It’s common to find digital cameras with a 3x optical zoom lens. You’ll find some have as much as 10x.
When putting this digital camera buyers guide together I found some cameras will advertise something like a 5x zoom without specifying if it’s optical or digital. Make sure you read the fine print.
OK, you’ve figured out Megapixels and understand optical zoom is better than digital zoom….it’s time to move on.
Next up, step 3 of the digital camera buyers guide…

Digital Camera Buyers Guide

Step #3..You’ll Need Memory

Digital cameras use memory instead of film to store pictures. The memory is reusable, unlike film in a traditional camera.
In this step of the digital camera buyers guide we’ll cover the types of memory and what you should know about each.

There’s two main types:
1. Internal or Built-In Memory
2. Removable Memory…referred to as ‘Memory cards’.
Low-end digital cameras will sometimes use built-in memory, however, most popular digital cameras use removable memory cards. Removable memory cards allows you to easily upgrade to handle more pictures.
You can simply remove the memory card from the digital camera and slip in a new one.
This gives you some flexibility to upgrade to a larger memory card or to swap out a full one with a spare so that you can keep snapping away.
This is especially useful when you’re away from your computer or taking a lot of pictures on one trip.
There are several different types of memory cards used by the different manufacturers. Most are about the size of a match book or stick of gum.
CompactFlash is the most popular type of memory card. SmartMedia and the Sony Memory Stick are also widely used. Less popular ones include MultiMediaCards, CompactFlash II, and IBM Microdrives.
Digital Camera Buyers Guide Tip: CompactFlash is typically the most durable and cheapest memory available. This type is used by Canon, Nikon, Casio, Minolta, HP and some older Kodak models.
Most Olympus and Fuji digital cameras use SmartMedia cards….and both are now introducing a new type of card - called XD Memory cards.
These XD cards are tiny! About half the size of CompactFlash memory cards and they’re really fast…so writing your picture to the card is pretty quick.
Sony has created its own type of memory card called the ‘Memory Stick’. They use the same cards in Sony digital cameras, video cameras and the Sony personal digital assistant (their version of the Palm Pilot). This makes it really easy to share pictures between all their products.
Researching for this digital camera buyers guide I found Sony also has a digital camera that uses small recordable CDs instead of memory cards. These can be used in any CD-ROM drive. It’s the Sony MVC-CD250 2MP CD Mavica…pretty cool!
MultiMediaCards (and their newer cousin - Secure Digital cards) are used in Palm Pilots, some Panasonic camcorders and newer Kodak cameras.
The IBM Microdrive fits into a special type of CompactFlash slot, called CompactFlash Type II. These can hold the largest amount of pictures on a single card, more than 1Gig (1000MB) worth of your pictures.
Most digital cameras will come with one 16MB or 32MB (MB = Mega Byte) memory card. The more MBs the more pictures you can hold on the memory card.

Here’s an estimate of how many pictures will fit on memory cards with different sizes…

Camera Resolution 16MB Memory Card 128MB Memory Card
1 Megapixel 40 pictures 360 pictures
2 Megapixel 17 pictures 140 pictures
3 Megapixel 13 pictures 100 pictures
Digital Camera Buyers Guide Memory Summary

So if you plan to take a lot of pictures it may be a good idea to buy more memory for your camera. You can expect to pay less than a dollar per MB.
Putting this digital camera buyers guide together I found 128 MB CompactFlash memory cards for $40…and you can buy them almost anywhere. I noticed my local drug store now carries them!
Alright, we now understand memory!
Next up in the digital camera buyers guide are…LCDs…

Digital Camera Buyers Guide

Most digital cameras come with an optical viewfinder (the thing you look through to take your picture), just like the one you use on regular film cameras.
Today almost all digital cameras also come with a LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). This allows you to see your pictures instantly! The LCD looks like a mini computer screen.
Putting together this digital camera buyers guide I found only a few beginner cameras don’t have LCDs. Also, you may find a couple of 1 and 2 Megapixel cameras without them….when you see a really low price there’s probably no LCD.

LCDs use the same technology as flat screen displays. They are one of the best features of digital cameras. After you take each picture you can see if you’ve cut anyone’s head off or maybe half an arm!
You can also use the LCD to preview how the picture will look before you take it. They’re also great for browsing your pictures and deleting any that don’t make the cut.
Digital Camera Buyers Guide Tip: If you wear eyeglasses look for a digital camera with a focusable diopter in the optical viewfinder so you can adjust the focus.
And beware! Some digital cameras do not have viewfinders, only a LCD. This is bad for two reasons:
1. It’s difficult to hold the camera steady while looking at a little LCD screen.
2. LCDs eat up a lot of battery power. So if you’re using the LCD all the time because you don’t have a viewfinder – keep extra batteries handy!
One more thing to note….more expensive digital cameras will sometimes refer to themselves as SLR cameras. SLR stands for Single Lens Reflex - in plain English - this means that what you see in the viewfinder is exactly what comes out in your picture.

There’s another type of viewfinder that you should know about. They’re like mini LCD screens and replace the optical viewfinder.
They’re called EVFs - Electronic View Finders.
An EVF can provide a very accurate view of your picture but some tend to be choppy or very dark when used in poor lighting - however they are becoming more and more popular.
Fuji Film is using them quite a lot on their higher end models.
Okay, all done with viewfinders and LCDs.
Next up in the digital camera buyers guide, Power…