As the General Manager of a Camera store, I can say that there are many factors besides the obvious ones that need to be taken into account when choosing a digital camera. You need to be aware of the disadvantages of a digital camera as well as the advantages. Both the digital format in general, and the chosen camera specifically.
First and foremost - most people will never save money using a digital over 35mm. A $150 35mm camera has the same equivalent zoom as a $300 digital (minimum price for one with an optical zoom). A roll of 24 exp. 35mm film will cost between $5.50 and $9.99 to get developed. Printing out your digital photos on your ink jet printer at home will cost between $.90 to $2.50 per 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper. At a maximum of 4 31/2 X 5 per sheet you can see that you will have to exercise a lot of self control and not print out many of them in order to make up the initial difference in price. In addition, these prints are not archival and will have to eventually be redone, 35mm prints won't.
Picture Quality and Film Speed - The $150 35mm can be loaded with film of different speed ratings, while most digital cameras at the sub $500 level have a permanent speed rating of 100 ISO. 100 speed film has approx. 17 million silver halide crystals per frame, while a $300 digital will have 1.3 million pixels per frame and a $300 to $500 one will have 2.0 or 2.1 million pixels per frame. Picture quality is much higher on film.
Those are the two major downsides to digital photography. Here are the two major upsides.
Immediacy - One of the major advantages of digital is the ability to make sure that the picture came out the way you intended it to right after taking the photo. the small LCD on the camera back allows you to preview, erase, and retake photos until you get the one you want. You also are free of the hours kept by the one hour lab. If you want to print out photos at 2am you can.
Photo manipulation and e-mail - there is no question that digital photos allow you to manipulate the photo in such ways that it can almost look like a painting by the time you get through with it in Photoshop. More importantly, it makes it so much easier to keep the Grandparents up to date with their grandkids life.
Now for some specifics
If this camera is for someone spending a lot of time overseas traveling, you have two choices. Buy a camera that uses good old AA's or give him the money to buy a camera on the local economy. An increasing number of cameras are coming out with a proprietary rechargeable battery with charger. Check the electrical supply standard for the country he is going to before buying one of these cameras. Forget converters, these chargers don't like them. It is a good idea also to check that the camera that you are getting via mail order or internet purchase is US product. A number of people try to save a $100 by buying on line only to find out that the battery charger is for use in the UK. Stick with a brand that is sold in the country, he is traveling to. That way you know that service and accessories will be available. That said, my first choice of a current camera to show you would be the Fuji Finepix 2800, a 2.0 megapixel camera with a 6x optical zoom that takes AA batteries and sells for $399.95
I didn't intend to get so wordy, however at this time of the year I felt that many of you might be contemplating a digital camera purchase.
Chris
