Here's what you need to know about buying that perfect digital camera--from lenses to batteries to storage considerations.
Size Matters - Size and Weight in a Camera
The first consideration before buying a digital camera for travel is its size and weight. Do you mind carrying a camera bag? Do your shoulders sag after an hour or so? There are plenty of cameras that fit in a shirt or jacket pocket, and others, slightly larger that fit in a case you can strap on your belt. But before you buy one of these tiny marvels, read on--there are other considerations.
Batteries for your Digital Camera
You probably don't care about batteries. That's ok, but let me warn you--they wear out fast with today's digitals. The tiny cameras you've read about above usually have proprietary cells made to fit a particular space. In a pinch you might not be able to buy one at your destination. Usually larger cameras use standard AA rechargables. They and the chargers are available pretty much everywhere.
Lenses--the long and short of it
The 3x zoom lens is pretty much standard today. That means it zooms from slightly wide angle to slightly telephoto--something like 35-100 mm on a 35mm camera. If you want to take pictures of buildings, you may want one that goes down to a 28mm equivelent. And for portraits, you'd like at least 100 mm or more. For competitions or objects really far away, you'd like 200mm equivelent lenses.
Sweet Memory - More is Better
The last thing you'll want to check is the size of the storage card. The larger the resolution of your photos, the more space it'll take on the card. Compact flash cards are larger and have a disk controller inside; SmartMedia cards are smaller, but not significantly so. Make sure your new camera can access at least 128 mb of memory on a card, because the longer you travel, the more you'll need.
Connecting
Many of today's digitals are automatically recognized by recent operating systems. If your camera uses USB (Universal Serial Bus) to get the pictures into the computer, check that it doesn't need special drivers if you want to access your pictures at a shared computer or cybercafe with the least amount of fuss.
