It's amazing how much prices for good digital cameras have fallen, with reputable camera manufacturers producing 3 megapixel cameras for under $200.

One camera I can recommend from personal experience is the Olympus Camedia C310, which fits in the hand, takes sharp, colourful photos and is a pleasure to use. This is an unobtrusive camera with great ease of use that allows you to take those quick snapshots.

I recently recommended the camera to a friend after some extensive comparison shopping and I have ended up using it more often than she does. I could easily have recommended other similar 3 megapixel cameras from Nikon, Canon, Konica and Pentax. Notice these brands are all manufacturers that have a history in the camera business long before digital cameras came along, compared to the other digital camera manufacturers - such as HP, Kodak, Fuji and Casio - who jumped in the market to cash in on a gold rush.

Despite the advances made by the upstarts and the good price competition they bring to the market, who in the end can you reasonably expect to produce good lenses? Unless you are a pro and can really test out the differences, it's best to stick with the standards.

The Olympus Camedia C310 has a 5.8 - 17.4mm lens (equivalent to 38 -114mm lens in 35mm format) and can capture photos at up to 3.2 megapixels, enough sensor power to get you a reasonable-sized print at 300 dpi (more on this later).

My only complaint is that the C310 uses an xD Picture Card, yet a new storage format.

The C310 comes with a 16 MB xD Card so of course, if you're an avid picture taker, you'll soon want to buy 50 MB card, or even 100 MB. This can get expensive if you want to switch brands later on and they turn out to use a different type of memory card.

It costs the equivalent of $180 in the UK and should be available soon in the US if you can't get it there. Go online and search!

If I had not found the Olympus C310 on sale I would have recommended the Nikon Coolpix 3700, which takes 3.2 megapixel images and costs about $199. I'm a fan of Nikon's Coolpix series, which produce good images and retain a classic look.

The Coolpix 3700, which has received good reviews in the camera press, comes with a Zoom-Nikkor Lens that is equivalent to a 38-115 mm lens in a 35mm film camera. For those divers in Bermuda you can also buy an optional waterproof case.

You should also take a look at other cameras in the 3 megapixel range, including the Pentax Optio S40 (4 megapixels, a lens equivalent to a 35-105 mm and costs about $169 in the US), the Canon PowerShot A75 (3.2 megapixels, 35-105mm lens, $170), the Canon PowerShot A310 (3.2 megapixels, 33 mm fixed, $125) and the Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z1 (3.2 megapixels, 38-380mm, $190).

All the cameras I have listed as examples have the minimum megapixel power needed to give you the size of prints of reasonable quality, whether you want to print them yourself or have your local photo developer make a real print on photographic paper. When you download your prints to your computer, you'll find they are large and have a resolution of 72 dots per inch (DPI), which is the average monitor resolution of your computer screen.

You can find the details of a particular print in the photo editor that you use to view the print. The size and DPI are usually given in the “resizing” function of your photo editor. DPI is a fixed printer mode of printing no matter what size image you print. You want as much DPI as you can get with any given printing equipment no matter what size of image you are printing and from what size image.

Without going into too much technical explanation, 300 DPI is thought to be the minimum standard quality. Without changing the printing size of your image, change the DPI of your print to 300 DPI.

You'll see a drastic reduction in the print size of your image. Print size is the size of the representation of an image when it is printed. You can also calculate your expected print size (different from screen size) through this formula: print size = pixel size divided by the resolution in dpi). A 3 megapixel image at 72 DPI brought to a resolution of 300 DPI will give you a reasonable quality 5 inch by 7 inch print, which is a standard size produced by your local photo developer. I hope this helps those who are in the process of choosing their next digital camera. But don't listen to me. Search the net for reviews of these cameras and the other exciting newer models in the same range that are coming on the market. Prices are going down and quality is going up making these affordable to the regular snapshot taker. Try PCMag and the Digital Camera Review. You can also go to the manufacturers' sites for the technical details.

****

Contact Ahmed at editor@offshoreon.com Go to www.SecureBermuda.com for security updates.