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Compact Brilliance

Finally, if all you want from life (at least in terms of cameras) is a no-frills simple-to-use digital camera that takes sharp, nicely exposed photos and weighs less than a hamburger, there are legions of compacts waiting to win your heart. While many of these cameras were trapped in the 2-megapixel zone at the outset, today five megapixel cameras are considered an entry point and I'm guessing that by the end of 2007 the entry point will be eight megapixels and even 10 will be pretty common. You'll be making 20 x 40-inch prints from a 10 MP point-and-shoot camera!

The beauty of compact (OK, we can call them point-and-shoot) cameras is that you can take them anywhere--and that is a real advantage. You can't take any pictures if your camera is home in a shoulder bag or back in the hotel room while your shoudler recovers from carrying too much gear. I love having a pocket-sized camera with me when I travel because I take it into restaurants, museums, friends apartments--places that I would probably not haul an SLR.

Probably the first big when you start to shop for point-and-shoots is just how much these small wonders have in common with cameras costing (and weighing) several times as much. All compacts, for example, have excellent auto focus, good quality light meters, both optical and LCD viewfinders, built-in flash, have macro settings and most offer at least minimal white balance control. And because their sensors are so small and their lenses so short they provide extraordinary depth of field and super-close focusing ability. And I mean REALLY good close-up ability--like an inch or less away!

You will, of course, have to brave the world with considerably less control over metering and exposure: while you might get a choice of a few subject modes, you will rarely have no user-selectable options, such as aperture or shutter priority modes or exposure bracketing. That said, I will probably have to eat those words fairly soon: advanced metering options have been drifting down and quickly to less expensive cameras.

Also, in terms of flash, most compacts will not have a hot shoe, which eliminates the possibility of adding an accessory flash.

And so...

I hope that this look at camera types and styles has helped you identify the type of camera you're after. Price is, of course, a major factor for most people and you'll love the camera more if you have enough money left over to do fun things like eat or put gas in the car after you've bought it--so keep price in mind, too. The one final bit of advice I will offer though is that you should buy as much camera as you can afford--it's easy to turn features off or ignore them if you don't need them right away, but you can't glue them back on later if you buy a lesser camera.