Can you recommend me some great digital cameras?

[kpnet]

I am totally ignorant with digital cameras since the last one I used was from the first generation five years ago. And I hate relying on PCWorld.com for reviews since they are selective and base their "rankings" too much on bells and whistles and not so much on performance.

Can you educate the dumb and tell me what a megapixel is and how it relates to image quality? What is better? Higher or lower megapixels?

All I want is decent battery life, fantastic image quality at a high resolution, great zoom-in, and something I can use to easily transfer the data to my computer. Again, this is where I show my ignorance. The last camera I used relied on a stone-age floppy disk for storage. In today's cameras, I don't know what a "Compact-Flash" or a "XD-Picture" card means. Is it like one of those Panasonic SD cards? How would I hook these cards up to my computer?

[VHockey86]

A megapixel is simply a term used to measure the resolution of a digital camera. Obviously due to the "mega" prefix it means "millions" of pixels. If you multiple the resolution out (IE 1600x1200 = 1,920,000), its the total number of pixels. 1600x1200 is the resolution of what they consider a 2 mega pixel camera (they tend to round it off quite a bit).

To my knowledge Canon powershot cameras are very popular.

Realistically 3 Megapixels is probably all the average user needs. Even 2 maybe. 4 is a bit over the top, and the images take considerable memory card size, but its not too bad. My sisters 4 Megapixel toshiba camera will take 81 full resolution pictures on a 128MB card.

:Compact Flash, XD-Picture, SD Memory, Smart Media. These are all different types of memory cards. These cards ranged in size (and therefore definately in price). Popular sizes are same as system memory for a computer. 16/32/64/128/256/512/1024. Depending on the type of card, the prices depends. Smart media for example is amazingly thin (like 1mm if not smaller) and is the most expensive that I know of. 128MB cards are reasonably priced and give you quite alot of picture storage

Another thing to consider with digital cameras is the type of battery. Some require you to use 2-4 AA batteries, which if you buy simple alkaline will cost ALOT!!! Those LCD screens on the camera eat up battery like nothing. If it does take AA or AAA bateries, you're best bet is to buy a set of NiMH (nickel metal hydride) batteries which are rechargeable and have more life per charge than alkaline bats.

Other cameras have lithium-ion batteries built into the camera (rechargeable of course). These are the same as many laptop batteries, as well as PDAs, Mp3 players, etc.

edit -- oh ya left off one question.

Most cameras connect to your computer via USB (mini-usb connector on 1 end, full size for computer end). Others use firewire, but it seems less and less of them are using firewire now, especially with USB 2.0

[kpnet]

Vhockey, that was very informative! Thank you!

I only have a few more questions and I'll shutup. Are Compact Flash, XD-Picture, SD Memory, Smart Media simply brand names interchangeable with any camera? If one digital camera used compact flash, could I use SD cards instead with no problem?

And when I hookup my digital camera via USB, would I just leave the card inside the camera and my computer would read it? I assume whichever camera I buy comes with the proper software.

My computer only has USB 1.1 jacks, so I guess I could buy a USB 2.0 PCI card and that would give me optimal performance?

[VHockey86]

Definately not, all those are different memory types (although they probably store data basically the same they are different sizes/shapes etc). Goto some different online stores and search for each of the different types, you should be able to see some pictures.

Maybe someone else knows better, but to my knowledge I really dont think any one of them is all that much better than another. Never heard much about XD-Picture. SD Memory and Compact Flash are ones I've heard of quite a bit.

How it acts when plugged into your computer will depend slightly on your operating system. 98 and up should automatically detect the camera when you connect, and on the first time prompt you to install the drivers. They will no doubt be included w/ software on a CD that comes with the camera. In the case of my sisters camera, I just plugged it into a usb port, XP automatically detected it and I could acess the cards memory almost immediately. It showed up as a removable drive in "my computer." From there I simply copy and pasted the pictures onto my hard drive.

Its probably too neccesary to go out and buy a USB 2.0 card... but as cheap as they are it proly woudnt hurt. USB ports on the front of the case are much handier for somethign like a camera, but if its in the back I would simply leave the cable plugged in and have the end that connects to the camera coming out on your desk.

Note that if the camera uses USB 2.0 it will still work fine with 1.1 (all USB 2.0 is backwards compatible with 1.1)

A couple other notes I just thought about. You might see things talking about optical zoom and digital zoom.. Optical zoom is the only one that really counts... It actually focuses the lens to take the same resolution of a "zoomed" image. Digital zoom just takes the image the camera lens sees and blows it up, making the image appear big, but at a lower resolution. Combined zooming is when you digitally zoom on an image that was also using optical zooming (that might not make much sense, i dunno, I feel like im rambling at the moment).

Check out this link for reviews'/recommendations
http://reviews.cnet.com/Digital_came...g=cnetfd.glnav

[kpnet]

Cool! You have been most helpful VHockey. It's like I've been a sleep for a generation because digital camera technology has evolved so much since the last time I used one.