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 »

Brill Camera

Advantages: Lifelong memories
Disadvantages: Batteries are quite expensive

...the website and found the JVC DVL 9200. It does everything for you but wash the dishes. As we are into family movie making in a big way we were delighted to find that we would download our film on to the computer, using a fire wire port, edit it and then save it to a cd. This camera is ideal for this as the film you get is clear and the sound is brilliant. However after a few goes we then discovered that with a different JVC model, DVL 9800 with ...

Janeinnes 05.11.2000 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of JVC GR-DVL 9200

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Well worth the investment

Advantages:
Disadvantages:

I bought my JVC GC-S1 in New York last year. I used the camera to take pictures of the holiday and was please with the result. The great thing was being able to see the photos that I had taken and just delete the ones that didn't turn out just right. The only problem with the camera was that it took a heavy toll on the batteries. As soon as i returned from holidays I invested in an AC adaptor in order to transfer the pictures to my computer. I was ...
...ANother useful accessories for this camera is a wide angle lens as it allows you to take more picturesque pictures. I would also recommend buying an AC adaptor as it is very hard on the batteries during the transfer process. This camera comes with decent photo enhancement software but I would still advise purchasing photosuite which is the best software for this task ...

Maribor 07.08.2000 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
Review of JVC GC-S1

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A good all rounder

Advantages: Excellent range of features
Disadvantages: Windows Me incompatibility

...I was attracted to the JVC as it featured much more than similar cameras in the price range. Things like rechargeable battery, USB link (more of this later!), TV out, motion video capture, large LCD viewer, macro, 3x optical zoom and a menu bigger than a Happy Eater. You can either use the camera as an automatic or manual, manual allowing you to adjust practically everything from shutter speed to the iris setting. Images can be captured in three ...
...standard, fine and no compression. Be warned though that for no compression you're going to need to invest in a minimum 32mb Smartmedia card. The camera ships with an 8mb card, and has no internal memory. It's more complicated than your usual digital camera, but for those who truly understand photography (and that excludes me!) it's a great little machine. It comes in a brushed aluminium casing, which makes a nice change from the black plastic casing ...

stuee 20.08.2001 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of JVC GC X1

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Good thing

Advantages:
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I saw a special offer for this camera and got it. So far I have been really satisfied. Although it only has 1,5 megapixels and is therefore not professional, for amateurs like me it is totally sufficient. The normal photos you get are excellent quality. Via a card (8 MB memory) the pictures are stored in JPG format. An adapter comes with the camera so that your computer drive can directly read it. The batteries provide 2 hours when using the display ...
...I reckon this is probably one of the cheapest digital cameras on the market and it’s still easy to use and of high quality standard. My only reservation is with the SmartCards - they, because they looked a bit rugged, even after only a few days. And I AM a careful person!! ...

El_Guapo 14.06.2000 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
Review of JVC GC S5

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camera for an average person

Advantages: easy and affordable price
Disadvantages: much bigger

The Canon PowerShot A460 would have been a good camera a few years ago, but these days it just doesn't cut it. With only 5-megapixel resolution and horrible image noise, we can't easily recommend this camera. Even among sub-$150 cameras, there are better choices out there. Image quality was otherwise decent. The automatic white balance produced a drastic yellow cast under our lab's tungsten lights, though the tungsten preset proved very neutral, ...
...noticed some purple fringing around bright highlights, and while the images weren't the sharpest we've ever seen, they were on a par in that respect with other cameras in this price range. As a budget shooter, the A460 fails to really stand out of the crowd. Its most notable aspect is its 38mm-to-152mm-equivalent 4x lens, slightly more powerful than the 3x lenses found on most snapshot cameras. Its 2-inch LCD, however, is just a bit smaller than ...

arshad101 09.11.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: not helpful
Review of Canon PowerShot A460

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