BUYING DIGITAL CAMERAS : eBay Guides

It is a proverbial minefield these days trying to buy a digital camera which suits everyones taste, reason for purchasing and use.

After my first digital I purchased from a bargain bucket in a now long gone Techno 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, and even though the picture quality was crap, I was smitten - no more film cameras 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 film (even from a cheap 35mm compact) has been an impossible task (but is almost getting there).

These days whatever you buy is obsolete as soon as you take it out of the shop, will be lucky to outlast  the guarantee - and this ever increasing need for face detection, smile detection, blink detection, anti-shake etc is all so pointless to me!!  What did we do in the old days? We held the camera up to our eye, not hold it at arms length, that's why anti shake is so (apparently) necessary. 

I find that most compact 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 cassette decks remember them ?) Panasonic I found were the worst culprits for that, pictures taken at anything over 400 ASA looked like oll paintings. Other makes vary to a degree but mostly suffer the same fate.

You do need larger sensors to get low noise, ie those in most SLR cameras fare better than any compact will for the same resolution (exept perhaps the new Olympus and Panasonic micro 4/3  system cameras, they seem quite good - if expensive.)

Phone cameras have improved a bit now but still are no match for a "proper" camera!!

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 necessarily 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.

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

My latest camera which believe it or not I've had for nearly 3 months (a record for me)-  is the Nikon D40 at 6 megapixels. It is more than enough to get a great picture. It is small and light, has a large 2.5" screen which is easy to read and can use practically any Nikon lens (some only in manual focus mode though)... .you will only get AF with the AFS lenses or newer. This was an ebay purchase - bought faulty  - but soon repaired as Nikon are very good for spare parts - (unlike most, especially Fuji). I hope to have many more months of happy snapping with this - its the longest I've kept any camera for so far!!

Update June 2010 Still got a D40, I haven't found anything I like better yet!

DIGIMAAN