure that your camera can be set to fully manual mode. How you check this is if the camera has the settings "A" or 'AV" + "S" or TV" + "M" + "P" you must have all four of these settings if not don't touch it. Good luck on buying a good camera.

How to get rid of those terrible Double Chins on your Photo--Photography Tips-VIDEO

Amazon Camera Products

Camera History
Sharing your photos on Photobucket

Tagged with: Buying a camera • camera buying tips • camera courses • digital camera • SLR Camera

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!