Anyone who’s ever bought a digital camera from a store knows the frustration of seeing the same model a week later at a cheaper price.  Not because there’s a new model out or because there’s been a change in the exchange rate for the yen, but because they simply didn’t shop around.  And even worse, because they didn’t shop around on the Internet.

In 2011, there’s no excuse for people shopping locally.  Unless you live in one of the ten biggest cities on the planet, the chances are that your local electronics store has prices that can be very easily beaten.  In fact, if manufacturers and the market allowed it, they’d probably be selling goods above the recommended retail price in the effort to make ends meet when faced with competition from global internet marketing.

It always makes sense to shop first on the internet.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  First, internet retailers don’t have to carry huge amounts of physical inventory.  If you walk into a store ask for something they’re advertising only to be told it’s out of stock you’re going to be annoyed.  And if it happens repeatedly, you’re going to stop shopping there.  But the internet retailer probably doesn’t carry any stock at all.  When you order from him, he simply takes your money and arranges for the item to be shipped to you from the distributor’s nearest warehouse, all without laying out any investment beyond the cost of his web site and office.  So he doesn’t have all those overheads of the local store.

The second reason to buy on the internet is because of the nature of global competition.  The cyber shopper doesn’t get tired tramping from shop to shop comparing prices, he can do it in minutes from the comfort of his home and because of this will make many more price comparisons than the mall shopper.  He’ll actually find the lowest price in the country, or even the world.  This is a strong incentive for internet retailers to keep their prices low, and they’re constantly checking the competition to ensure that they’re either the lowest, or very close to it.  Because of this, it really doesn’t matter where on the internet you buy, because the prices are likely to be all pretty much the same.  Where you can save is by checking very carefully what delivery costs and how long the waiting time is.

But if you’re after a serious bargain, if you want a digital camera, especially a more advanced model, at a very good price, spare a thought for the second hand dealers.  You don’t have to leave the internet, there are plenty of them around offering reconditioned cameras, often with a warranty and often at bargain price.  You’re not going to get the latest models, but unless you’re a gadget fashionista, that’s not going to bother you too much.

And that, in a nutshell, is the very best way to get a digital camera you can’t afford at a price that you can.

Kids learn by imitating, which is fine when it comes to tying their shoelaces or sweeping the floor but, if you have a budding photographer in your brood, you probably don’t want to hand over your expensive DSLR and let them learn to take pictures by trial and error on it.  And kids love to take pictures, so they’re going to be you’re going to have to resist a lot of pestering to keep their hands off it.  The perfect solution is to buy a camera designed for kids and let them click away happily while they learn what works and what doesn’t without putting your own precious camera at risk.

This is absolutely the best way to learn some photography skills and the sooner kids picks up a camera and starts shooting, the sooner they’re going to be taking good pictures.  There are plenty of inexpensive cameras designed especially for kids on the market today and it’s easy to find a suitable one.  If your child is a little older or seems to have a serious interest in photography, then it may be worth buying one of the sturdier models of digital camera around and sparing them the limitation of these cameras made especially for kids because most of them are pretty poor in quality.

One of the most important things about a camera for kids is that it encourages creativity.  The camera is something that a kid can carry with them everywhere they go and gives them a way to interpret the world around them.  The more kids can be encouraged to make their own pictures of the world and communicate their own attitude to the things they see every day, the more they learn that life is not just about imitation.  Once they develop some confidence in their own ability to present their own images of the things and people and around them, they will quickly develop the skills to talk about and describe the world in their own personal terms.

If a child is showing a serious interest in the visual aspects of life and is always curious and giving ideas when you’re using your own camera, then it’s important to develop that interest by giving them the chance to choose their own photographic subjects and the way they shoot them.  And that’s not something they’re going to learn by you occasionally letting them take a shot with your camera and showing them exactly how to do it.  It’s important for the child to experiment.

But there’s one even more practical reason for your kid to have a camera.  There’s nothing more frustrating than being the only photographer in a family, especially if you’re away on a family holiday.  You come back from that fantastic place you’ve just visited with hundreds of photos of everyone enjoying themselves there.  Except you.  Because you’ve been stuck behind the camera the whole time.  Buy your kid a camera and pretty soon you’ll be appearing in all those family holiday shots yourself.

There are a really bewildering range of digital cameras on the market these days, all of them offering dozens of features, simplicity and great picture quality, and they cover a wide range of prices.  So, when you’re buying a digital camera, how do you make sure that you’re getting what you want, and what you pay for?

First of all, know what you want a camera for.  Putting a little thought into this can make it much easier to whittle down the field and make your decision much easier.  In fact it’s not a bad idea to make a list of those features and then check them off one by one for every camera you look at to see how it shapes up.

So what are some of the questions you should be asking about the purpose of your camera?  If you’re like most people, you probably want to be able to take snapshots mainly for fun and sharing.  And sharing these days usually means digital transmission at fairly low resolution. So let’s look at the features you really need and a few other factors that affect your choice.

Most digital camera companies shout loudly about the number of megapixels in the sensors of their cameras.  But the truth is that you don’t need fifteen or even ten megapixels.  This is important only for high resolution photography that’s going to be used in fine printing or be blown up for large scale prints.

Zoom range can be pretty important for impromptu photographs if, for instance, you see something in the distance that you want to bring closer.  It’s important here to distinguish between optical zoom, which is magnifying your subject and digital zoom which is just making the pixels bigger.  Basically, anything you can do with an optical zoom can be done later on the computer when you’re editing your shots.  But for flexibility you should look for a minimum optical zoom of 5x.

Simplicity.  The chances are that if you’re reading an article like this you’re pretty unsophisticated when it comes to photography.  That’s fine, and modern digital cameras are designed to be simple to operate.  So you should make sure that the camera you choose has good automatic settings which let you take pictures without having to worry about the technical details.  Conversely, if you can imagine situations in which you would need more control, make sure that you can override the automatic settings.

There are literally hundreds of extra features offered by various digital cameras, and it’s unlikely you’re going to use many or even any of them, so make sure you’re not paying for features you don’t need.  Macro settings are a good example of this.

Lastly and probably most important is the question of price.  Before you sit down to make your choice, make a firm decision about how much you can afford to spend.  Without this it’s too easy to be seduced by advertising and sales hype into buying a camera that’s way beyond your price range.