Top 10 Myths and Misconceptions about Buying a Digital Camera

The goal of this article is to clear up common myths and misconceptions about buying a digital camera, and to provide some advice and tips on buying digital cameras to people who aren't interested in becoming experts but who are also smart enough to realize that doing some basic research and reading now can save them time, money and frustration in the long-run!

This article is targeted at amateur photographers looking at buying compact digital cameras but will probably even be of interest to somebody looking to buy their first digital camera. Professional photographers tend to know all these things already, but for somebody new to the field it's difficult to get a good overview of what's true and what's not.

This is a myth. Everybody has different needs. There is no single camera that will make everybody equally happy. When buying a digital camera (especially when buying your first digital camera), you need to set some time aside to figure out which camera features you can't live without and which camera features you'd like but are not as important. Some people only want to take photos of the sea, while others only want to take photos at parties. Some people have big hands and giant fingers, while other people have small fingers. Each of these people will be better suited to different cameras.

Implication: You need to decide how you will use your digital camera. Your buddy who owns a $2,000 camera and $10,000 in camera lenses and equipment isn't you and can't tell you what's important to you. They can give you advice once you know what you want, but not before then. This is probably a good thing unless you have tons of spare cash lying around :) But if you know nothing about digital cameras then how will you know which features even exist and whether or not they're important to you? That is the subject of my upcoming Digital Camera Buyer's Guide (follow me to see when it's published!).

This a misconception. Look at this diagram:

(Don't know what all of this megapixel and sensor stuff means? Read my other hub, "What is the best digital camera to buy?"!)

Let's assume that both sensors have the same number of megapixels. Does that mean they produce the exact same picture? Unfortunately not! To make a smaller sensor with the same number of megapixels as a large sensor we need to make the light detectors smaller. It turns out that when we make smaller light detectors we run into some problems with physics. Exactly what the problems are isn't important, but the effect is that smaller sensors produce more noise:

Implication: So the next time somebody tells you their phone camera is "12 megapixels" the first thing that should occur to you is that there is no way the phone camera can have the same size sensor that you'd find in a normal 12 megapixel digital camera. Your conclusion: the "12 megapixel" phone camera will produce photos that are much noiser than a "12 megapixel" digital camera. This same logic applies to super compact vs. compact cameras vs. DLSRs, etc. The smaller the camera, the smaller the sensor is likely to be and thus the lower quality the images are likely to be even if the number of megapixels is high.

Is the opposite true? Does this sometimes mean that fewer megapixels can actually be better? Yes! Some of the higher-end ("enthusiast") compact digital cameras that you can buy (e.g. the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 and Canon G11) were specifically designed to have a sensor with fewer megapixel so that the photos produced would be of better quality than if a sensor with more megapixels had been used! The reason Panasonic and Canon reduced the number of megapixels instead of just making the sensor bigger was partly because the cameras needed to be able to fit into people's pockets and there was no more space for a larger sensor. Larger sensors also cost more to manufacture.

Canon actually originally produced the Canon G10 in 2008 with 14.7 megapixels but decided to reduce the number of megapixels to just 10 in the Canon G11 in 2009 after the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 demonstrated what a big difference this made!

This is a misconception. We know from earlier that sensor size is important, but now look at this:

Sensor size: 8.3mm x 5.8mm

Pixels: 11.3 million (but the camera only ever uses 10.1 million of these at most, hence it is considered to be a "10 megapixel camera)

Pixel density: 23.47 megapixels / cm²

These are the sensor specifications of two real cameras, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 and the Canon G11. These sensors are basically the same size and have the same number of megapixels in the same space. Does this mean that they are both equally as good? Unfortunately not!

These sensors use different designs and different electronics. Compact Canon sensors tend to be very good at sensing bright light, but not as good at sensing low levels of light. Compact Panasonic sensors tend to be more balanced and are better in low-light scenes than Canon sensors, but not quite as good as the Canon sensors in bright light. Fujifilm claims that their compact EXR sensors are than other similarly sized sensors but real world tests haven't confirmed this yet.

Note that sensor technology improves continuously as well. A 10-megapixel sensor from 3 years ago that costs the same as a 10-megapixel sensor built today is probably not going to perform as well as the newer sensor.

Implications: Know your needs! If you are going to be taking many photographs in low-light scenarios (e.g. at parties, indoors, etc.) with a compact camera then you will want to avoid most brands of digital cameras except for Panasonic, Fujifilm and Canon as most manufacturers do not have decent low-light performance except for these 3. See my upcoming guide for more information about what to expect from different brands (bookmark this page!). Some people would argue that the quality of compact camera sensors is so bad that you should always use a flash and so it doesn't matter what the camera's low-light performance is, but I don't personally believe this.

Tips: Manufacturers very rarely draw attention to the size of the sensor used in their cameras. Even when they do, they usually report the sensor size using an archaic method known as "type designation" (see this article at dpreview.com for more information). My feeling is that this is very deceptive since if you consider the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 for instance, the sensor size is designated as 1/1.63" yet the shape of the sensor is very different from other sensors that may be designated a 1/1.63"! Fortunately knowing the details are usually not that important if the camera in question has been reviewed at one of the higher quality camera review sites (see my list of links at the end of the article for examples). These sites usually take a vast number of photographs in different conditions that measure the real world performance of the sensors.

This is a misconception. Zoom lenses are very complex pieces of equipment. As the zoom range tends to get longer, the image quality tends to reduce. Often the image quality will be good at certain focal lengths while being worse at other focal lengths. Longer zoom ranges also tend to mean slower lenses, which may be an issue if you are shooting in dark conditions or if you are an action photographer.

Implication: if you're excited about buying one of those cameras with super-zoom lenses, make sure you read up about the quality of the lens and not just how much it can zoom!

