What Do I Need To Know About Buying A Digital Camera?

Question

I'm an idiot when it comes to buying new technology. I want a decent brand, (Sony would be ideal) have a moderate budget, (like $200) I have rechargable batteries so I don't really care too much about battery life, just that it's small, works well, and that I can really get a good product.

My current camera (it's a crappy Canon) I need to have the flash on at all times... if I try to take an indoor photo without a flash it comes out like a psychadelic experience, I just want it to work without flash, in a flash...

Thanks~

Answer 1

"My current camera (it's a crappy Canon) I need to have the flash on at all times... if I try to take an indoor photo without a flash it comes out like a psychadelic experience, I just want it to work without flash"

All cameras will have this problem. It's not a problem with the camera, it's a problem with the amount of light that's available to take your picture. Even though to your eye it looks like there's plenty of light available to not require a flash, that's not always the case when it comes to taking pictures.

The "psychedelic" effect you're talking about is a blur resulting from a combination of motion blur from your subject and blur from camera shake (even though it may not seem like it, you really aren't holding the camera perfectly still--the minute amount of shaking/movement that you do is enough at times to make the picture blurry). When you take a picture, the shutter has to be open a certain amount of time to let enough light in to take a properly exposed photo. What happens when you're indoor and there's not a lot of light, the camera has two choices: Use the flash to add more light, or don't use the flash and keep the shutter open longer to let more light in. When you keep the shutter open for a long period of time (and by long, I'm talking about anything longer than 1/50th of a second), you have to worry about motion blur and camera shake.

If you want to take a picture indoors in low light without a flash, you really have two options:

1. Have your subject sit really still and use a tripod or something similar to rest your camera on so you take camera shake out of the equation.

2. Increase your camera's sensitivity (ISO) such that you end up with a fast enough shutter speed to take your picture without blur. The downside of doing this is that when you increase the ISO, you also increase the amount of visual noise in your picture. Some cameras are better at this than others. www.dpreview.com tests the cameras at different ISO's and often compares them head to head.

Before you go spending money on a new camera, I'd read your manual for your canon and see if it's capable of manually changing the ISO and give that a shot. Like I said, you'll have this problem with any camera. I too hate using the flash and the way I got around it was buying a digital SLR and some fast lenses. Digital SLR's usually perform much better (less noise) at high ISO's. Unfortunately, it's much more than your $200 budget.

Good luck!

Oh, and don't get caught up in the whole megapixel thing. That isn't going to solve your problem. Unless you're going to be blowing things up to poster size, you really don't need a high megapixel camera. I had a 4MP camera for a while and was able to make wonderful 8x10 prints from it.

Answer 2

Firstly, Canon is the ONLY brand I would usually recommend (and it's not crappy one bit!). Maybe it's just the photographer ;-)

All digital cameras will require the use of a flash in low light when using AUTO.
You can bump up the ISO and turn off the flash, but then your photos will suffer and have a lot of 'noise' in them.
And you can easily take a photo indoors without a flash...using a slow shutter, but the camera needs to be perfectly still.

Anyway, the best compact camera for low-light indoor shots (without the need for a flash) and using a high ISO of 800 & 1600, while handheld...is the Fujifilm Finepix F30. Most other compacts can only do good shots at only about ISO 200.
No other compact camera can compete with it in this area.
It's the only one I can recommend for low light, flashless photography.
It comes with a rechargeable Lithium battery & has an amazing battery life of over 500 shots!
Check out the reviews below...

And I also recommend you read a good book or two on the basics of photography ;-)
Good luck...

Answer 3

I would give you the same answer I gave Dani 6 hrs ago.Possibly, learn your camera a lot better.....and MAYBE there's no need for a new camera. Try Website dpreview.com
Try upping your ISO setting to 400. Above that most cameras would produce a crappy image. Go back on some of the answers to same question.

Answer 4

i would recommend amazon, they do great bargins and on most of them it's free delivery, ebay don't give that much off and it is not free shipping as well. i got a 9megapixel camera from there only for£130 and in stores it is around £400 odd.

Answer 5

here's a link to ebays guide on selecting a digital camera

Answer 6

you need to know abouth the mega pixels
also some cameras have internal memory so you dont need to buy a memory card rite away