It is a proverbial minefield these days trying to buy a digital camera which suits everyones taste, reason for purchasing and use. I have been buying and selling digitals mostly for the last 6 years - a lot from ebay - to try and find one which suits me - an impossible task it seems!!  After my first digital I purchased from a bargain bucket in a camera shop in Ipswich (Suffolk), a Casio 640 x 480 pixel swivel lens camera (I can't recall the model) but because you could instantly see what you had taken I was smitten. No more film camera for me - this was it.

I have spent rather too much money (as my long suffering wife will confirm) trying to get something that will take a picture that reasonably resembles what you could get on fim (even a cheap compact) has been an impossible task which has still to be aimed for but I doubt will actually happen.

These days whatever you buy is obsolete as soon as you take it out of the shop, will be lucky to outlast  the guarantee - and this ever increasing need for face detection, anti-shake etc is all so pointless to me!!  What did we do in the old days? We used fast fim and or a tripod!!

I find that most cameras over about 6 megapixels suffer so much with noise as the pixels are so much smaller than say a 4 megapixel sensor - the smaller pixels pick up less light so they have to "wind up" the amplifiers to compensate which means noise, they then try and remove it with noise reduction so reducing the quality (much like the old cassete decks remember them ?)

Therefore do not bother with anything more than 6 megapixels max, the pictures are no better than a good 4, 5 or 6 megapixel camera of some years ago (this is where ebay comes in, try to find a shop that sells older digitals cheap!!)

I read the camera reviews regularly and have to laugh - nothing has really improved in the digital field in the last 3 years - its all about shifting boxes these days.

As for phone cameras - a pinhole camera would be sharper. Worse than useless like an ashtray on a motorbike or a chocolate teapot.

My latest toy is an old Konica Minolta 5D (6 MP),  given to me by my favourite camera shop for spares for free (I do repairs for them) got it going and bought a Sigma 28 - 80mm zoom for just over a tenner off ebay - this is cheap!! If I win the lottery I can get some Sony Alpha lenses for it but so far I have been pleased with it.

Remember when buying  a digital  camera in any shop, avoid anything less than £50.00  - its a waste of money,

High megapixel counts do not mean better pictures.

The make does not matter, they are probably all made in the same factory in China.

Don't buy the first thing you see it will be a mistake, think about what you want it for first.

If you want to take pictures buy a camera not a phone. (but keep it with you for that grab shot)

Lastly its not the camera that takes the picture its the person behind it!!

Hope you have  enjoyed my rantings.

DIGIMAAN