I get a lot of questions all the time about which camera to buy, and most of the time I don’t quite have the time to respond to all of them, so I’ve decided I’d start a regular camera guide feature.  These aren’t in-depth rationales or anything, just quick summaries that tell you, unequivocally, which is the best of the best; I also write digital camera recommendations for a site called bestinclass.com – I might recommend visiting there if you’re looking for more in-depth analyses and comparisons.

Digital cameras don’t come out all that often, so this may be a quarterly guide.  This also may not reflect the very cutting edge – it takes a little while for reviews for the newest cameras to come in, and it’s impossible to really assess the cameras until they do.

All prices based on the lowest of amazon.com or bhphotovideo.com

Have you got a use case/need that isn’t covered here?  Feel free to post it in the comments, and I’ll keep it in mind for future guides.  And if you think differently about any of the cameras, feel free to share that too!

General advice:

To give you all an idea of the perspective these recommendations are written from, here’s a few guidelines I mostly go by:

Features trump image quality: With modern cameras, image quality differences are mostly a consideration of the past.  Almost every camera released today has megapixel resolution far in excess of what’s needed (or even usable) for most applications, and in most daylight scenarios there is practically zero difference between cameras, especially among the top tier of manufacturers.  The main differentiator in your photographic experience and capability, then, is what features you’ll have to work with – being able to take a wide shot with a 28mm wide-angle lens, or having a fast 4fps continuous shooting mode for action shots, for instance, is going to go a long way towards getting you the photographs you want compared to minute differences in image quality or resolution.

Price/performance: The recommendations for different categories will mostly recommend the camera with the best value proposition – a lot of these are often written in the format of: Best budget camera under $200, best midrange camera under $300, best premium camera under $500, etc. While oftentimes, yes it’s true that Camera Xa has a slightly bigger LCD screen than Camera Xb and is therefore better, and the $50 premium still puts it under the $300 budget, as a knowledgeable consumer you wouldn’t want to spend that much more on a mostly cosmetic difference, and as an informed friend you would do best by recommending Camera Xb to your friend.

Simple Ultracompact

For many people, cameras are just cameras, and all they need is something that, for lack of a less-hackneyed phrase, they can “point and shoot”.  They’re not interested in photography and don’t need nor want full manual controls, and rarely would use and can make do without a huge zoom range.  They’ll take snaps while they’re out at social events or just randomly at home or in their room, but that’s about it.  For this group there’s the simple ultracompact – a basic camera that has a few useful features (possibly wide-angle lenses for indoor group photos and image stabilization for low-light situations) but otherwise just provides good overall quality and a small formfactor that can be slipped just about anywhere.

Simple Ultracompact, midrange: Canon SD960

A plethora of Canon, Panasonic, and Fujifilm cameras rule the roost in the ultracompact category, all roaming around the $300 range.  For a little less than $300, Canon’s SD960 puts together the best combination of image quality and features, with a 28mm wide-angle, image stabilization, and even 1280×720 (720p) video capability.

• 12MP resolution
• 28-112mm (4x) zoom range
• f/2.8-5.8 aperture
• 1280×720, 30fps video (720p)
• Image stabilization
• 145g (5.1oz)
• 99.1 x 53.3 x 22.9 mm (3.9 x 2.1 x 0.9 in)
• 200 shots battery life (CIPA)
• $281 on Amazon

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In part 2 we’ll take a look at the huge realm of cameras outside DSLRs.  A boatload of compacts and ultrazooms and budget cams get announced every half-year, so I won’t highlight every single one, but we’ll take a look at some of the interesting products and general trends.

Bajillion-x Megazoom

Olympus' 26x zoom SP-590UZ

An interesting thing about the “Megapixel Wars” is that the public’s fascination with megapixels as a selling point have somewhat waned.  I don’t have particular evidence of this – perhaps it’s just media emphasizing it less, or perhaps even that I’ve become so jaded with the numbers that I’ve mentally blocked it out. And in any case, I’m certain that any such effect that’s been noticed has purely been with the semi-educated consumer – there are still millions of consumers who have no idea how to evaluate cameras aside from megapixel count.

But as the emphasis on megapixels seems to recede, another emphasis over ever-skyrocketing optical zoom ranges mounts.  Back in the old days, ultrazooms hit 10x (something like 38-380mm or 36-360mm equivalent), and inched up to 12x and pretty much stopped there.  About two years ago, Olympus changed the dynamic of this race completely with its groundbreaking SP-550 UZ which packed a whopping 18x (28-504mm) zoom.  Olympus had about a 6-month monopoly on this range, but ever since then, manufacturers have been pushing their lenses to ever stratospheric heights.

A lot of people have decried this extreme push in lens design, which certainly has its drawbacks.  The SP-550’s 18x lens was universally panned for delivering terrible image quality, and no camera since then has really been able to deliver that kind of zoom range in a lens that is up to par with the previous generations’ more conservative 10x or 12x lenses.  Unlike pixel count, however, which past a certain point doesn’t given any usable advantages for most users and applications, a larger zoom range will always add more versatility.

So PMA saw the introduction of no less than 5 such ultrazooms (4 new releases and one North American re-release) having 20x+ zoom ranges.  A quick summary of them:

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