First I am speaking about the common place camera that an Architect needs at a construction
site to take pictures of buildings under construction or document images of buildings to be remodeled not full featured and expensive Digital-SLR cameras to take beauty shots of completed projects. Over the years I have owned and used a lot of the basis cameras and want to share myexperience.
The most important factor in selecting the right camera is the lens angle. As an Architect you need the widest angle lens you can find. Think about the photos that you need to take. Many of the pictures are indoors so you are going to be close towhatyou are photographing. For example, you are going to remodel a office and need to take photos of the existing toilet rooms, this is a small room so you can't keep backing-up to geteverythinginto view.
Most of the point and shootdigitalcameras have a lens that goes down to only 35mm, this is not enough. Istronglyrecommend that you find a camera that goes to 28mm or less. For example the PanasonicLumix DMC-ZS1 has a 25mm lens it works great for survey and construction photos, plus the quality can get you those beauty images if the light is good. There are many point and shoot cameras with similar lenses but you will have to look for them.
Once you have the right lenseverythingelse is simple, anything over 6mega-pixelsis fine resolution, SD or micro-SD cards work. One feature that is hard to find anymore in a point and shoot with aviewfinder, the screen is nice but out in the sun a screen gets hard to see.