So this question has popped up several times over the past few weeks… What camera should I buy?  I’m honored and humbled that everyone who has asked lately respects my opinion, thank you!!

Today there are so many options for cameras it’s overwhelming!  There are different sizes (ranging from key chains to big poppa hunkers of DSLRs) and styles that offer a wide range of features (HD, panoramic, video with/out sound, 720/1080, presets and many other variables.  This isn’t even taking into consideration how many megapixels they boast!! I already want to pull my hair out thinking about it all.

Let’s start with megapixels… to break it down “Yvonne Style” (now that’s hopefully simpler than “Barney Style”!), the more megapixels you have the larger you can potentially print your images.  Think of it this way:

• 1 megapixel and up renders a good web image.
• 3 megapixel and up prints a 4×6 image.
• 6 megapixel and up prints an 8×10 image.
• 8 megapixel and up prints a 16×20 image.

My favorite chart that explained anything beyond these numbers was at Les Jones’ site.

The numbers are dots per inch of resolution. The colors represents quality of print: purple being highest and orange being the lowest.

Now, with this knowledge remember that a good sharp image can easily be blown up HUGE because it’s a good image to begin with.  The greatness of your picture will not be equal to your megapixels.  It’s not a MP contest, it’s a sensor size contest ; ) HA!

Why would a bigger sensor matter?  Well, to put is simply, the bigger the sensor the more information that can be captured (given that it’s technically correct and in focus).  Is this going to really make a difference in choosing your camera? Not really.  If you’re interested leave me some feed back and I can go into a more detailed explanation on sensors.

Okay, so now that we have a megapixels under our belt the next question, for me is, what are you going to be taking pictures of?  What type of pictures do you want to capture?  One thing that took me forever (and I mean F.O.R.E.V.E.R. – ask a couple of my friends) was why couldn’t I get those “blurry backgrounds” in my point and shoot pictures?  Well, the simple answer is that my camera was fully automatic and even though it took great pictures I couldn’t control anything.  I wanted blurry backgrounds. I wanted blurry backgrounds to highlight the object I was photographing.  My old faithful buddy just couldn’t do that.   That encouraged me to learn more about the basics and what I ultimately wanted to do with my camera… which, in turn was the deciding factor in going back to school for nursing or photography (guess which one won?)!

The third thing I suggest thinking about is size.  How compact and accessible do you want your camera to be?  Do you want to carry it with you everywhere? How important is accessibility to you?  Something compact is easier to tote and whip out anytime any place while any of the current DSLRs are usually too big to fit inside a medium purse… and no way are you fitting one of those things in a pocket!  With the DSLR you also have to take lenses into consideration.

So, is any of this helping? I feel like I’ve shared a lot but nothing!  I guess the next step is what do I have?  Well, I have them all! HAHA! I really do!  I have three DSLRs (Canon 1D, 50D and a 5D), an Olympus point and shoot (plus many dead cameras in a drawer – why do I keep them? Are they ever going to work again? NO! I can’t throw them out though because I might, one day, open one up and revive it… yeah right!), and my handy dandy camera phone.  The hubs and I bought our first digital camera after we got married to capture our lives 10 years ago (and let’s face it, it’s the way things were going and the way I take pictures the film was getting expensive to process).  I think I  might have that shoe boxed size thing around here somewhere… ha!  When we upgraded on a vacation we stuck with Olympus because we had already invested $$ in xD cards and it made the most sense.  So we’re Olympus point and shoot people, simple as that.  When I went DSLR shopping I checked out Nikon, Sony, Olympus and Canon. Canon seemed the most popular and was a little less expensive when it came down to the crunch.  It was on sale. Period. Each brand had their pros and cons and sale always wins! And to be totally transparent, a lot of my favorite photographers used Canon.

In the end ask, ask some more, do your homework and figure out what you want to do with your camera!  That will make shopping or deciding on what to look for much easier. I’m always open for help.  I may not have the answers but I will try my darnedest to find you a suitable answer, that much I promise!

Love, Yvonne

P.S. I’m always up for sharing so hit me up and leave some plog love or email love!