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A Quick Guide to Digital Cameras
If you're looking for a way to capture all of the memories made in Japan, you might be in need of a respectable camera. After all what mother wouldn’t want a picture of her son wearing the traditional mawashi loincloth of a sumo wrestler or her daughter posing with the Gwen-Stefani-praised Harajuku girls of Tokyo?
Although the war of digital camera vs. film camera rages on and I find respect for both sides of the battlefield, I am here to give you a quick guide on digital cameras, particularly since most of you are looking for convenience in size and price, an area where digital cameras are usually the undisputed champions.
By now most of you have probably walked into a loud Japanese electronics store and have been discouraged by the vast amounts of colorful, gadget-ridden cameras on display. This can be overwhelming for anyone, particularly since the features listed with each camera never serve as a good indicator of what the camera can actually do. For example, a camera might boast an 8.0 megapixel image size, but might have minimal optical zoom or poor image quality. Although I can’t save your picture-taking talent, I will at least provide a quick crash course on the first features to look for in a digital camera.
Research
More important than any other aspect of buying a digital camera is doing your research before you go to the store. The best way of doing this is through the Internet. There are tons of websites that offer amazing camera reviews and provide comparisons between different camera models. I don’t recommend going to original manufacturer’s websites since their descriptions are obviously biased. However, here are a couple of the best sites I’ve found that will give a good start to your camera search:
www.dpreview.com – absolutely the best camera review website out there, they have the most in-depth reviews available on the Internet. However, those of you without the tech-savvy gene might get a bit intimidated by the vast amount of information provided in each review. You can always go to the end of each review and get the bottom line. Check out the links page as well for many other fantastic sites.
http://review.zdnet.com/ - this site offers excellent real-world advice toward buying digital cameras and provides an immense number of reviews as well. With practicality in mind, they offer some wonderful advice for any photographer’s ability. Also, along with camera ratings provided by the website, users can leave their own rated feedback for each camera, giving a good idea of just how well a camera performs in the real world.
Stores
In the Toyama area, Yamada-denki is pretty much the most popular of the electronics stores for buying digital cameras, but mostly because it’s so well known. Their prices are always reasonable but rarely ever bargains. Instead, I actually recommend Camera Kitamura (カメラのキタムラ) because their prices tend to be much better than Yamada-denki and they usually have a larger selection of cameras to choose from. Camera Kitamura shops are always easy to spot since they usually have a huge orange or rainbow-colored square sign set into each of the chain’s buildings. Here is a web link that will show the locations of all the shops in Toyama-ken (sorry, addresses and maps are in Japanese – get your advisor to help): http://mpm.kitamura.co.jp/mssm/
What to Look for in a Camera
Physical Size - cameras now come in sizes that are as small as a credit card or as big as … a big camera. Basically, smaller sized cameras really win out for practicality since they can be carried in a pocket or a purse and often have fully automatic settings. However, don’t expect great picture quality from these smaller cameras. Due to their tiny size, these cameras lose in every category to their bigger brothers (zoom capability, color and picture quality, etc). All that aside, small cameras are wonderful for daily shooting and are amazing for a thought-free picture taking experience. A larger camera provides more features, but you’ll sacrifice the lighter weight and convenience of the smaller sized version. The lenses of some larger cameras are of superior quality, and many provide an optical zoom of up to 10x. Most of the large cameras come with manual settings, so those of you who know about f/stop and shutter speed will have a lot of room for experimentation. Also, the images from a larger camera almost always tend to have better color quality.
Zoom – most digital cameras come with two types of zoom: digital and optical. Optical zoom is always superior to digital zoom since it relies on the optics of the camera, thus preventing any loss of picture quality. Most cameras come with an optical zoom that range from magnification factor of 3 all the way up to 10. However, beware of some of the tiniest cameras – I have seen some smaller models of the Casio Exilim and Canon IXY/Elph lines that have no optical zoom. A digital zoom is much less desirable than an optical zoom and is often turned off by default in most cameras that come with both zoom types. A digital zoom always results in a loss of picture data and quality; for example, a 5 megapixel camera that is making use of its digital zoom may only take a 2 megapixel image depending on the magnification factor used by the digital zoom. Also, due to the way a digital zoom works, pictures may appear blurry. For more information on how these two types of zoom work, go to the aforementioned www.dpreview.com, and follow these links in the upper left-hand menu: Glossary Digital Imaging Digital Zoom.
Image Size – essentially, the higher the megapixel range of a camera, the bigger the images that can be produced without the appearance of pixelation. Pixelation occurs when the blocks used to form a digital photograph become obvious to the human eye, thus resulting in poor quality print-outs or developed photos. A 4 megapixel camera can generate 8”x10” photos without appearance of pixelation. A 6+ megapixel camera can produce images as big as 11”x14” (or even bigger) without any loss of quality. Just keep in mind that the higher the megapixel range, the bigger the file size for each picture you take. Those of you with those 5+ megapixel cameras, make sure you buy a large memory card (see next section).
Memory Card – nearly all digital cameras support one or more types of digital memory cards that are used to store your photos. Typically, most cameras come either without a memory card or come with a pathetically small card that won’t be worth your time. Essentially, when buying a new camera, expect to buy a memory card as well! There are currently quite a few memory card types out there. The most accepted card types in the digital camera world are Compact Flash (CF) and Secure Digital (SD). However, certain manufacturers use special memory cards: Sony cameras use various forms of Memory Stick, many Olympus and FujiFilm cameras use xD, and still others use MMC (Multimedia Memory Card). Be sure to buy the correct card for your camera. Also, since most new cameras now come with a high megapixel range (> 4 megapixels), the file size of a single picture is usually more than 3 megabytes. Because of this, I recommend purchasing a memory card with at least 256 megabytes of storage so that you don’t end up having to delete pictures to make room for more.
Although there are plenty of other features that I could go over (battery life, LCD screen size, etc), researching the previous features will give you essential confidence in buying a new camera and will prevent you from ending up with something that falls far short of your expectations. Trust me, a bit of research will make that chunk of your month’s salary a great investment!