Josh

Gaby’s camera got stolen back in November. It was an awesome camera and we’ve been mourning the loss since. It was a Canon A75, perfect for someone who just wants a good camera. Well, anyway. Her birthday is coming up and her dad is going to buy her a camera so we’ve been researching and everything. It’s a bit of a long process, but it’s worth it. I thought I’d post this, because a lot of people don’t really research their purchases, which I think they should do, so here are the steps we’ve taken and hopefully it’ll help.

I’m going to walk you through a hypothetical camera search step by step, so you can see the steps I took.

Step One

Deciding the kind of camera you want is hard, but it helps if you have a price range. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money, set a max you want to spend. This way, when searching for a camera, you won’t fall in love with a camera you can’t afford. Keep in mind that a lot of great camera you can still get for less than $300, so don’t think that you’re going to be left with crappy choices.

EXAMPLE: I like to use CNET to do a lot of research on electronics. They have great editor reviews, user reviews, and sometimes they have a video of the camera. I clicked on the digital camera section and then searched by price. I’m setting my max spending amount to $300.

From here, you are given a list of all the camera between $200-$300 dollars. You can narrow your results by choosing how many megapixels you want, what brand you want, zoom range, or other options. Since I don’t really care what brand it is yet, I’m going to choose by megapixels. I don’t want a camera that has lower than 4 megapixels and I don’t care if it has more than 8 megapixels. I would prefer that it had between 6 to 8 megapixels so I’m going to click on that to narrow my results.

Step Two

Now that I have the basic search criteria out of the way, I’m going to start reading. Most of the cameras on CNET have editor reviews, which are quite helpful, but what’s even better are the user reviews. These are very helpful in making your choice. I don’t usually pay close attention to the good reviews, because it’s really not going to help me make my choice, however you might benefit from these. I usually look mostly at the bad reviews, because it’ll let me know the drawbacks of the camera.

I’ve selected three cameras using the Editor’s review; Nikon Coolpix 7900, Canon Powershot A620, and the Casio Exilim EX-Z750. I start off by reading the editor’s reviews. These give a fairly good overview of the cameras design, function, and image quality. But what really gets me is the user reviews. I want to hear how people feel about it after using it often.

Here are some sample reviews that I thought were helpful:

For the Nikon Coolpix 7900:

“Now the cons for this camera. I would expect at this price range for a camera, it would perform in all lighting situations. However, I am sorry to say that this camera performs very poorly under low light conditions. This performance is slightly improved with the auto-focus illuminator lamp but not by much. As stated in the user’s guide, the camera focuses much better in a high contrast scene than a low contrast scene.”

“The camera waas set on autofocus using flash. Both indoors and outdoors, images was usually blurry and ghosting. Nikon web customer service requested that I send them examples, which I did. They never then responded by e mail. I was then advised to try to obtain a refund from the dealer or return the camera for service. The camera was sent to Nikon and returned with the same continuing problems—I wonder if someone even bother to examine the camera. Not recommended.” (This was helpful even though he should learn to use spellcheck.)

“Not too impressed with this camera. Out of the box for ten minutes and the lens froze in the out position with a “lens error” message on the LCD.

Amazon has sent a replacement (not the best customer service from Amazon either). We’ll see if it was an isolated case, although from reading comments at jancology.com/blog/archives/ 2003/11/02/nikon_5700_lens_error.html, it sounds like this may be a bigger problem than just this camera.”

For the Canon Powershot A620:

“My other complaint is the brightness balance in photos. I shoot a lot of outdoor images with bright sunlight and shadows. In my opinion, there is an excessive loss of detail in the dark areas. Dark areas nearly go black. The white areas are sometimes too bright. Some detail can be coaxed out of the darker areas with post processing (via Photoshop or equivalent), but there is always a loss of contrast elsewhere when this is done. I think the brightness balance is worse than my previous camera, the Sony DSC-P1, and much worse than conventional film.”

“Like so many others, I had a (brief) love-affair with my Canon PowerShot. Just outside of the warranty period it had the fatal E-18 error. So if you’re considering the PowerShot, just factor the replacement costs (within 15-24 months) into your decision making process.”

For the Casio Exilim EX-Z750:

“5. Oversaturated colors: The reviews I read listed this as a problem, and I found it to be true. Again, correctable via menu line item, but should you have to do this?”

“1- The image quality with default settings is unnatural in terms of sharpness and contrast. So you have to play a lot with the settings (sharpness, contrast, ..) to get a more natural image.
2- The flash is very week. Indoor pictures come out poor unless you are very close to the subject.
3- For outdoors, the camera could not focus most of the time with the zoom set to minimum and the images will be out of focus. I had to zoom in slightly to get the camera to focus. The zoom control is also coarse, you don’t have much control.
4- The manual controls such as shutter and aperture are mostly useless in this kind of camera because the aperature range is so limitted. You can’t do much with manual settings.
5- Start-up time and shot-to-shot time was mostly good but not always. It was not consistant. Sometimes I had to press the shutter release several times between shots, before it took a picture.”

Step Three

Now that we’ve seen reviews, both good and bad, it’s time to see some sample images. CNET doesn’t provide these, but luckily, Amazon.com does. All you have to do is search for your camera by its name and click on customer images. You now get to see sample images taken by the cameras.

So after looking at sample images, you should decide if you want to continue your search with these cameras.

After looking at sample pictures from all three of my choices, I decided that the Nikon Coolpix 7900 was a little too blurry for me, but I liked sample images from both the Canon and the Casio, so I’m going to continue searching them.

Step Four

I wouldn’t limit your research to just CNET or Amazon, but branch off by going to the maker’s website and also try google-ing them. You never know what you may find.

You’ll find other reviews, specs, more pictures, and other odds and ends, which are always good in helping you decide.

Step Five

Go to a store and hold them in your hands. I like to go to Best Buy to check them out in person. Best Buy has a good selection, and even if I’m not going to buy the camera from there, you should just go to check them out. Hopefully, by now, you’ll have about two to three choices to check out. Usually Best Buy will have sample images that you can look at, and you can pick them up and play around. But I wouldn’t make a purchase just yet.

Step Six

Think about it. Weigh the pros and cons for each camera. It might take awhile, but it’ll help you make your decision.

Step Seven

Hopefully, you have a Costco Membership. Costco is great in that it has an awesome return policy. If you don’t like what you buy, you bring it back, if you want to upgrade to a newer model, bring it back and upgrade. No problem. Go and buy the camera of your choice. Hopefully, you’ll love it, but if not, bring it back and try out another one.

Final Notes

Keep in mind that the memory card that comes with the camera is small, and you’re going to want to buy a bigger one. Also keep in mind the type of batteries you’re going to want to use. Some cameras now use lithium batteries instead of rechargeable AA batteries, so you don’t have to carry around a bulky charger, but it some cases like the Casio Exilim EX-Z750 you’ll have to use a dock to charge the battery. These notes might factor into your desicion and they might not.

I hope this helped you out a bit, if not, leave your comments on your tips for looking for a camera. I know a lot of people have a lot of ways to look for the perfect camera, and this is just one way.

Other Web Resources

Digital Camera Resource Page - This is a review site much like CNET, however this site focuses just on digital cameras. Also, DCRP shows photo galleries of all the pictures taken while testing and reviewing, which is mighty helpful.

Categorized as How To