Our buyers guide is designed to help you choose which pink digital camera is the right one for you. We look at all the features that you should consider (as well as how good it looks) when choosing.

Mega-pixels (sometimes written as MP)

Mega-pixels is simply another way to say ‘million pixels’. If you looked at your photo under a gigantic magnifying glass, or zoom in enough within your photo editing software you will see it is made up of very tiny squares (pixels), each one being a single colour.

Each photo your pink digital camera takes will be upwards of 2000 x 3000 pixels (6 mega-pixels), with the latest models being 12 mega-pixel or more.

When looking at your pictures on your PC screen, or when printing them out at standard photo sizes, 6 mega-pixels is more than enough, and more is only really needed if you intend to print out poster sized prints.

Summary: 6 mega-pixel is enough for most uses, 12 mega-pixel is better if you intend to make large prints

Optical Zoom

Almost all pink digital cameras have a zoom feature, but it’s important to understand the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom.

Optical zoom is achieved by physically moving the parts of the lens to simply make thinks larger. No quality is lost by doing this – although in very bad light conditions pictures may appear more grainy the further you zoom in.

Most of the pink digital cameras on the market offer either 3x or 4x optical zoom. It’s a simple case of ‘more is more’ when it comes to optical zoom, the higher the multiplier the more you can zoom in.

Digital Zoom

Be very careful when looking at the digital zoom capabilities of your potential new pink digital camera. Unlike optical zoom, digital zoom is carried out by the software in the camera. It simply disregards what is at the edges of the photo sensor and increases the size of each coloured dot to use more than one pixel (the photo sensor, also called CCD is the part of the digital camera that replaces the film in a traditional camera).

This can leave your photos looking blocky, especially when viewed full screen on your PC or when printing at anything other than the smallest sizes. The same effects (often with better results) can be achieved by cropping and zooming using photo editing software once you get home.

Summary: Optical zoom is very important, digital zoom is generally not useful because of quality loss.

Flash

All pink digital cameras on the market have built-in flash. For the most part there is nothing to choose between the various models, but cameras with special flash modes like ‘red eye reduction’ can be really helpful.

Digital Viewfinder vs Optical Viewfinder

An optical viewfinder is what was found on traditional film based cameras – a small hole that you looked through to line up the shot as you took it. A digital viewfinder is generally a display on the LCD screen on the back of your camera where you can see what the shot will look like even before you take it.

All pink digital cameras have a digital viewfinder, and some offer an optical one in additional. Neither one is really better than the other, its just a matter of personal preference, but you might want to note that the digital viewfinder will more accurately portray what the shot will look like, and it’s also great when you want to hold your camera up above your head, such as at a pop concert or in other crowded places.

Battery Type

The manufacturers seem to have differing opinions on whether standard AA batteries, which can be bought in any supermarket and even gift shop, or whether to use a high powered specialised rechargeable battery which are not so readily available (but can be ordered).

Both have major benefits and major drawbacks (hence the differing opinions), and it seems to be a trade-off between availability and how long they will last. Even rechargeable AA batteries need to be recharged much more often than the specialised ones.

Our advice would be that if you are likely to be away on a long trip with no way to re-charge, go for a camera using AA batteries, so that you can buy new ones as and when needed. If however recharging every few hundred photos is not going to be an issue, the specialised battery route is probably better.

‘This’ or ‘ That’ Scenario Modes

Most of the pink digital cameras you will find have a certain number of different modes for different scenarios, such as night mode, snow mode, fireworks mode and pet mode.

These can be useful as they adjust various settings on the camera – speed of the shutter, aperture of the shutter, light mode, whether the flash is used or not, and so on. It certainly means that you don’t have to think about those settings, although to be honest if there are too many different scenario modes, you will spend just as long deciding which one is right!

For the average snap of your friends or places you visit, the most important mode is ‘Auto’ mode – just turn it on, point and click. Additional modes such as night mode, extreme close-up mode (macro mode), sports mode (for fast moving targets) can be really helpful, but if the camera goes too far with this – for example a ‘close up pets in the snow’ mode – you can be sure that it’s going too far.

Summary: Anything more than ten modes is probably a waste, so don’t focus too much on the exact number.

Video

Almost all of the pink digital cameras on offer have the ability to take videos. Most important is to remember that the quality of any of them will not be as high as a dedicated video camera – they are simply not designed to be. Also important is to bear in mind that the resolution (or quality) of the videos will simply not be as high as the still photos you take.

That said, video from compact digital cameras is getting to be quite good, and for uploading videos to sites such as YouTube they will be fine. Unlike the still photo resolution which is normally displayed in megapixels, the video resolution is normally displayed such as 640 x 480. You guessed it… this is the number of pixels across by the number of pixels down, and the higher the numbers, the better the quality will be.

In addition to the resolution of the video, checking whether audio is also recorded is well worth remembering, although almost all the pink digital cameras available now do this.

Lastly, please don’t forget when taking videos, don’t rotate the camera 90 degrees when filming video. For still shots its fine as you can turn them later either on the screen or of course on paper. This is not the case for video, and can be very disappointing (if however mildly amusing), to watch people standing on their side when you play them back!