Which brands do I choose, then?

The cheaper one, of course:) Really, if you are really tight on budgets, go for the cheap one. But NEVER EVER buy used digital cameras! There are things in this world that are not supposed to be bought second-hand, and electronic products are one of that things.

The reason is, you’ll never know that the previous owner has ever dropped the camera or not. Some cameras’ casing are good at recovering from drops on hard concrete floors, and they won’t even have scratch marks on the body.

Heck, maybe they even come with X months of warranty, as a token of goodwill from the seller. But Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) seems to love to kick in at the most unfortunate of times (who’s this Murphy guy, anyway?)

One way or the other, the internal circuits will be slightly damaged. Add that to your clumsiness (I’m not blaming you, but even the pros occassionally dropped their gadgets. It’s not they intentionally did it, but hey, it’s that one thing people call accident), and you’ll have a recipe for once-used-and-then-damaged-used-camera. Disaster, in short.

Some tips, please?

Okay, I hear you. After some deep meditations, you decide that photography is for you. You head to your nearest ATM, flip out your card, get some cash, and quickly dash yourself to your old trusty camera shop. The thing is, Heck, what camera should I buy? Here are some guidelines:

Price - Higher number on the price tag doesn’t always mean better product. That 200 bucks piece of crap could be 10 times better than the 300 bucks shiny silver stuff. Who knows? Don’t listen to those so-called experts when they recommend one product over another. Use your own budget as a guideline, i.e how much you are willing or able to spend on a digital camera. Don’t just grab the one that you think you can afford to sacrifice a 100 more bucks to buy it, only to find out that the functions are lesser than the cheaper one. Make a trip around town to survey the price.

MP - No, not Military Police. Merely, Megapixels. Like I said (heck, you probably don’t even listen to what Mama said), higher megapixels never guarantee better pictures. It’s like driving a Gallardo-with-400km/h-topspeed on a 110 km/h-highway. It’s good, but it’s not that good, especially if the higher megapixels count increase the price of the gadget. You are more than good with 4 MP, sufficient for the noobs (which I dedicate this website to;).

Skill - Know thyself. Or if you are buying for someone else, you better ask him about his photography skill. But if you are reading this, I’ll safely assume that you are a noob. That’s okay, nothing to be ashamed of;) Everyone has been a noob at some points in their life. Anyway, if you seriously thinking about switching to photography career, you’ll want to buy a camera that you can tweak its settings to suit your needs. For the occasional users, just pick the one that has more optical zoom than digital zoom (I’ll tell you why later, coz I want you to keep reading. Mwahahaha!), auto white balance with Manual setting (if you don’t know crap about this, just tell the store girl that you want those. She’ll be fascinated by your “knowledge” in photography:), multiple ISO setting, and presto, you’re good to go!

Magazine Reviews - When in doubt, read the mags. Review the reviews. But beware, many a magazine have a product tester that did not follow the proper test procedures. They write reviews based on their own limited knowledge, not the combined expertises and knowledges of the experts in the field. Use your own judgement. I recommend surfing through multiple photography forums.

The Nerdy Store Guys - No offence to all photography store owners, but many times I had found that a 5 year-young lil’ kiddo has more photography knowledge than their salespersons! Ask him a lot of questions, and if he seems to be repeating the answers or answering while glancing at his watch every 3 minutes, beam out at once! Trust me, you don’t want to buy his recommendation.

LCD vs Tiny Hole - Digital camera nowadays often have larger-than-life LCD screen, while diminishing out the little peeking hole called viewfinder (it’s the hole on your camera that is used to look at your subject, just like the good ol’ days of film camera). Don’t buy camera without this viewfinder thing. There will be times that you wish you could drill your camera for one, because LCD screen is a juice-sucking mechanism. It can drain your batteries faster than you can say I’m outta batteries! If you’re stuck in Amazon for 3 days with only a digital camera (you really shouldn’t be stuck there. Whatcha doing there anyway?), you’ll be thanking the engineers for inventing it, thus saving your much-needed batteries from the vampiric LCD screen.