When most people head out to make a big purchase, they think they should go with the “bigger is better” concept, but when it comes to buying a camera you could very well be dooming yourself to horrible pictures.

Photography is one of this talents that everyone seems to feel they have. “Oh, how hard can it be?” they think, and then they run out and buy some crazy complicated cameras with more buttons and settings on it than a rocketship. They quickly learn just how hard it can be and the camera gets put in the back of the closet never to be seen again, and their bank account is just that much lower.

If you do not have a lot of photography experience, before you go out and drop hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on a high end DSLR, why not get a higher end point and shoot that allows you to do some of the settings yourself?  If you learn to customize just a few settings, then it won’t be so overwhelming when you do move up a more complex manual camera.

On the off chance you do decide to go for a nice manual camera right off the bat, then we highly suggest you do sit down and actually red the instruction manual.  Most people don’t ever bother to look at the instructions, but its better to do so than getting constantly frustrated because your pictures don’t turn out.  You might even want to see if there are any photography classes or clubs in your area where you can go and learn from others.

Having a nice camera can be a fantastic thing, but if you only end up using a small percentage of its features, was it really worth it?

As we enter the holiday shopping season,  of course tons of digital cameras will be given out as gifts to friends and family. Considering the rate cameras come out there days, keeping up with their technical specifications seems like a lost cause, but luckily there are more factors with which you can judge which camera is best for you.

One thing you will occasionally run into is information on the camera being able to shoot images in the RAW format.  Most people don’t even think about what format the pictures are in just so long as they can easily show them to grandma later on.  Unfortunately this is now the case with RAW as it is a fractured format where many people have done many different things with it despite the fact there is a standard out there, just some companies haven’t adopted it.

Here is some information on the RAW format vs. JPEG.

What are some of the pros and cons of each format?

Essentially it boils down to the fact that RAW is great for professional photographers, and people who want extreme detail in their photos. If you just want to take pictures at a party, you’re going to want JPEG. In most cases I would say go with JPEG for the ease of it, and the quality being totally acceptable to your average person, but if you are using a nice camera, possibly shooting as a pro, then you’re going to want the RAW format for sure.

Picking a new camera can be a headache-and-a-half.  Not only is there the choice of point-and-shoot vs. four-thirds vs. DSLR and so on, but then it becomes what brands, which features, which models … it can turn into a major life-altering decision by the time you’re done that usually results in you having considerably less hair than when you started.

Most people usually turn to friends for advice on these sorts of decisions, and quite often they will tell you that Nikons are the best, and that’s what you should go with, but you might want to think twice on that recommendation now.  Choice, an Australian version of Consumer Reports in the United States, just ran a battery of tests on 26 SLR, Four Thirds and other high end digital cameras, priced from $536 to $3499 (Australian Dollars), and while we can’t tell you the winners because it is a paid article, all we can say is four of the five top spots went to Canon, with one Panasonic model coming in at fourth place.

In short, no one could have seen Canon doing that well.  We haven’t seen the rankings past fifth, but this is not an encouraging report for one of the top selling camera brands in the world.

Of course, each person has different needs from a camera, and just because Choice named Canon as four of the top cameras currently on the market, it should definitely factor into your purchasing decisions.  While they may not be your first choice, they probably deserve at least a second look now after such a decisive victory in an unbiased test.