First I am talking about the everyday camera that an Architect needs at a construction
site to take pictures of buildings under construction or take survey pictures of buildings to be remodeled not full featured and costly Digital-SLR cameras to take beauty shots of completed projects. Over the years I have evaluated and used a lot of the basis cameras and want to share my knowledge.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 images that you need to take. Many of the pictures are indoors so you are going to be close to what you are photographing. For example, you are going to remodel a store and need to take images of the existing toilet rooms, this is a small room so you can't keep backing-up to get everything into view.Most of the point and shoot digital cameras have a lens that goes down to only 35mm, this is not enough. I strongly recommend that you find a camera that goes to 28mm or less. For example the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS1 has a 25mm lens it works great for survey and construction photos, plus the quality can get you those beauty photos if the light is good. There are more point and shoot cameras with similar lenses but you will have to look for them.Once you have the right lens everything else is easy, anything over 6 mega-pixels is fine resolution, SD or micro-SD cards work. One feature that is hard to find anymore in a point and shoot with a view finder, the screen is nice but out in the sun a screen gets hard to see.