Are you looking for a digital camera but you’re not sure which type to choose? There are only two questions you have to ask yourself to find out the best camera for you. What is your budget and how will the camera be used.

If your budget is between $100 to $300, forget about buying an SLR camera. Digital cameras are so good nowadays that a lot of point and shoot cameras out there are more than capable of taking almost any kind of shots.

For example, if you need manual controls on your camera to set aperture and shutter speed, most of the major camera manufacturers like Nikon and Canon have a line of cameras with those settings. Some of the complaints I hear is that the speed of the shutters for these cameras are not fast enough to take photos of children or sports. If so, then take a look at a line of Casio Exilim high speed cameras. They have cameras that are capable of taking 30fps (frames per second) or more, which is faster than most SLR cameras. Problem solved.

The next question you have to ask is how will you be using the camera? Do you just want a camera to take occasional photos of your friends and family? Maybe your cellphone camera is good enough. Do you want a camera you can carry around in your pocket? Then obviously an SLR camera is out of the question. Are you more of a hobbyist who want to learn a bit more about photography? Then a higher end point and shoot  or an entry level SLR camera might be the answer to that and will fit your budget.

If you are a more serious about photography and can afford to spend over $500, then an SLR camera is the best way to go. Since there are a lot of type of SLR cameras that ranges in price from $500 to over $8,000. How do you choose the right one?

Again, you go back to the two choices. What’s your budget and how will it be used? If you’re just using it for a hobby to learn and not as a source of income, any entry level SLR camera is good enough. These cameras will have 90% of the manual controls you need. If you’re shooting sports photography, then the important factor to consider is how fast it can shoot continuously. In which case, you will need a higher end SLR for it.

The most important factor in SLR cameras is the lens, not the camera body. Invest in the lens, they last a lifetime. The body changes every 18 months or so and just gets better every time. A high quality lens from the 1960s works just as well today.

Digital photography is an expensive game, you can easily get dragged down to spending more than you need. Megapixels doesn’t matter anymore. You can get a good quality 5″ x 7″ print from a 3MP camera. Unless you’re printing poster sized photos, you rarely need to go higher than 10MP.

The quality of your photos is not dependent on the camera, it’s dependent on you.

Here is a list of people who uses really simple cameras but achieve great results.

Chase Jarvis a commercial photographer that uses some of the high end professional cameras for his work. But he has a portfolio of photos using just his iPhone.

Sion Fullana is a journalist, a writer, a filmmaker in New York and takes a majority of his photos using an iPhone. He considers himself an iPhoneographer.

Wilson Tsoi has a great portfolio of photos using an obsolete Canon A620.

The great thing about their photos is that unless you knew what they were using, you wouldn’t know they were using some of the most basic cameras in the market.

When someone tells you that you have to have an expensive gear to take great photos. Tell them, it’s not the camera, it’s the photographer.

Take a look at this photo. Can you see what’s wrong with it? 

Well, aside from it being crooked. What else is wrong with it? Yes, I know the composition isn’t the best. Can you guess what else is wrong? Don’t see it? Click on the image so you can zoom into it.

See it now? Do you see how the white uniforms seems to have a blue halo? That folks, is called chromatic aberration or CA in photography jargon. According to Wikipedia, “chromatic aberration is the failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same point. It occurs because lenses have a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light (the dispersion of the lens). The refractive index decreases with increasing wavelength.”

In short, if you have bad or cheap lens, your photos will look ugly or weird. I used my compact camera here which is the Canon SD880IS. It’s cheap, easy to use, but as with any compact camera, it can only do so much.

This doesn’t usually happen to my photos, but the reason CA happened is because the grass and green trees provided really even colors, but the high sun and the white uniform was beyond what the lens and perhaps the small camera sensor can handle. Small sensors have smaller dynamic range, so it cannot handle a wide band of colors range and CA or exposure error occurs.

This is not such a big deal if you are not displaying a large picture. As you can see here, you probably would not have seen it if you didn’t zoom in to the picture.

Unless you’re printing a photo for a magazine, don’t sweat it too much. It happens, you learn from your mistakes and you compensate for it next time.

How would I compensate for this photo? There’s really nothing much I can do here, I can zoom in closer so I take in more of the person so the dynamic range wouldn’t be so big or I can just cut off the people all together. But I would never have made these decisions unless I went out to shoot and test my camera. That is the best way to learn.

