Our Buying hints and tips

• Always try and get your hands on a camera before you buy it as no matter how many reviews  you read, it can all change when you actually hold a camera.
• Shop around on the internet and high street to find the best price, and don't be afried to barter for a price match.
• Don't forget to budget for a memory card as it realey comes included. 

DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses and that’s a huge reason why serious photographers love this type of camera. But what else should you look for in a new DSLR ?  

Auto focusing

DSLR auto focusing is the norm now and the latest systems are generally excellent – they are swift, responsive, accurate and dependable. The only times they tend to struggle are when the light levels are poor or when there’s no Contrast in the scene.

Most SLR’s have three focusing modes, there Manual for when you want to take control, then Single-shot and continuous focusing. The latter mode should track a moving subject and how well it does this depends on the systems itself and how fast the subject is moving. With single-shot focusing, the camera will focus on the subject and hold that focus point for as long as the shutter release is partly depressed.

Exposure system

A digital SLR’s exposure system is very sophisticated. It can cope with most extreme lighting conditions readily. There are often several ways of assessing light: Centre-weighted metering, measures light in the central area of the viewfinder image spot for selective takes a reading from a small area, usually defined by a circle in the viewfinder, but the most common mode used multi-segment. This measuring mode takes many readings from the scene, and then the cameras computer decides what the correct exposure should be according to situations it has programmed in its memory.

LCD screen

On the backs of all DSLR cameras are coloured LCD viewings screens. These are generally used for navigating the cameras menus and viewing the images you have captured. They can also be used to see the settings on cameras that do not offer a separate LCD Data panel. Some newer DSLR cameras have a live view screen that allows you to use the LCD to frame will shop as is common with compact cameras.

Menus

Setting the camera overrides is an important element of cameras ease of use, so it is important that the menus are clear and simple to navigate.

Shooting modes

One of the key differences between a DLSR and compact is the manual control of shooting modes. Program, aperture and shutter-priority plus full manual are standard modes on a DSLR. The entry level models also tend to have a selection of preset creative modes to allow quick shooting in difficult to lighting.

Built-in Technologies

And eighty’s Batch of DLSR’s encompassing some great internal features. One that helps reduce Camera shake is the in-built optical stabilizer. This uses clever the sensor-shift technologies to reduce potential Blur. Dust control is another technology with having, has it cleans the sensor each time you switch the camera on, thus preventing the wings spot the blighting your pictures.

Resolution

The size and detail of an image is down to it’s resolution, so the more you have to better it should be. Resolution on a digital camera is calculated by the number of usable photo diodes (pixels) on the sensor chip.

Sensor

This sensor is a silicon chip covered in light sensitive photo diodes. Each diode creates a pixel of information and they join together to create the image. There are both CCD and CMOS Sensors ships. It is common misconception that cameras with the same megapixel rating will give the same levels of detail. The size of the Sensor is also a factor, so the bigger the physical size, the better the image quality is likely to be.

Sensor Crop factor

You will see this term in many buyers guides. Into refers to the fact that on many DSLR’s the Focal length of your lens is multiplied because of the physical sensor size. The sensors our generally smaller than a 35mm train and therefore,  the light delivered through the lens has a smaller area to fill and effectively crops of the edges to fit to the sensor. This results in a cropping of the image and hence the sensor magnification figure shows you how much more magnification will be caused by this cropping. You do not get this problem on a fall frame sensor has they are the same size as a 35mm negative a frame.

ISO

The camera’s sensitivity can be altered. Lower ISO gives the best image quality but as the ISO speed increases there’s more digital noise and quality loss as can be seen in these example images (image). The ability to controlled problem of noise levels is better than some cameras than others.

White balance

Most users leave the camera in auto white balance mode so that the color quality of the light is automatically assessed. DSLR’s have manual options which can be handy.

Burst rate

Every digital camera has a built in processor that handles the file transfer from the sensor  to the memory card. To processor utilities built in memory to temporarily store information for each shot. Once this buffer memory is full the camera cannot capture any more images. The number of shots that the camera and take before the buffer is fall is known as a burst of rate (quoted for the camera’s highest resolution JPEG files).

File types

There are three main types of image files. The most common is a processed JPEG, which is a compressed digital file used to maximize memory. A TIFF offers no compression when saving your images. This gives a far bigger file size, but the image quality is better. Both Jpeg’s and TIFF’s are in some way adjusted by the camera to give that to cover and sharpness, and but raw files are completely untouched. Their advantage is that you can apply your own processing later on the computer but you do need special software to do this and it is time consuming.