The first thing you need to know is what is on offer. There are three kinds of digital cameras. There are compacts that fit in your pocket. There are SLRs (single lens reflex cameras), and there are bridge cameras. Bridge cameras are smaller than SLRs but bigger than compacts. They try to make out like they are as good as SLRs but nearly as small as compacts.
There are super-compacts, but we don’t want to get into all the advertising stuff about super-slim, super-compacts, super this and that. There is a place for super-slim, super compacts, and it is in your shirt pocket.
There are also rangefinder cameras but there are not many of them (two to be precise) and they are not cheap so I will refer to them in passing but not discuss them in detail.
So apart from size, what are the differences? Well SLRs are called ‘single lens reflex’ cameras because when you look through the viewfinder you are looking down via a series of prisms and a mirror, right out through the lens. They are called ‘reflex’ cameras because the mirror flips up out of the way for a fraction of a second, when you take a shot and then back again.
It seems pretty obvious that there must be something better about SLRs, otherwise everyone would buy super-compacts. After all, who wants to carry around the extra size and weight. And that is the first thing you need to decide. How big a camera are you prepared to carry around? And in order to decide that you have to know what you are going to sacrifice by not having an SLR.Continue reading “Choosing a digital camera (more added 23 July)”
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