Tech Talk: Snap happy for holidays

THIS is the week many of us will be shopping for sun cream and a new suitcase – and perhaps a nice new digital camera to slip into our holiday shorts. But which are the best ones, and how do you pick your way through the minefield of technical mumbo-jumbo put out by the manufacturers?

Come to that, do you need a new camera at all, when your phone is perfectly capable of taking half-decent snaps?

The answer is that it depends what you want to do with your photos once you’ve taken them. Phones are fine for emailing low-resolution shots (and videos, too) and posting them on to Facebook – but for printing, displaying and enjoying your work for years to come there’s no substitute for a proper camera.

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The trouble is, everyone’s definition of what constitutes a “proper” camera is different, and the makers’ descriptions are no help. Most camera brands, in fact, insist on ranking their models on a scale which is all but pointless: the so-called Megapixel rating.

Pixels are the electronic units which make up a digital photo. A million of them equals one megapixel and – the theory goes – the more of them the better defined the image.

This is true, but only up to a point. Unless you’re David Bailey, you’re unlikely to want to blow up your pictures beyond 10x8 inches, and a camera packing six megapixels is more than adequate for that. More precious than pixels is the sensor inside. This is to digital cameras what film was to traditional ones: the bit that gets exposed to light so it can record what it sees. The bigger the sensor the more light it can capture, and the less noisy your pictures will be. Pocket-size cameras have smaller sensors than those with interchangeable lenses, but they’re still bigger than camera phones.

And don’t forget that no matter how complex the electronics, your pictures will only ever be as good as the lens. The more expensive the camera the better its optics will be, and it’s a good rule of thumb that the lenses are best on cameras whose manufacturers you’ve actually heard of. Nikon, Canon and Sony represent the gold standard, and Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic and Samsung also tend not to risk their reputations with inferior optics.

Finally, don’t confuse a “digital zoom” for a real, optical one: it’s manufacturer-speak for no zoom lens at all.

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