Many people like to ask me for advice on buying cameras and these days, I will be honest, it’s pretty hard to keep up with the latest and greatest. So I really don’t like to  recommend specific brands or models unless I just happen to be looking at them but there are some general guidelines that I like to share with those who call me looking for advice on a Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera [a camera where you can change the lenses] First remember this “the bigger the camera the shorter the distance between you and the car”.

So before you go spending a lot of money on a big piece of equipment think to yourself what you really want to be doing with it and then consider how often you are going to be doing that. Plenty of people tell me they are going on a safari and want those National Geo shots of the tigers and they want to be able to do it for less than $350! faaahgetaboutit! and besides, how many times are you going to be doing that? So be practical. Get a small camera, a point and shoot. One that you will WANT to use all the time.

Okay okay, you are again thinking – where’s the advice??? 1. Optical Zoom is better than digital zoom (why? optical zoom is accomplished by the glass in the camera. Digital zoom is software which guesses what the image would look like if it had a longer zoom lens) 2. Buy as much megapixels as you can afford, but consider how big you most often enlarge your images to and buy enough megapixels to accomplish just a little bit more than that. 3. a large sensor can be more valuable than the number of megapixels – you’ll need to do a little digging to find out what the actual size of the sensor is for each camera. 4. A short zoom is generally better than a ginormous zoom; the glass quality usually drops with a longer zoom. 5. simplicity. Most cameras add more and more bells and whistles which you need to navigate around. Try to go with the simpler model. 6.Buy a nice big memory card!

If you have questions feel free to send me an email.