what are the most important options to consider when buying a digital camera?

Answer 1

Most important - Digital zoom is useless. Optical zoom is what matters.

Will you be printing mostly unedited regular size pictures or will you be doing a lot of editing and enlarging? The more editing or enlarging you do, the more megapixels you'll need. IMHO, 5.0 is the minimum for a quality picture, but you can get away with 4.0 if you're not changing or enlarging the picture.

From my own experience - Kodaks are very user friendly, Nikons are not.

Make sure the camera fits well in your hands before you buy. Also make sure you can use the buttons easily. If you're uncomfortable with it, you won't use it.

Answer 2

Most people would start talking about mega pixels. Don't bother about that, most cameras have 5 mega pixels or more, and that's usually enough.
Look first at the zoom, and don't let yourself be taken in by impressive figures of digital zoom. Digital zoom is worth NOTHING. Go for a good OPTICAL ZOOM, with 4x or better!
The camera should also have various options:
- different picture sizes
- different picture quality
- choice of different light sensibilities
The first choice you have to make (and that's of course a question of the $$$ you're willing to spend) is whether it should be a compact camera or a reflex with exchangeable lenses. There are some good compact ones of various makes, for a reflex go for Canon or Nikon, perhaps Olympus, but not Sony or Samsung.
Never buy a camera without having it held in your hand to test whether the important buttons are easy to reach. For this reason I would never buy a camera in internet.

Answer 3

I always go for the following.
1. Resolution, the more Pixels the better.
2. Cost. Buy the best you can afford and future proof your investment.
3. Size. you do not want to be carrying a big camera all day.
4. Memory. How many photos do you want to take on 1 card, the higher the resolution the less you will get on a card. (i have at least 3 cards for each of my cameras.
5. Battery. Nothing worse than running out of power at the wrong time. (again i have 3 for each camera)

Personally i have 3 cameras, all Canon (i like Canon) one i keep in my jacket and i have an SLR i keep in the car.
Look on line for camera reviews before you buy.
Good Luck.

Answer 4

Ease of use, intuitiveness. Otherwise all the good specs won't make a difference if you can't use it.

Then look for things like optical zoom (3x or higher - digital zoom is crap), flexibility in picture size settings (1.2mb, 2.0mb, 5.0mb, etc...) so you can make the most of remaining memory in situations where you wish you had more pictures left, size of screen so you can review pictures.

Check out the Canon A540. 6.0 megapixel camera for under $300. Night time pictures are not the best, but video is good, and normal pictures are amazing.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/A540/A540A.HTM