This is a myth. While it is true that modern digital cameras can be very good at selecting automatic settings, manual controls give you greater creative flexibility. Even more important, they may help you recover from a situation where your camera doesn't make good automatic selections.

Implications: Give preference to a digital camera with manual controls if at all possible. Different manufacturers have different philosophies here. Panasonic tend to give users more control across all their camera models, whereas Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm tend to only give their users more control in their higher-end camera models.

This is a myth. Electronic Viewfinders (EVFs) show miniature versions of whatever you see on the LCD screen of your camera. These are digital images and therefore come with a number of limitations:

• there is a lag between when you point your camera somewhere and when the image updates;
• the resolution of the EVF can make manual focusing difficult if it is not high enough for you to see the detail you want to see;
• the amount of detail you can see is only as good as the underlying sensor, which usually means you can't see much detail in low-light conditions;
• EVFs consume power whereas optical viewfinders don't.
  

Implications: While electronic viewfinders also have some advantages over optical viewfinders, it is important to keep in mind that they come with various trade-offs.

This is a misconception. If you and I both have ten megapixel cameras with the same sensors and lenses, do we end up with the same photo quality? Not necessarily.

Raw data. Digital cameras save the image data into a computer file. The most obvious way to do this is called the "raw" method. In this method, all the information from the sensor is simply saved into a file. That's a lot of information! For modern high-resolution cameras, this could mean files that are tens of megabytes in size, even if the data is also compressed by the camera. It takes a long time to read/write so much data, and it means you can't fit as many photos on your memory card. Raw photographs are usually stored in file formats proprietary to the camera manufacturer, although companies like Adobe have been pushing to use more standard formats (e.g. DNG). Most consumer-level cameras do not support the raw method.

Lossy compression. That's why a second way exists: the "lossy compression" method. In this method, the photograph is simplified and compressed to save space. The advantage is more photographs can fit on your memory card. The disadvantage is you lose picture quality when you simplify the picture data, hence the term "lossy". (The "raw" method is considered "lossless" since no information is lost.) Lossy photographs are usually stored as "JPEG" files.

Implications: Some cameras let you choose to what extent you want the data simplified for JPEGs, but even so in practice there is a huge different between the highest quality lossy compression setting (usually called "Fine" or "Superfine") on the camera and the quality of RAW photographs. If you want the most information retained in your photographs (important if you plan on doing things like HDR or if you take many photos in the dark without a flash), having a camera that supports the raw method can go a long way.

This is a myth. There can often be very large differences between the performance of the flash unit on cameras that are otherwise very similar. For instance, compare the waterproof Canon D10, which has a flash range quoted at 3.2 meters with the Panasonic TS1 (FT1 in Europe) which has a quoted flash range of 5.1 meters -- that's a 60% greater range. (Of course, Canon D10 is rated to be waterproof to a depth 3x more than the Panasonic, so if you're buying a waterproof camera you will want to look at all the data.)

Implication: Read camera reviews (see the links section at the end of this article) and make sure you buy a camera that suits the types of photos you're taking!

This is a misconception. Image stabilization cannot freeze moving objects -- all it can do is reduce blur caused by the camera itself moving. In otherwords, if your hand is shaking then image stabilization can help reduce image blur caused by that. But if somebody in front of the camera is moving, then image stabilization won't be able to 'freeze' them -- they will still end up blurring if the shutter speed is too slow.

Scenario: Let's say you have two cameras with the same sensors but different lenses and image stabilization technologies:

Camera 1: the lens can open up to F2.0 at the desired focal length (zoom) and has basic image stabilization.

Camera 2: the lens can only open up to F3.2 at the desired focal length and has much better image stabilization (half the blurring from camera shake compared to camera 1).

You are trying to take a photograph of a band playing on stage and the sun set 2 hours ago. Which camera will produce the image with the best overall quality? Assuming that the basic image stabilization in camera 1 is good enough that the amount of blurring from camera shake is acceptable at the desired shutter speed, then camera 1 wins without a doubt.

Technical discussion: To make this clear, let's say that at ISO 200 the first camera needs a shutter speed of 1/40s for a decent exposure. The second camera would need a shutter speed of 1/10s at ISO 200 for the same exposure because the lens is 4 times slower at F3.6 than at F2.0. This will more than likely result in somebody on the stage blurring significantly. To get the same shutter speed as the first camera, the user of the second camera would need to increase the ISO to 800. This will more than likely introduce much undesired noise. So even though the second camera will normally produce a sharper image, that is useless if the subject of the photo is blurred because it is moving!

Technical example: This is a photo I took of a band playing at a music festival. This photo would have been impossible to take without increasing noise significantly when using a camera that had a similar sensor but slower lens at the same focal length (e.g. F3.6 on most competing cameras), even if the camera had good image stabilization. Caveat: many lenses do not perform at their best when wide open! My LX3 would produce a sharper photo at F3.6 than at F2.0. That being said, in a low light situation you don't really have this option with a compact camera, so having a fast lens vastly outweighs the minor loss in sharpness caused by having the lens wide open.

Implication: Iimage stabilization is very useful but it cannot make up for a slow lens.

This is a myth. Nikon, for example, produce excellent DSLR cameras that few people would consider to be of low quality. Nikon compact cameras on the other hand, consistently perform very poorly when compared to the likes of Panasonic, Fujifilm and Canon compact cameras.

Implication: Unless there's a good reason to stick to one brand (e.g. you are buying a camera that supports interchangeable lenses and want to be able to re-use your lenses), be open to the idea that different manufacturers have different strengths. Be willing to look into products from different manufacturers before making a decision to buy and you'll end up feeling far more satisfied!