What you should know about SLR digital cameras

In order have pictures from internet websites or photo sharing, or to do your own digital image editing, or printing your photos, a digital SLR Camera is ideal.To help you improve your work quality or for taking great pictures most consumers are buying SLR digital cameras.

Digital SLR Cameras combine advanced imaging and color processing giving amateur and professional photographers the high quality they are looking for.

Performance and popularity are the 2 top measurements for the new line of SLR cameras. Research show owner satisfaction is number 3. 4th is the range of prices and 5th is availability.

The top-of-the-line cameras will give the owner high resolution. Also most include a wide range of manual controls. Like less-expensive cameras, they are can work well with the automatic settings. Most also offer a good range of manual controls. All support formats like RAW and TIFF as well as the standard JPEG. These features make them ideal for photographers.

Like traditional cameras, digital SLRs offer the advantage of using multiple removable lenses. These cameras deliver professional-quality pictures and a studio quality appearance.

If you see megapixels as confusing, and do not understand the difference between optical and digital zoom, or if you are unsure how to find the right camera for you, there are simple guides to help make buying a SLR camera easier. You can find some tips on what to look for when looking for your new camera.

o The first thing to consider is how you will use your camera. Is this camera going to be with you at all times? Or will it just be taken out for special occasions?
o Ultracompact cameras are best if you expect to carry it with you a lot. They can fit easily in a pocket and are usually quite light.
o Point-and-Shoot cameras are also small but can be a little thicker than ultracompacts, and are better carried in a bag or jacket.
o Extended zoom and digital SLR cameras are larger and heavier, and ideally might need a special carrying case, since SLRs often use multiple lenses.
o Megapixels are the main way cameras are judged. This is important however few people understand why. Megapixels measure how many little dots of light a camera can capture. More megapixels means more dots which allows greater detail and larger image sizes. Higher megapixels determine how large a print you can make from your digital photos. Anything above 5-megapixels give quality to print 8x10" prints. They should be capable producing an image you will be satisfied with.
o If you're someone who wants to develop expertise by learning greater control over your photographs, make sure your camera has manual settings. Nearly every camera has an automatic mode. SLRs are included on this list.
o Many smaller cameras have eliminated the optical viewfinder, so you will have to rely on the LCD screen to see your subject. A LCD screen of 2.0-inches or less might be difficult for vision impaired photographers to use

Also you will need:

Memory Card: Most cameras come with some internal memory but that's never enough for more than 3 or 4 pictures at a time. When you purchase your camera, you also need to get a memory card that holds at least 512MB or 1GB of data. This will allow you to take hundreds of pictures. Also you will not need to delete or transfer any to make room for new ones. Generally, a 2 gig memory card will hold all the pictures you will take before downloading them to your computer or sending to the internet.

NiMH Batteries: If your camera takes 'AA' Batteries, using traditional alkaline batteries will be costly. Digital cameras drain alkaline batteries fast. By getting NiMH rechargeable batteries, your camera gets long-life from a single charge. When the batteries are drained, you can recharge them. A single pair of NiMH rechargeable batteries could last over a year.

At a recent product expo IFA 2007 in Berlin, Canon unveiled its latest SLR camera, the Canon EOS 40D. This model will allow professional photographers and amateurs to put out unbeatable pictures.

The camera has a 3-inch LCD screen, viewfinder and a magnesium alloy case. It is designed to work well in damp weather. Its connection ports, battery compartment and compact flash memory card door are all weather resistant.

It features an enhanced 10.1-megapixel CMOS imaging sensor. For the first time in any EOS camera model, the central AF point offers precision for both vertical and horizontal contrast. This camera is 30 per cent faster than most other SLR digital cameras.

New features also include the framing and capturing of subjects using the camera's LCD screen instead of the viewfinder. The Canon EOS 40D SLR has a 0.15-second initial start-up, a top shutter speed of 1/8000 sec and 1/250 maximum X-sync flash shutter speed setting.

With a burst mode of five frames per second, it can shoot up to 12 RAW images at a time, other 1Ds highlights are 19 autofocus points, and a cleaning system for handling dust. Approving researchers reported a 3-inch LCD, and 26 focus-assist points for accuracy when tracking fast moving subjects.

Casio had a crowd pleaser in its Exilim model that is an incredibly fast digital camera able of shooting 60 photos per second at full resolution. Instead of being recorded as separate JPEG files, the VGA-quality shots (640 x 480 pixels) will be recorded as a Motion JPEG movie. Each frame can be viewed by pausing the move and looking through it frame by frame. The camera also features a 2.8-inch LCD screen and a viewfinder.

Panasonic has announced an 8.1-megapixel camera at IFA 2007, the Lumix DMC-FX55. It has a 3.6x wide angle optical zoom, and a 2-inch screen. The camera detects the light shortages or excesses and automatically boosts the LCD backlighting by 40 per cent when shooting outdoors in bright sunshine, and boost signals 4.5x when shooting in low light.

Photos can be shot in 3:2, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios. The widescreen option allows images from the DMC-L10 to be enjoyed in high-definition widescreen - on a Panasonic plasma TV.