It must have been five or maybe even six years ago, when I purchased my first real digital camera. Even then, when I purchased it, I had no idea what to look for in a digital camera. The digital camera I bought then was the Sony Cybershot DSC-P93A (5.1 Mp, 3x Optical Zoom).

Here are some recent examples of this camera in action in the Drakensburg, South Africa.

This week, I have been helping a close friend, decide on which digital camera to purchase, however not without its set of problems.

The first camera that my friend purchased was a Nikon Coolpix 230.



After about 4 days and a thousand photos later my friend decided the camera was crap. After experimenting a little with the camera I could only agree. The Nikon Coolpix 230 is shit.

Negatives

• Camera is too small for my liking
• No manual control over aperture/shutter speed – This just makes a digital camera useless in my opinion.
• Terrible photographs in low light conditions – Because you have no manual control over aperture/shutter speed
• Higher ISO ranges generated very ‘noisy’ photos and in some cases unusable
• Competent technology, terrible software
• Touch screen seemed laggy – Nothing like an iPhone
• LCD screen had dreadful playback quality of photo’s. Virtually unusable to preview the quality of your last digital shot.

Positives

• Well constructed
• Small battery
• Touch screen on a camera has potential

It is important to mention at this point that I am not a photographer by profession. I know nothing about the finer details of taking photos, let alone taking a good photograph. However in the 5+ years of using my Sony Cybershot digital camera I have come to rely on being able to adjust the aperture and shutter speed manually. This is especially needed if you want to use your camera for night shots.

I went together with my friend to Dion Wired in Woodmead, Gauteng where they kindly allowed us to exchange the camera without any hassles. I spent a good two hours browsing and playing with most of their display cameras that looked like potential exchanges and that my friend pointed out.

As a whole it was a great experience for me to immerse myself in the latest digital camera offerings and I must say, I was highly disappointed with what is available today.

Regardless of manufacturer, below is the list of common features you will find on new mid-ranged digital cameras today.

• Slim designs
• Proprietary power packs as opposed to AA batteries (longer battery life)
• Larger display LCD screens (some are touch screen like the Nikon Coolpix 230)
• Image processing between 9-12MP
• Optical zoom between 3x-12x
• Image stabilisers

Along with the above list I have compiled another list of common additional new features that camera manufactures have deemed important but are in reality useless.

• Smile detection
• Face detection
• Scene settings (simplified auto white-balance)

The moment you investigate one of these new slim models, a couple of things will frustrate you. Although comfortable in your pocket most of these cameras turn out to be cumbersome in your hand. You struggle to press the right buttons, which in most cases are these tiny bumps packed close together.

When I tried to get the most out of the settings with each camera, I was disappointed to find that many did not allow me to manually change certain settings. This in my opinion is where a lot of the digital cameras completely fell short. They boast new and wonderful technical features, but what good are these, if I can’t adjust certain settings?

What stuns me completely is that the manufacturers could easily include access to these, instead manufactures deem it important to add: smile detection or, if you struggle to find people or their faces then: face detection. Are we becoming that apathetic, that we now need our digital camera to tell us someone was not smiling?

Wider… nope show more teeth… almost… smile wider… yes more teeth. Snap!

I put forward the question to any sane human on earth. Do you really need a camera to detect a smile?

My conclusion about the average modern digital camera is they came across as these amazing gleaming sports cars that turned out to be limited to 120km/h.

At the end of our two hour review, of the many digital cameras on display at Dion Wired, Woodmead, the final choice was to be the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS.

It allows me to adjust aperture and exposure values, and further using a very easy to use scroll wheel device that also adds up as a d-pad. The size of the camera is chunky handful, making it incredibly comfortable for taking shots, and consider it does pack 10x optical zoom. It uses 2xAA batteries as a power source, which is a sore point considering most camera’s come with their own battery pack, which does allow for reduction of physical size.

The Canon PowerShot SX110 IS is capable of 9MP photographs and has 10x optical zoom which is simply incredible. Further to this you can digitally zoom up to 40x, making the camera almost insanely voyeuristic. Photographs taken at this kind of zoom level do come out digitally ‘re-mastered’ with some artefacts occurring on a grainy final image. At 10x zoom and below things are pretty clean and pretty damn sexy.

The Canon PowerShot SX110 IS is a superb digital camera, despite being slightly bulkier and having to use penlight batteries. As a digital camera, I find it difficult not to like.

I have added the following shots below to give you an idea of how the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS performs vs other cameras.