Capturing beautiful moments and making them quickly accessible is no longer a rich man’s forte. Most of us have access to our memorable moments with just one click. Digital cameras save you a lot of time. Once the photo has been taken, you can simply download those images to a computer and make them accessible on the web in a variety of ways. Digital cameras record and store photographic images in digital format. Image capture is usually achieved through the use of a photosensor, using a charged pair device (CCD). After transferring the images to your computer, you can edit them and save them to a compact disc or hard drive.

With digital cameras, you can instantly capture the image you’d love to keep forever. Remove unwanted images easily. Without the hassle of buying movies. You do not need to print all the images; you are in full control of the final print after editing on the computer. Don’t worry about the negatives getting damaged or lost. You can store many images without having to change or buy film.

There are many brands of digital cameras available in the market today. These include: Sony, Canon, Olympus, Nikon, Kodak, Minolta, and Fuji. These are some famous brands all over the world. Even basic digital camera models have many features, levels, and menus. This makes it difficult for beginners to select the right camera that meets their needs. Digital cameras are available in all price ranges depending on how many features they have. Before you start comparing features, you need to decide for what purpose you would like to use your digital camera. The best way to start your search is to log on to the web and visit all the sites that offer feature and price comparisons for different types and brands of digital cameras.

Almost all digital cameras today have the live preview feature, where a screen is provided on the camera to see the preview of the image you just clicked on. The most frequently compared feature in digital cameras is “megapixel.” This means the number of pixels in millions. Therefore, a four megapixel camera would have four million pixels. The other important features to compare include optical and digital zoom capability; connectivity with other devices such as computer, printer, etc.; internal storage space, as well as compatibility with external storage devices; memory cards; batteries; and image file formats.

Many digital cameras offer connectivity via USB port, FireWire port, USB PTP mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. These days, many cameras offer PictBridge mode which allows direct printing from the digital camera without the intermediary of a computer. Although all cameras have a certain amount of internal memory, external memory cards are required to save more images. These include Micro Drives or Compact Flash memory cards that are generally used for high-end professional cameras. Sony’s Memory Stick is a proprietary flash memory card. SD/MMC, Mini SD and Micro SD cards are the ones that are mainly used for commercial digital cameras.

If you are an amateur photographer, you should select a camera with automatic settings and functions. This will help you get the right images for the amount of light and scenes without too much effort. But if you are looking for a professional camera, you should go for the one that allows you to select all the shooting modes manually. There are many shooting modes available on the latest digital camera models, including landscape, portrait, panorama, action settings, night mode, beach mode, snow mode, and sunset/sunrise modes.

Common formats you can output the image in include JPEG, TIFF, DNG, etc. For videos, the most common formats are AVI, DV, MPEG, MOV, WMV, ASF, and MP4.