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Remember the days when you had to wait for days to get your camera\’s film processed so you could finally see those photos of your holiday or vacation? With the onset of digital cameras those days are gone forever. Digital cameras not only give you instant photo gratification, they also give us clearer photos and an incredible opportunity to enhance them digitally. In fact, very few people rely on professional photographers anymore since we can capture amazing photos of our own lives without their help.

If you are looking at buying digital cameras you will find that there are a wide variety of choices, from inexpensive point and shoot cameras to expensive SLR options. While we have the typical misconception that if it is inexpensive it isn\’t of good quality, when it comes to digital cameras you can throw the notion out the window. You can easily find an inexpensive digital camera that has a wide variety of options and will be able to meet all your needs.

If you don\’t require a professional quality camera you will find that the inexpensive digital cameras are ideal. Each of the major, name brand manufacturers, including Fuji, Kodak, Samsung, Olympus, Nikon and HP, have digital cameras available at reasonable prices. For as low as $100 you can find a camera that has up to 10 mega pixels and a great zoom lens. These cameras are compact and can be carried with you anywhere so you can take great pictures no matter where you are.

For under $50 you can find cameras with anywhere from 3.1 to 5 mega pixels which make these cameras perfect for printing out digital photos up to 8×10 in size. The features on these cameras are a bit more limited, with a smaller zoom range, yet they are ideal for typical personal use.

If you want to get the most for your money when buying digital cameras, I recommend you do some Internet research to find the camera that meets your exact specifications. Understanding the terms and knowing what you would ideally like to have in your camera will help in your search. While the Internet has many opportunities to find a deal, knowing what it is you are looking for will help you find a great camera at an incredible price.

If you wish to spend a bit more money I would definitely recommend you look at cameras in the $100 to $200 range. These cameras come with an incredible amount of features and are great for those who wish to take more professional quality photos. Most of these cameras are compact enough to take wherever you wish to go to get incredible, spur of the moment, photos.

Most cameras on the market today are incredibly compact, generally small enough to be slipped into the pocket. Most of these cameras have 3 to 5 mega pixels which should create prints in the 4×6 – 8×10 range. The higher the mega pixel the larger the print you will be able to make, as well as the better the overall quality of the photo. A few of the manufacturers that you will want to look for include Konica, Minolta, Nikon, Sony and Olympus. At this price range some of the features you can expect are optical zoom, multi scene, LCD and a few other useful functions.

If you wish to spend more than $200 when buying digital cameras, you will find 12 mega pixels, image stabilization high resolution sensors and an ultra compact body. You can even find SLR cameras at this price range, allowing you to change out lenses. While SLR cameras are bulkier you are definitely moving from the point and shoot to the professional arena. Ultra compact cameras are also found in this price range. Ultra compacts are generally the size of a credit card. Even though these cameras are incredibly thin they still contain the advanced features such as digital zoom and LCD.

Prior to purchasing your camera check out the various sites on the Internet to ensure you get the best price. As well as finding the best price you can also use the Internet for getting information on discounts as well as keeping abreast of the latest innovations in digital cameras. You should always make the price comparisons before the final deal.

Figure out what your ideal digital camera would include then search the Internet for it, always looking for the best deal when buying digital cameras.

Dan Feildman
http://www.articlesbase.com/clothing-articles/buying-amazing-and-inexpensive-digital-cameras-online-1282280.html

The hottest thing in the digital camera market is undoubtedly the digital SLR, which is better known as a dSLR. While dSLRs are flying off dealer shelves, many new users are confused about the terminology. Most people know that SLR stands for “single lens reflex.” Since nearly all SLRs accept interchangeable lenses, it would appear they should be known as multiple lens reflex (MLR) cameras.

If you want to understand how the SLR received it’s name, you have to dip into the history of the camera. Early cameras were similar to the view cameras used today. The photographer looked through the lens, focused, composed and then inserted a single film plate behind the optics to make an image. While the entire process was crude by modern standards, the photographer enjoyed great control, since he looked directly through the actual imaging lens to compose the shot.

While this was fine for still life, portraits and landscapes, this process did not lend itself to action photography. These early cameras could only record a single image at a time. Which is why you have never seen a motor-driven view camera.

Realizing the need to offer sequences of exposures, camera makers begin to experiment with various roll-film designs. With a roll of film in the camera, the photographer could fire off numerous images without reloading. Although this improved throughput dramatically, it caused another problem. The roll of film had to pass closely behind the camera’s optics, which meant that the photographer could no longer look through the camera lens to compose and focus.

Rangefinder cameras appear to keep things in focus

The lower-end, consumer roll-film cameras generally used an inexpensive “fixed-focus” lens, so a simple viewfinder was sufficient. Better quality optics, however, require the lens to be focused, and since the photographer could not look through the lens with a roll-film camera, this was a major problem. One of the first solutions to this problem was the Rangefinder — a type of camera that offered a distance measuring scale in the viewfinder. By determining the range from the viewfinder, the photographer could then adjust the focus to match — usually with very good results.

Twin Lens Reflex cameras offer another solution

While the rangefinder type cameras worked well, the camera industry is always evolving. A second method of allowing the photographer to focus and compose appeared in the “Twin-Lens Reflex” cameras. These cameras used two identical lenses, arranged one on top of the other in the manner of an over-and-under shotgun. The film winds past the lower lens, while the photographer can focus through the upper lens. The twin-lens cameras were fairly bulky, so designers added a mirror and ground glass to the top of the camera, hence the term “reflex.

Now the user could hold the camera at waist level and look down at the ground glass which previewed the image via the mirror located behind the upper lens. As the user adjusted the focus on the upper lens, a gear mechanism moved the lower “taking lens” to match.

While both rangefinders and twin-lens reflex cameras offered a credible way to focus and preview a shot, neither allowed the photographer to actually look through the actual lens. This sometimes made exact composition difficult.

SLRs take cameras another step forward

In their quest to allow users to see through the actual “taking” lens, camera makers turned to the periscope — a simple device using two mirrors placed at opposite angles to bend the light path. Periscopes are easy to understand — any kid can construct one from a couple of mirrors and some scrap wood.

In a camera, the lower mirror is placed at a 45 degree angle directly behind the lens. Light striking the mirror is projected upwards to a ground glass. While a second mirror would show the image on the ground glass to the user, it would not appear right, because mirrors tend to reverse things. So camera designers added a prism arrangement that corrects the reversed image. When you peer through the viewfinder on a SLR, you look through a prism, which displays the image on a ground glass, which displays the projected image from the mirror located behind the lens.

There is just one problem. If you have been paying attention, you have no-doubt realized that the lower mirror blocks the light path to the film (or digital sensor as the case may be.) Now the photographer can look though the lens, but the image cannot be projected on to the filmplane.

So the camera designers had to add another wrinkle. They had to move that mirror. Just long enough to make an exposure, since when the mirror moved, the photographer could no longer see anything through the lens. So they designed the “instant-return” mirror. At the instant of exposure, the mirror flies upward, the shutter fires and the mirror snaps back down. It is a incredible feat, when you consider that instant return mirrors have to flip up and back in a heartbeat, over and over for the life of the camera.

Once the instant return mirror was perfected, photographers could once again design their images by looking through the lens. Unlike the twin lens reflex, this new breed of camera needed only one lens to focus and shoot with. So they became known as… you guessed it…Single-Lens Reflex cameras.

Tom Bonner
http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/slr-cameras-what-is-a-single-lens-reflex-679956.html