The best way to learn about photography is to just shoot. Shoot anytime, anywhere and any subject.

I was washing some dishes when I saw this beautiful light hitting the roof outside the kitchen window. So I immediately grabbed my camera and took a picture.

I have two friends who have very opposite views on learning about photography. One says he wants to learn how to use his camera, but every time I tell him to go shoot, he always says there’s nothing good to shoot. He always complains that there’s no good views in the Philippines where he lives.

Another friend just shoots. He’ll shoot a flower, his car, food, pretty much anything. If he can’t find any subject to shoot, he’ll shoot his shoes and flip flops. Pretty much anything he can think of. They live in the same country, same city, less than ten blocks from each other. Guess who’s the better photographer?

I bring my camera everywhere. I use a point and shoot camera because it is easier to carry around than and SLR. I would love to have the control of an SLR, but I hate carrying it all the time. I don’t have an SLR yet, but I’m not missing anything by just having a point and shoot camera.

My camera is a Canon SD880IS, it’s a camera with hardly any control for the user. I can’t control my aperture or shutter speed. All I can control is the zoom, white balance and exposure compensation. But that doesn’t stop me from learning and trying to take better photos. I noticed that the less I have to think about the camera controls, the more time I take to think about the composition, color, subject and feel. In short, I spend more time on the “art” part than the technical part.

I bought my camera in March 2009 and I’ve already taken over 2000 shots. I took a whole series of wedding photos the second day I had the camera. It’s the only way to learn.

My philosophy for learning photography is any subject, any light at any time. I’m not going to limit myself to the “golden hour” or just people or landscape. I want to know where I’ll excel so I’ll do everything.

Macro shot

Landscape

Would a DSLR take a better picture? Sure, no doubt it will be clearer, sharper, less noise and more dynamic colors. But unless you’re printing pictures to sell, most people wouldn’t notice the difference.

Take this photo for example

Would you believe I won in a contest with this photo? I won a new Canon SD780IS P&S camera with this photo. Guess what I used to take this photo?

Just shoot, it’s the only way to learn.

I went to Stanley Park last Sunday with my friends and their children. I was trying to take a picture of the surroundings but I couldn’t find a view I liked. This was round 4:30 to 5pm so the sun was still a bit high.

If you look at this picture, the exposure looks ok. But you can see there’s a lot of long shadows from the trees, the people walking and the rocks. Depending on what you want to achieve, this may or may not be good photograph. If there wasn’t any people, this would be acceptable for me. Although I would have used an SLR and use a polarizing filter to remove some of the haze in the mountains.

Anyway, I decided to take photos of my friend’s daughter instead. If I shot it in full sun, there’s a harsh shadow falling on her face.

No matter what angle I do, I just get shadows. Either my shadow covers her or I’m facing the sun making the exposure darker. Not pretty at all.

I decide to move into the shade and take her picture.

As you can see, this picture in the shade is much better since it evens out the light. But since the sun is still quite strong, her face is a bit dark while the background trees are a lot lighter. Her face looks bluish gray, not very flattering for a baby girl.

So how do you balance this? I turned on my flash to balance this photo.

Now this photo is more balanced in terms of exposure. Her face now looks of normal color and the background is exposed as it was in the first picture.

This is the proper way to use flash especially on a P&S camera. Since the flash on a P&S camera can only be pointed straight ahead, if used in a dark room, it would make the person look washed out and flat. But in strong sunlight, the intensity of the flash and the sun is pretty much even. So you can hardly see that a flash was used in this picture.

The only way you’ll know that a flash was used is if you look at the girl’s nose and cheeks, there’s shiny white spots there. That’s the reflection from the flash. Unless you’re familiar with photography, you wouldn’t even know it.

This is the best way to use your flash.

Here are a couple of quotes about photography to inspire you.

