How to buy a digital camera

Lens quality on point-and-shoot digital cameras is now excellent across the board. In these cameras a single lens is used for nearby wide-angle shots and for zooming in on distant objects. Look for lenses with bigger optical zoom, which moves you closer to the subject without sacrificing quality; ignore digital zoom technology, which works by essentially cropping the image. A 3X zoom is standard, though a new and fast-growing category of compact super-zooms now hits 15X.

Sensor: Amateur buyers don't usually think about it, but the sensor captures the incoming light and converts the resulting pixel image to a digital file. The more pixels on the sensor, the more sensitive it is, and the bigger the sensor, the better the pixels' ability to capture light. You want the biggest sensor with the most pixels. There are a few formats; CCD is the standard on better cameras.