Tuesday, April 30, 2013

It's All About The Sensor Size, Stupid! Advice for buying the right Digital Camera

If we take a look at the current product offerings by the major digital camera companies we are faced with a vast array of different digital camera models that are all competing for our hard earned dollars. No longer content to wait at least a year before coming out with new camera models, the choices of digital cameras available for the consumer seems to be endless and the marketing hype, feature creep and mis-information being circulated about what makes a good digital camera makes it harder than ever to decide on a model that will give the best quality digital photos. The megapixel escalation war seems to have died down, but the number of megapixels is just one factor that affects picture quality. Lens quality, the image processor and most importantly the size of the image sensor will have the biggest effect on the ultimate image quality and noise produced in low light conditions.

Yours truly has finally figured out the secret to unlocking the mystery of how to buy the best digital camera by following a very simple rule of thumb.

Buy the digital camera with the largest CMOS image sensor available your budget can afford.

Put quite simply, the larger the CMOS image sensor the digital camera has, the higher quality images that camera will be able to produce. Currently the largest size image sensor available on consumer level digital cameras and DSLRs is the APS-C size sensor. Until a few years ago, the only digital cameras that employed this size sensor are bulky DSLRs. (Digital Single Lens Reflex Cameras). These DSLR cameras weigh much averaging 20-32 ounces with the battery installed. The lenses for DSLRs are much larger and heavier as well. With a whole new generation of much smaller-bodied mirror-less compact changeable lens cameras introduced to the market by Sony in their line of NEX cameras, the APS-C sensor has been adapted for use in a camera body that weighs around 12 ounces which opens up the door for a truly compact pro-level camera that you can take any where like a point and shoot but be able to attain the quality of a much larger DSLR camera.