Light is the photographic medium par excellence; it is to the photographer what words are tot eh writer; color and paint to the painter; wood, metal, stone, or clay to the sculptor.
- Andreas Feininger

The difference in ‘seeing’ between the eye and the lens should make it obvious that a photographer who merely points his camera at an appealing subject and expects to get an appealing picture in return, may be headed for disappointment.
- Andreas Feininger

I can look at a fine photograph and sometimes I can hear music.
- Ansel Adams

Writers of light do it as well; they transform shape, line, color, pattern–passionless components–into photographs that grab, delight, revulse, or inspire. Their work bestows life.
- Author unknown

Photography is a human act and therefore subjective, a selective act and therefore interpretive. This makes it possible for photography to be an art, for photographers to achieve a personal style–and for the camera to lie.
- Arthur Goldsmith

The camera is my tool. Through it I give reason to everything around me.
- Andre Kertesz

…nature has ceased to be what it always had been–what people needed protection from. Now nature–tamed, endangered, mortal–needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.
- Susan Sontag

My photographs at best hold only a small strength, but through them I would suggest and criticize and illuminate and try to give compassionate understanding.
- W. Eugene Smith

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.
- Susan Sontag

I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.
- Garry Winogrand

The camera is a fluid way of encountering that other reality.
- Jerry N. Uelsmann

I have travelled widely i Concord.
- Henry David Thoreau

Check out this interview of Chase Jarvis on the 5 secrets for Exceptional Photographs.

I found this tutorial site by Marc Silber. It has a lot of video interviews of photographers and tutorials of about 5 minutes long.

It’s a great resource to use to expand your learning.

Here’s the site.

http://www.silberstudios.tv/

I never had any reaction or comments about my photos until I posted this one.

This was taken after it’s been raining the whole day and it stopped late afternoon. Funny thing is, I only got a reaction after I used Photoshop to edit this picture. I never usually use Photoshop other than to adjust levels and a bit of cropping or lightening.

On this picture, I actually used color balance and saturation to bring out what I wanted in the photo.

This is the original out of the camera.

I had trouble with the white balance because of the clouds and I was facing the sun. So the original photo didn’t come out the way I wanted. Normally, I would just leave it as is since I’m lazy to use Photoshop. But for some reason, I tried using Photoshop on this image and it came out better.

I adjusted color balance to make it warmer and the red of the canopy to come out. I adjusted saturation and some contrast to bring out the differences in the colors since most of them look the same in the original picture.

Lastly, I put a bit of vignetting around the photo to emphasize the walkway since I wanted the viewers eyes to get drawn to the long walkway.

Finally, I put some captions on the photo to explain where I was and why I took the picture. That got a bit of reaction from people who viewed it and was the first photo that actually got them commenting.

I guess I should use Photoshop a lot more, not to manipulate the photo, but to bring out what I see. I tend to just leave my photos alone since don’t really like photos that’s been overly Photoshopped. I kind of like a more journalistic style photo and sharing what I see. I guess what I see doesn’t necessarily translate to the camera since the camera is not as sophisticated as our eyes.

Another thing that help was actually putting a bit of caption explaining the photo since some people don’t understand why I took that photo.

Another lesson learned in photography.

I constantly browse the web for tips and tutorials on how to take photos. I found one and I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s a site from Steve Paxton, he has tutorials on Adobe Lightroom, urban and street photography and general photography tips.

Here’s the site. http://paxtonprints.com/index.php?x=tutorials

Why do I take a picture? Is it for art? Is it to capture a moment? Is it because I like what you see?

I take a photo because I want to remember the feeling that I had when I was there. Some of my most memorable photos are not technically good. In fact, some are downright bad, it’s not even worth showing. But they can be my most memorable photos. Examples are pictures of my son being born, it was taken at 640×480 resolution and was under exposed. It printed out to be 3″x2″ which was hardly viewable. But they’re very precious to me.

I took a picture of my daughter in a hotel room in low light, she was running around so much that most of my pictures came out as a blur. Technically bad, nothing sharp, nobody would say it was a good picture. But it reminds me of the fun we had being together on vacation.

I sometimes take a picture to see if I can convey the feeling that I had when I visit some place. An example would be my portfolio of winter landscape. There was this peaceful feeling I had while hiking. I tried taking a picture to see if I can convey that feeling to others. I guess it didn’t translate well since I didn’t really receive very good comments about them. But that’s ok, when I view them though, I remember the feeling. And that’s fine with me.

I feel that some of my best photos are those where I took a deep breath, looked at the view and just shoot. Not thinking much about the technical aspect of photography. Just making sure it’s not over or under exposed. I try to narrow down the view to the most important and crop out the rest to remember the feeling I had.

They don’t always bring “wow” to the viewer. But they do give me a sense that I capture a slice of time to remember for always.

And that’s why I take a picture. What about you?