When you are ready to shop for a camera, it is a good idea to make a list of the things that you are looking for in a camera
. Too much choice is not necessarily a good thing, and the sheer number of digital cameras with their bewildering array of features and options can be overwhelming for the first-time buyer.
Just like with a film camera, the digital camera has a lens which brings light into focus on a bed of light sensitive material. In the digital camera, that light sensitive material is a circuit bed called a "CCD."
The better digital cameras will have ground-glass lens and high quality digital cameras will even have interchangeable lenses as do high-end film cameras. The lens still plays the important role of bringing light clearly to the CCD surface for a distortion free picture.
As these images become the same data on the memory card, a digital camera can offer unparalleled versatility without the need to change film types. Not all digital cameras have these features built in, but these are options you may see in some cameras. While the possibilities are great, you should ask yourself if you that's a feature you really need in a digital camera.
With digital cameras, CCD is a grid of light sensitive points which capture the image for conversion into a digital image. The number of points on the CCD is measured in terms of "mega pixels." The mega pixel rating is a completely new bit of terminology and is unique to the digital camera.
A lot of people print their film to 4x6 prints and many are now doing the same with their digital cameras. You can ask to see printed samples of pictures which are like the type you would normally take and compare the same prints between different cameras.
It's unlikely that the digital camera you buy today will be the only one that you'll ever have. You want to buy the digital camera that most reasonably meets your needs and how you normally plan to take pictures.