Buying Guide »


Introduction

Long gone are the days of 36 shot films and disposable flashes. The evolution of the age of the digital camera has allowed novice and expert photographers alike to review, edit and improve the quality of their pictures. Be it for the family album pic or the artistic landscape shot, the Ciao Shopping Guide to Digital Cameras gives you overview of some of the major features to look for when making your purchasing decision.


Price + Size

As you would expect, the average price of a digital camera can vary highly depending on the specifications you are looking for. For a camera that provides a basic offering, you can spend as little as £50, but expect the quality of your photos to suffer as a result. While improvements to the number of megapixels offered by cheaper cameras have been made, buyers need to look at many other factors if they want a camera that takes the perfect shot. The lack of a decent zoom, battery life, decent flash and sufficient image and editing features will all have a detrimental effect on the final photo quality. The better you want your camera to perform in these particular areas, the more you will have to spend. Good quality digital cameras will cost between £150 and £200, with the best products starting at just over £300.


Digital cameras by price



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Reviews of Digital Cameras »

Not perfect, but a very good camera

Advantages: Light. good automode or manual if you want, good lens, autofocus & anti-jitter, videoing
Disadvantages: No hotshoe, fixed LCD screen, full user guide on CD only.

A strong contender in the superzoom/prosumer/bridge class. Main advantages: * Lighter weight than most if not all rivals * Good "Intelligent Auto" mode which gives you a great "point and shoot" * Plenty of manual / semi-manual modes and scene options for those who like to fiddle * Fast autofocus * Good image stabilisation * Good Lens - 18x not 24x or 26x like some rivals, but 600mm instead of 480 isn't that important to me * Easy filming Weaknesses ...
...one which is common on this type * Intense light sources can spoil movies with lines - but apparently not unique for this type of filming, and if movies are important you should probably be getting a proper video camera anyway * No printed full user guide - supplied on CD instead, and written in the usual garbled English. * User Interface not quite good enough to make previous point irrelevant. For more detail see my review at Amazon UK ...

PeteBiddle 25.09.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38EB-K

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Takes Cool Picks

Advantages: Great camera
Disadvantages: None that I found,

...pretty good integrated flash. The Nikon P90 hasn’t fallen into the ‘small as possible’ electrical craze and is very ergonomically designed making it even more of a pleasure to use. It has an impressive battery life, I haven’t managed to run it down. My Verdict A great camera with a fairly reasonable price tag, I would recommend this to any fellow photography enthusiast as I have had a great experience with it. ...

anakha6 04.06.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Nikon Coolpix P90

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Digital Compact camera with a DSLR ability

Advantages: Have A Lot Of Features
Disadvantages: Standard Forms

...the standard forms, but the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 this provides a very high quality # Have an ability to store the results of shooting in RAW format In the back of the camera, have a wide screen LCD 3-inch color display with a bright and sharp # Start up time required camera is only about two seconds # Features autofocus it is also quite impressive both from the ability to work in low light conditions and speed work Cons * Available ...
... My Opinion This Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 provides a very high quality, even with a standard forms, from the performance side, this camera is also very satisfying. Overall, good design and performance of this camera is very satisfactory. Even Leica lens that is used also not show any symptoms of distortion or color irregularities. Need to give the thumbs up. ...

lovelyrose 23.11.2008 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3EB-K

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Canon Powershot SX1 IS Not as good as I expected

Advantages: a point and shoot 20x lens, reasonably good LCD screen
Disadvantages: image quality not great, pretty useless viewfinder, can be overly complicated to setup, CD manual

The Canon Powershot SX1 IS seems to offer the impossible, read the reviews and it seems image quality is great, the lens has an amazing range of 28-560mm, its image stabilised, its got high quality move mode, ... Having taken about 500 pictures with it so far I am not that impressed. Take the camera out of the box charge some batteries add an SD card and see what you have got. The lens diameter is miniscule when compared to an SLR , nothing unexpected ...
...a digital SLR like the Canon 5d and you will see what I mean. 2. Viewfinder is virtually useless for anything other than landscapes. It is dark and impossible to see detail, you have a 560mm telephoto lens and its impossible to see let alone focus upon a bird in a tree even at 50-100 feet. So using the LCD screen is a must, and that is a pain if you are used to a camera with a decent viewfinder and it will drain the batteries. 3. My suspicion is ...

tsahugh 24.02.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Canon PowerShot SX1 IS

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Diamond review  A Canon that lacks firepower.

Advantages: Easy to use, well built and looks good (in silver at least)!
Disadvantages: Poor image quality in some lights and not great value for money.

Canon has been producing great quality cameras since Jesus was a lad, both in the compact digital and the DSLR market. Their cameras regularly combine great looks with awesome technology and performance and the Canon IXUS 980 IS follows that pattern, well as long as you buy it in silver it does because the black version just isn't as good looking by far. This point and shoot digital camera has a huge 14.7 megapixels and it uses Canon's latest DIGIC ...
...and shoots this offering from Canon has a full metal body rather than the cheap plastic we have all had to become used to, it feels great in the hand even for a professional like me who is used to much bigger and heavier DSLR`s. On first examination I would be shouting from the rooftops about this camera but after using it will I be so happy? Read on and find out!! When I agreed to test this camera for my local camera club it was becoming the first ...

thebigc1690 23.01.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: exceptional
Review of Canon Ixus 980 IS

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