Decision making parameters for camera purchase

With the market overflowing with a big range of cameras. There needs to be some basic criteria on which one should decide which camera to buy. Following are the parameters one should keep in mind.

Mega Pixels : See my post on Mega Pixels to decide which will be apt mega pixels for you.

Lens : Lens unarguably plays an important role. Nikkon uses their own "NIKKOR lens" where as Sony uses partially their own lens in lower range series and Carl Zeiss lens in most of their cameras. Both stand good in their field.

Zoom : 3X is normal zoom which most of the companies give. But there are cameras in the market will higher zoom.
Supported memory cards : SD is the most common card used. And all the companies apart from Sony use this card. Sony has their own pro duo cards. But as long as Sony is there is market there is no supply issues of this card. (But i personally feel after there Video cassette fiasco that this company learns from its mistakes. See my blog for further details)
Battery type and backup : Unarguably lithium batteries are lighter and gives a great battery backup in comparison to the AA batteries. But it does come with a cost factor. Each battery for example Sony NP-FP1 battery for digital cameras comes at a cost of 3990 ( as on 9/4/2007) But I have hardly seen a battery giving a problem. A consumer re-invests this money only is case of loss or extra battery privilege. In such cases there is no limit to luxury anyways.
PAL TV and USB compatibility : This is a must have in all the cameras. And I haven't seen a camera without these features. If some camera does not have this capability then there is straight no no to that camera.
ISO Sensitivity : The higher the ISO the better the pictures will be in dim light.
Schemes : What kind of schemes a company is running with it.
Service and warranty : How good that company is in service of cameras. The clear winner for such cameras is Nikkon, Sony and Kodak. Others have to still be penetrative in this area.

Mega Pixels

What does mega pixel mean?

A megapixel is 1 million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but also to express the number of sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera with an array of 2048×1536 sensor elements is commonly said to have "3.1 megapixels" (2048 × 1536 = 3,145,728)

What does higher mega pixel do? Megapixels quantify two things whenever a digital camera is concerned:-

1. Size of photos that can be printed.


2. Quality of photos.

What will be appropriate mega pixels depending upon different usage?

For a normal Indian family/individual 5 Mega pixels is more than enough. But it wont pinch the pocket if one gets more mega pixels at the same price. Currently following are the brands that are there in market :

Sony : All cameras over and above 7 mega pixels.
Cannon: Apart from A430 all are 5 mega pixels and above.
Kodak : Apart from Camera C433 all cameras are 5 megapixels and above.

The basic structure of this blog

This blog will be mainly concentrated towards following labels:

1. What's New
2. Compare products
3. Product Reviews
4. What does this mean? (Concentrating on a particular feature, like mega pixel , plasma technology, and what does it really mean.)