What Makes A Great Point-And-Shoot Digital Camera

A digital camera is an indispensible gadget these days especially if you have lots of great moments in your life to capture. However, the market is saturated with all kinds of digital camera. Some are truly dedicated for professional photographer and many are designed for the common mass. Now, if you happen to be in this common mass you're in luck since you have the luxury of numerous brands of makes to choose from. But which ones are actually the best choices for average Joes who want a point-and-shoot camera?

A great camera should come with well balanced combination of image quality, functionality and handling and also value for money. Now, we'll discuss what are the important features that a point-and-shoot digital cameras should have.

1. Good resolution and picture quality
In everyday situation you can't control how much light there is when you're taking a picture. Therefore it is essential that the camera you choose can produce good quality pictures with sharp details when light is abundant and when light is low like when you're taking indoor pictures or when you're taking night scenes.

2. Good value for money
There are a number of great cameras below $300 available in the market. Any cameras priced over $300 are meant for the semi-pros and professional photographers. Don't bother paying for cameras with features that you will probably never use anyway. Save you money to buy extra batteries and additional memory cards.

3. Excellent movie quality
There are times when you would prefer to take a movie instead of a still picture with your camere. For instance when you kids are playing you want to record their laughter and everything that they do. Even though a digital camera will never produce a movie as good as a camcorder you would definitely need one that can produce good quality movie.

4. Fast, reliable focus
My old camera totally lacks this feature. It is so slow to focus that when i'm ready to shoot the object (which is usually my son) already moved. You really won't want that to happen to you. A camera with slow focus will only make you miss lots of precious one-in-a-lifetime moments.

5. Big bright screen
The day of small and dark LCD screen is long gone. The average digital cameras sold today come with 2.5-inch LCD display for easy on-camera viewing. And these are for fairly priced cameras with price below $250. Don't bother buying a camera if the LCD display is smaller than 2.5-inch. It is annoying because if you want to check the pictures you just taken you would need to zoom the pictures to see if it's good or not.

6. Clear and understandable menu and control layout
A point-and-shoot camera should be just that. Anyone should be able to take pictures by simply pointing the camera to the desired object then click a single button. My five year old niece can operate a digital camera easily. Taking pictures, movies, view the taken pictures, deleting undesirable pictures and many more. Now, that's what i call a camera with understandable menu and control layout.

7. Effective image stabilization
Sadly some cameras with claim to have image stabilization feature are making false claim so when you're recording a movie they record every shake and move you make. One camera that does have working image stabilization is Canon PowerShot A570 IS.

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