Compact digital cameras have come a long way over the past few years. The features keep getting better and better while the prices get less and less expensive. Manufacturers also seem to be refreshing their cameras at a very rapid pace, with replacement models coming out as many as two to three times in a year.

Just in time for this year’s new crop of spring cameras, Photography Savvy has some things to look out for when purchasing your next compact camera.

More Pixels Are Not Always Better

A common digital camera myth is that a camera with more megapixels takes a better picture. Generally speaking, this is definitely not the case. Even though the pixel count keeps getting higher and higher, this doesn’t directly translate into better pictures. Other features, such as the camera’s processing, the optics, how it handles color and its performance at high ISOs, have a far greater impact than the number of pixels. Unfortunately for us, most manufacturers are content improving the quantity of pixels over the quality of pixels.

Since most compact cameras are using a small sensor, even the highest resolution point and shoot won’t match the quality of a digital SLR. Unless you plan to do a lot of cropping or enlargements bigger than 14″ wide, anything with around 8 megapixels should be more than adequate.

All Zooms Are Not Created Equal

You always want to look for optical zoom in a camera over digital zoom, especially in cameras with a large zoom range. Optical zoom uses the lens to bring the subject closer to you while digital zoom magnifies or crops the image, resulting in a loss of clarity and resolution.

Most manufacturers are much better about not advertising the digital zoom, but it is still something to watch out for. When you do make your camera purchase, you might want to consider disabling the digital zoom so you don’t accidentally use it.

Another thing to watch for is the range that the optical zoom covers. Manufacturers usually designate their zooms with numbers like “3x,” but 3x zoom is not standardized among different models. What this means is that you could have two cameras with a 3x zoom, and they may have different focal lengths.

To differentiate between cameras, try to look for their 35mm equivalent zoom. Typically most compact cameras start at about 35mm, but there are models out there that will go as low as 24mm for a wider field of view. Cameras with a wider field of view will be a little limited on the telephoto side and vice versa.

Image Stabilization

Most of today’s cameras have some form of image stabilization – a function that will allow you to get pictures at shutter speeds slower than normal without camera shake. An important thing to keep in mind is image stabilization will stop your motion, not your subject’s motion.

Another thing to watch out for is the type of image stabilization that the camera has. Cameras have three different types of stabilization: optical, sensor-shifting or electronic. The stabilization is built into the lens or image sensor for optical or sensor-shifting, respectively.

These forms of stabilization are both very effective and will help you reduce camera shake. Electronic stabilization is when the camera boosts the ISO sensitivity up higher in order to reduce camera shake – something most cameras already do anyways. Electronic stabilization should usually be avoided because it is not as effective and results in a grainy picture.

Types of Batteries

Today’s cameras either use AA-type batteries or lithium ion rechargeable batteries. Each type has its advantages and disadvantages. AA-type batteries are extremely convenient in the sense that if your batteries die, you can get replacements just about anywhere you go. Their biggest drawback is they don’t last nearly as long as their lithium ion counterparts and are consumable, meaning you might be using a lot of batteries.

Lithium ion batteries are more and more prevalent in today’s compact cameras. Their biggest benefit is they last a long time on each charge and don’t need to be replaced frequently. Their biggest drawback is once they die, you’re stuck unless you have a backup (which is a must!). Also, they can be very expensive (sometimes as much as $60).

Don’t Skimp on Quality

No matter what type of camera you’re shooting, always shoot on the highest possible resolution. I know I’d mentioned earlier in the article that megapixels are not everything, but there’s no point in buying a 12 megapixel camera if you’re going to lower the resolution down to 3 megapixels.

Memory prices are ridiculously cheap these days so shoot at a high resolution; you never know when that once-in-a-lifetime shot is going to come. The important thing to remember is you can always scale an image down, but you can never add more pixels to an image.

Conclusion

Hopefully these pointers will help you when selecting your new compact camera. Once you get your camera, be sure to take a lot of pictures!

Interested in buying a Digital SLR? Check out our Digital SLR Buying Guide.

Wonderland 3.0 is arranged into eleven different categories: General Corrections, B&W Conversions, Color Punches, Color Isolate, Color Modification, Creative Catalyst, Cross Process, Lighten/Darken Vignettes, Portrait Specific, Sepia and Sharpening. Here’s how the categories break down.

General Corrections

These are mainly designed as a starting-off point. The A-Game settings provide some adjustments in contrast and color, as well as some other minor adjustments. There are some extremely handy one-click white balance adjustments that bring you to Lightroom’s default preset WB settings.

