How to Take Excellent Pictures with Your Digital Camera

These days, decent-quality digital cameras can be purchased for as little as $100. Bump that up to about $250 and quality approaches professional levels. Taking really good digital pictures depends only partly on the camera, though. The most important part of taking a digital picture - as with a film picture - is the person who pushes the shutter release button.

Do you have what it takes to take great pictures with a digital camera? Learning just takes time and practice -- and a little basic knowledge.

Camera ABCs

First things first. When looking for a good quality digital camera, check out the reviews. More money doesn't always equal better, and doing your homework online costs nothing. There are several review sites online. The most comprehensive is at www.dpreview.com. Their site allows you to browse by brand name and specific model. It provides an in-depth analysis of most digital cameras now on the market. Dpreview.com compares a specific camera to other brands and models, giving pros and cons of every model, and even showing the results of the same picture taken with different cameras.

More Isn't Always Better

Contrary to popular belief, high megapixels don't automatically equal a crisp, clear image. As the number of megapixels rises in digital camera development, the camera has to cram more and more information into a set amount of space. Sometimes the pixel size gets crunched so small that the color dots(or pixels) end up bleeding over to surrounding pixels. That results in a blurry image. An example is the Canon A630 digital camera vs. the Canon A640. They're the same brand and the A640 is the upgrade of the A630. The A630 has an 8 megapixel sensor, while the A640 costs $100 more and has 10 megapixels. Of the two, the A630 takes cleaner pictures.

Noisy Images