Which Compact Digital Camera?

How many Pixels?

This is the first thing you will probably be told about the camera. It is an important consideration, but having more pixels is not always better (see the section on sensor type and size below and my more detailed article if you want to know more about this) The size of the sensor is more important and a small sensor with lots of pixels may be noisy in dark conditions. Some compacts have as many as 14 Mega-pixels, but a good quality 8 Mega pixel camera may give you very good results too (and will use fewer memory cards)

Manual Over-ride

Do you want to do creative photography with control over shutter speed, aperture etc. or just put it in one of the many automatic modes usually provided and let the camera do the work. Many compact cameras do have full manual over-ride. It can be a bit fiddly to use and is not something most people need or want to do with compact cameras, but it is something to consider.

Zoom range

Almost every compact camera has a zoom lens, with a range usually quoted in numbers that represent the equivalent lens for a film camera ("35mm equivalent" - referring to 35mm film) This is a bit inaccurate, if the range is quoted as 28mm to 130mm it implies wide-angle to short-telephoto. For some examples:

24mm very wide, suitable for landscapes, buildings and interiors even when you can't get very far away from the subject

28mm good wide-angle, suitable for landscapes, buildings and interiors

35mm fairly wide, suitable for landscapes, buildings, but maybe not always wide enough

50mm "standard" lens (i.e. similar to your eyes) suitable for landscapes, buildings from a distance, people, street photos etc. General purpose

85mm short telephoto suitable for portraits and candid photos

130mm telephoto suitable for some portraits and candid photos

200mm telephoto suitable for some animal/wildlife photos

300mm long telephoto suitable for animals and even birds or safari photos

For portraits you need to minimise depth of field which requires wide aperture lens (f2.8 is a wide aperture, f16 is a narrow one) and/or longer focal length to focus on a face but defocus the surroundings (if this means nothing to you just put the camera in portrait mode, zoom in and it will set the aperture as wide as possible). For longer than 200mm you may need a tripod, but you need at least this for safaris.

Compacts have a confusing range of sensor sizes and when choosing it is worth checking the specification, but most importantly read reviews of the camera because the quality will vary a lot for small cameras. The size is just one thing to consider (generally the bigger the better though)

To confuse things further, compact camera sensor sizes are usually measured differently to their big brothers, the DSLR cameras. Some sensors are wide-screen and some have an aspect ratio of 4:3. The size is often denoted as a fraction of an inch e.g. 1/3" but may even appear as something like 1/3.6" or 1/1.8" (the crop factor is the relative size compared to 35mm film i.e. a sensor with a crop factor of 2.0 is half the linear size or a quarter of the area)

1/3.6" = 4.0 x 3.0mm = area 12.0mm2 (crop factor 8.7)
1/2.5" = 5.8 x 4.3mm = area 24.7mm2 (crop factor 6.0)
4/3" = 17.3 x 13.0mm = area 225mm2 (crop factor 2.0)

See my more detailed article if you want to know more about this

As I said before always read a review of the performance in addition to the size specification. Smaller sensors have smaller pixels which are more prone to noise, because they each catch less light and therefore are less accurate. Obviously if there are more pixels they will be smaller too. More pixels may not indicate a better picture in all lighting conditions.

Which is better CMOS or CCD? First of all, what is the difference and what does it mean? Most cameras are CMOS now because it is cheaper to make, but more prone to noise because the electronics (the transistors on the chip) are close to the pixels and can interfere, but as I said before always check the reviews before buying, because to say one is better than another is a huge generalisation. The sensor size and pixel sizes are more important.

See my more detailed article if you want to know more about this

There is no advantage in using film compact cameras now. There is still and argument for using film in a big SLR camera or a professional medium format camera (although many may disagree - see my more detailed discussion here) Most digital compact cameras are far smaller and much more convenient than most film cameras. Film compact cameras were limited by their lenses so they did not in general get the full benefit of the film quality.

I have written a separate article about classic film cameras, here

If you are still using film or have a lot of negatives or slides I have written a separate article about scanners, here

Whether scanning negatives and/or slides, or using a digital SLR or compact camera you need photo-editing software to improve the results: crop them to get better composition, adjust colours and brightness or just to remove read-eye. There are many great software programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, but you can also download a good free tool called GIMP (This is more complicated, so I have written a separate article about that - see below)

Free Photo-Editing Software (GIMP)