Or it could be “What do you think of this cam­era?” or “Is this a good deal?” or… or… or… Not to labour the point, but I get asked this a lot by my friends and fam­ily. I don’t mind, as I def­i­nitely suf­fer from an addic­tion to cam­era porn (i.e. research­ing, review­ing, buy­ing the lat­est and great­est cam­eras and acces­sories ). In the cam­era buy­ing world, reli­gious wars are many, and opin­ions are strongly held. As a ser­vice to the world at large I will share my opin­ions with you…

1) There are NO GOOD DEALS IN IRELAND:

Just in case I didn’t make that clear enough… YOU WILL BE RIPPED OFF IF YOU BUY A CAMERA IN IRELAND!. Never mind the bull about local sup­port, war­ranties, etc. ped­dled by the var­i­ous deal­ers. It can­not make up for the 50–100% markup most of them charge. Case in point, I recently bought a Canon IXUS 860IS for a friend at just over €250 within Europe, a sav­ing of exactly €100 on the online price from a Cam­era Shop on Burgh Quay, Dublin. For pur­chas­ing cam­eras, I rec­om­mend the following:

• In the US: Ado­rama, B&H Photo
• In Europe: Pix­ma­nia

2) Megapix­els are overrated:

I could go into detail, but an 8 megapixel pic­ture will result in a pro­fes­sional qual­ity print of 11+ inches by 8+ inches. Do you print to that size? No? Well any com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era with more megapix­els than that is nearly always going to result in a poorer qual­ity pic­ture. It is the trade­off of the “Megapixel Myth”.

3) You sim­ply want to take pictures:

Now that the first two fal­lac­ies are busted, on to the meat and pota­toes. You want a sim­ple cam­era for hol­i­day snap­shots, wed­dings, etc. You are not inter­ested in cus­tom set­tings, RAW files or any of that baloney. Ok… here are some things you do not need:

• Any­thing over 8mp (see item 2)
• An opti­cal view finder (i.e. some­thing you look through… you will never use it!)
• RAW file capa­bil­ity (if you don’t know what it is, you don’t need it)
• Inter­nal Stor­age (Trust me on this one… any stor­age included with the cam­era is a con. It is insuf­fi­cient for any purpose!)
• A bloody great zoom range — guar­an­teed to pro­duce crap photo’s.

So what do you need?

• A decent bat­tery. In fact, buy a spare, but absolutely make sure that they are re-chargeable bat­ter­ies. AA bat­ter­ies last no time!
• A large screen. You will use it to take and dis­play 90% of your photo’s.
• A rea­son­ably big mem­ory card, 2GB should do the job.
• Image sta­bil­i­sa­tion would be a bonus.

My rec­om­men­da­tion — The Canon IXUS 860 IS. I bought this for my wife, and have pointed oth­ers in its direc­tion. Superb camera.

Canon IXUS 870 IS

4) You need some­thing to carry around, but wouldn’t mind a bit more power:

Ah, the mem­o­ries. MY first proper dig­i­tal cam­era was in this cat­e­gory, an Olym­pus 8080, and some of the best shots I ever got were with this cam­era. This cat­e­gory is the answer to the pho­tog­ra­phers say­ing “The best cam­era is the one you have with you…” Expen­sive pro­fes­sional camera’s are heavy. They tend to be left at home a lot of the time. So what do you need in this category?

• Cus­tom con­trols, Aper­ture, ISO, Shut­ter speed
• RAW file capa­bil­ity might be handy
• A big screen. Nope, you still don’t need the opti­cal viewfinder.
• A rea­son­ably big mem­ory card.
• Image sta­bil­i­sa­tion again.

My rec­om­men­da­tion — The Canon G9. I have the G7, which is essen­tially the same. The Sigma DP1 is flawed, but is a promis­ing concept.

Canon G9

5) You want to take pic­tures at sport­ing events, con­certs, dawn, night, etc…

Ok, when you using a com­pact dig­i­tal cam­era for any length of time, you become aware of two major shortcomings:

• You point, you focus, you wait, you take pic­ture, of noth­ing. Com­pact dig­i­tal cam­eras are not fast enough for sports or action.
• The small “chip” in them makes shots taken in low light / night look ter­ri­ble. Wel­come, my friend, to dig­i­tal noise!

Now we enter the realm of SLR’s. SLR stands for “Sin­gle Lens Reflex” is a fancy way of say­ing “you look through the lens you take the pic­ture with!”. They typ­i­cally have a much big­ger chip, often described as being “full frame” (full size of 35mm film frame), DX (size of APS film frame), or some­where in between. They are also much, much quicker to focus and oper­ate. There are many wor­thy cam­eras in this seg­ment of the mar­ket; Olym­pus, Nikon, Canon, Sony, Sam­sung, Pen­tax, etc. The only really solid bits of advice I can give are:

• The lenses are the most impor­tant part of this pur­chase — if you buy one good lens and use it well, you will be hap­pier (such as a 50mm F1.4)
• You are buy­ing into a sys­tem at this level, i.e. the lenses, the acces­sories, the bat­ter­ies, etc. are expen­sive and long-lasting. It is expected that you will reuse most of them when you upgrade your cam­era. Make sure you trust that the ven­dor will be there, and offer a prod­uct that meets your needs!
• Research, research, research. The best web site: www.dpreview.com

My rec­om­men­da­tion — I am a Canon user, so the Canon EOS 450D.

Canon EOS 450D

6) Beyond that… either you have more money than sense or you know what you are doing:

Just to let you know, I drive a Canon 20D, and would love at some point in the future to upgrade to either a 40D, 5D, or 1Ds MK III. Here’s dreaming. 

Canon EOS 20D