How to Buy a Digital Camera and Ignore Expensive Hype

Wired’s How-To Wiki takes a group-edited look at the digital camera market and how a newcomer (or, more likely at this point, a buyer replacing their first, outdated model) can parse all the features and statistics to come out with a reasonable bargain. Their advice on megapixels, one of the most hyped features on any camera, is pretty reasonable:

Then there is the fact that even a 3.1 MP camera, which is obsolete for non-camphones, can take a perfectly passable 6″ by 8″ photograph. The current standard for the low end of consumer digital cameras is between 5 and 7 megapixels, allowing flawless 8×10s. Really, when any camera you buy lets you print 8×10s, do more mexapixels matter?

Not everyone’s going to be looking for a bargain camera, of course, but Wired’s wiki is a good read for anyone trying to reason out the difference between two models they’re considering, or just figure out what’s important to them. Photo by David Boyle.