During my career as a photographer for long time, I have bought lots of cameras, and I have seen people do huge mistakes in choosing a digital camera model.

1. Blind buying
This is perhaps the most common mistake. No matter how many reviews you have read, how many digital camera advice forums you have browsed or how many professionals have recommended it to you, always get a blind of what using the camera feels like.

2. Digital zoom figures are useless
Optical zoom is the only one you should care about. A 3-5x figure is alright for most low to middle end cameras. You will never use digital zoom higher than 5x, so don’t get wooed by the 1000x zoom boasted by the sales person.

3. Megapixels shouldn’t be your mandatory interest.

Granted, the highest resolution a camera can work at does matter, but you shouldn’t focus solely on that. If you just want to take photos to post on your blog, which shouldn’t be larger than a few hundred kilobytes, you don’t need a 12 Megapixel camera. Features such as zoom, previously discussed, should be equally important

4. Expensive is not bad
In other words, don’t get the most expensive camera on the market. As tempting as it may be, if you’re new to photography and just want to take occasional pictures at some events don’t buy the newest, shiniest and slickest DSLR with heaps of manual controls because it will make your shootings a living hell.

5. Not knowing what you want
Not all cameras perform their best with the set of features you need. First, evaluate what you want your camera to do. Define a list of top features you need, then go over a technical specifications catalog to find your model.

By Chris Campbell