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?

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.