It can be a hard decision deciding what camera to buy, but before you choose a digital camera you must decide what kind of photographer you want to be. Most people use their camera for everyday snapshots of friends, kids, family and events. If that’s all you need it for you’ll most likely be just looking for a camera that’s easy to use and compact.

Almost all compact cameras have auto focus, which helps us non-professional photographers take easy photos without having to worry about exposure and all that kind of stuff. Lots of these “easy-to-use” cameras come with scene modes for landscape, portraits and night shots etc. to make it even easier to use and get that prefect picture without even trying.

If you however hobbyists you may desire better visual effect and control. You should consider a camera with manual exposure controls, advanced features, extra optical zoom that will allow you more creativity when taking photos.

You’ll hear lots of talk about megapixels and this has become one of the main selling points of cameras. So what are they you may ask, basically the more megapixels available the higher the resolution of the photo, which will be sharper and have better colour details.

There’s plenty of manufactures trying to out do each other in the megapixel area, the decision you need to make is down to what type of photographer you want to be, if you just want to print on ordinary 4 x 6 paper you wont notice much difference between three megapixel and seven. If on the other hand you hope to move into the semi or full professional photographer the high rating of eight or ten megapixels will allow you to capture a high level of picture detail which in turn will look better on large printouts of the photo.

We have covered only some of the basics here to help you to start understanding some of the features that digital cameras have. At first this can be daunting but as you do your research you’ll get to understand the terminology better.