Cheap Digital Cameras

For those who have never had a digital camera before, you will notice some terms and features that you might not have ever heard before.

The most important features to keep in mind while shopping for a refurbished digital camera are megapixels, optical zoom and compact flash memory.

Megapixels & Resolution

Megapixels define how much resolution a digital camera will record the scene at. With digital cameras, you actually have to "buy" resolution - if you buy too cheap a camera, the pictures it produces would be very coarse and blocky with little discernable detail.

Basically, the more pixels you have, the better your pictures will look.

For printing purposes, the amount of pixels you need depends on your intended use. If you just want to make small prints or take pictures for e-mailing, a camera with 1.3 megapixels or higher will work fine. With the recent advances in technology and reduction in prices, however, you really should not consider anything with less than 2.0 megapixels if your budget allows. At 3.0 megapixels and up is where you start seeing some great picture quality, capable of replacing a 35 mm camera for many nonprofessional users.

Keep in mind, however, that the better your pictures look, the larger the file sizes will be on your computer's hard drive. And for emailing higher quality pictures, you will probably need to shrink their resolution down so that your emails don't become too large to send over the Internet.

Optical Zoom & Digital Zoom

Whatever camera you choose, be sure that it has an optical zoom lens with sufficient range for you, not a digital zoom. Most have both, but you will want to only look at the optical zoom numbers when comparing camera models.

Optical zoom lenses physically extend to magnify your subject, and a motor actually controls the physical movement of the lens. Digital zoom works by cropping your image and then magnifying the result of the cropping, which tends to produce less than satisfactory results. And that is why you should always buy refurbished digital cameras with Optical Zoom.

Compact Flash Memory

In essence, compact flash memory serves as the "digital film" in your camera. As you take pictures, they are stored on the flash memory card. To learn more about this type of memory for digital cameras and to pick the right type for your camera, read our section on Compact Flash Memory.

Also make sure that your have some form of Flash Card Reader. This is an accessory that allows you to download pictures from your digital camera's flash memory card to your desktop or laptop computer.