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Optical Zoom
Optical zoom is nice, but do not be fooled. More and more camera manufacturers are choosing to label their digital cameras with the total (optical + digital) zoom. "Digital zoom" does not really zoom; it just enlarges a part of the image imitating optical zoom. This isn't bad in and of itself, but when you are comparing digital cameras, you should always use optical zoom, as you can do "digital zooming" and cropping in any image editing software.
Size and Weight
In point-n-shoot digital cameras these parameters are very important. After all you plan to take your camera somewhere, and you do not want to carry a brick in your pocket. Larger camera can be harder to hold steady in your hands, and often you need a sturdy camera tripod to take good pictures with an SLR camera. We have done a lot of field tests and our customers always send us their camera reviews, so we know for sure that smaller and lighter compact digital cameras such as Pentax Optio and Canon Digital Elf always get used more frequently than their bigger and heavier brothers.
Modes
Most modern digital cameras also offer different "picture modes" - Best, Better, Good - for the same resolution, and therefore store different number of digital photos on the same card. When you select Quality Level or Resolution Mode, you select the type of compression or resolution that your digital camera will use to store the images. Better quality requires less compression and needs more flash memory card storage. If you plan to print your digital pictures on paper, select the highest resolution possible, but keep in mind that when you increase the quality setting, you create larger files that might be inappropriately large for e-mailing or web publishing. Please remember - most if not all digital cameras come with some image editing software, so you are always able to shrink your digital pictures to a smaller size by discarding extra pixels you don't need, but this process doesn't work in reverse. If you enlarge a lower resolution digital picture, the image will appear blurry and distorted.
