JP/8/IT
Getting to know dSLR cameras
Digital cameras come in various different shapes and sizes. Even tiny spy cameras can be considered consumer products nowadays, because they have become so cheap and are sold freely on the open market.
However, in general we use three types of digital camera: the credit card size, the pocket and the dSLR. Canon used to be the leader in credit-card-sized digital cameras (remember the Ixus?) but today the Casio Exilim Card EX S100 is even thinner and it has a 2.8x zoom lens as well.
And then there are the pocket cameras. Most of them are meant to be "point and shoot" cameras, although we normally have a lot of control over various settings such as white balance and focus area.
When it comes to pocket digital cameras, we have plenty of choice from Canon, FujiFilm, Kodak, Konika Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Rollei, Samsung, Sony and many others.
It is getting harder than ever to say which model is the best. In fact, buying a pocket digital camera is almost like buying a city car -- they compete so fiercely in terms of features and price.
Because they are larger than credit-card-sized cameras, pocket digital cameras usually use larger batteries, too. You can take far more pictures without having to worry about a charger or a new battery pack. You can even record video, which is generally not possible with the pocket camera's smaller brethren.
Professional photographers like to use a lot of different lenses and filters. They spend thousands of dollars acquiring these. Unfortunately, only a few pocket cameras can be fitted with these expensive accessories. Therefore, for these pros, an SLR camera is a must.
SLR stands for "Single Lens Reflex". The term obviously came from the predigital era, when we had cameras with a separate viewfinder and cameras that used the same lens to reflect the image to the film and the viewfinder.
The latter was called the SLR. Today, the film has been replaced with the CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) or the CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor), which captures and records the reflected image, pixel-by-pixel.
So, a digital SLR (dSLR) camera actually combines the benefits of a digital camera and the flexibility of an SLR camera.
Who are the leaders in dSLRs? Certainly Canon and Nikon are. Currently, among the most popular dSLR cameras are the Canon EOS 20D, Nikon D70, Canon EOS 10D, Nikon D100 and the very popular Canon EOS 300D (also known as Digital Rebel).
There are other dSLR makers as well, including Mamiya and Sigma. By the way, did you know that the highest achievable resolution of digital cameras has passed the 10 megapixel mark?
The Sigma SD 10 is capable of 10.2 megapixel.
Consumers aspiring to be professional photographers also want the dSLR as well, and therefore we have a class of dSLR cameras that are slightly below the Pro models in terms of features and price, and they are called "prosumer" models.
If you added a prosumer dSLR camera to your Christmas wish list but did not find one in your stocking, do not despair: Christmas will come again next year!
--Zatni Arbi
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