B&W Conversions

Wonderland 3.0 has a lot of very nice presets for B&W. There are light conversions, extremely contrasty conversions and everything in between. A few of them have some subtle split toning to them, which can really add to the photo. There are about 28 total B&W conversions, so there are a lot of choices.

Color Punches

These settings provide very vibrant and saturated colors. The default white balance settings are not ideal for everything, so you’ll definitely want to do some tweaking in that department. You may also want to be careful with people getting orange skin tones, but with some playing you can get vivid results.

Color Isolate

Color Isolation can be a little difficult in Lightroom, but Wonderland does a fairly good job at it. There are nine different colors to isolate, each with an additional setting to also isolate the skin tone. In complex lighting situations where the skin is not evenly lit, it has some difficulty but is still fairly accurate. You might need to do some playing around in Photoshop for the finishing touches, but this does a lot of the groundwork for you.

Color Modification

These are cooling/warming presets, which are pretty self explanatory. The warming one uses toning while the cooling uses the WB adjustment sliders. Since there is only one option for warming and one for cooling, I didn’t find these to be useful. I still prefer using the WB sliders to make warming/cooling adjustments since those decisions generally depend on your lighting situation.

Creative Catalyst

The Creative Catalyst presets are the “heart and soul” of the Wonderland Presets. With a total of about 60 presets, the Creative Catalysts offer a wide range of effects to choose from. There are some absolutely killer split tone B&W conversions, as well as many different color effects. You may have to make some minor tweaks depending on your image, but there are a lot of awesome effects to choose from here.

Cross Process

As the name implies, these presets provide a cross-processed look to your images. You get the effect both ways (C-41 to E-6 and vice versa) as well as a lomography preset. This is a very popular look, and Wonderland does a great job of executing it.

Lighten/Darken Vignettes and Contrast

The lighten/darken portions of the Wonderland Presets give you a one-click solution to adding vignetting to the image. There are three lightening and four darkening presets, and between them, you can get extremely close to the effect you want. The contrast controls are nice, but I found them to be more useful in combination with other presets rather than on their own.

Portrait Specific

The Portrait presets have a couple of options for softening skin tones, and they work very well. Some of them give a soft and dreamy quality to the pictures. There are also a series of presets called portrait spotlight, which mutes the color except for a small amount of saturation (mostly in the skin). I wasn’t as keen on these presets as they made the subject look a little sickly.

Sepia

Just like the B&W and other monotone presets, the sepia settings from Wonderland 3.0 are excellent. There are only about 8 compared to the 28 B&W presets, but you get a nice range of subtle to full-blown sepia toning.

Sharpening

Rounding out the presets are sharpening presets for portraits and landscapes. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Lightroom’s sharpening and have always preferred sharpening in Photoshop based on where the image is going to be output. If you do plan to use the Sharpening presets, you might want to modify it; by applying it, all the sliders are reset to their default settings. This might have just been a slight oversight since sharpening is typically the last stage in post-processing.

Conclusion

Wonderland Presets 3.0 offers a lot of worthwhile post-processing options. There is a solid collection to choose from for a decent range of applications. As with any preset, you might have to make some slight modifications to make them work for your image, but for the most part they get you where you need to be. The Wonderland Presets allow you to make very creative modifications to your pictures with just a few clicks.

Wonderland Presets 3.0 is available directly from the Wonderland website for $39.99. At the website, you can also download 14 free samples, or look at more examples.

HP Photosmart B8550 Photo Printer

The Photosmart B8550 is ideal for photo enthusiasts and hobbyists who want to make 13″ x 19″ prints with ease. The B8550 produces vibrant prints and offers a very straightforward, easy to operate interface.

Professionals and advanced users might want to consider other options because the printer does lack some of the more advanced features of higher-end printers such as advanced ICC profiles (there are some basic ones), and a wider range of color and black cartridges.

Out of the Box

The Photosmart B8550 is a reasonable sized printer and has a footprint of about 26.5″ x 16.9″ x 9.5.” Setting the printer up took about 20-30 minutes, with most of that time being the initialization process of the ink cartridges.

Between the instructions on the 2.4″ LCD and the provided step-by-step startup guide, the setup is very easy. Once the ink is installed, the printer even does its own alignment without you having to input anything.

My only personal complaint with the install is when you install the printer, you have to install all of the Photosmart software along with it. Some of these, like the Device Manger and Dashboard ink status widget, are useful, while others are very redundant and basic if you already have photo managing or editing software. This software might be useful if you don’t have anything for photos, but a custom software installation option would have been nice.

Printing

Prints from the Photosmart B8550 were outstanding. The printer does an excellent job of handling tonal gradations and providing excellent clarity in the images. Additionally, HP’s Vivera inks provided very vivid colors on everything from 4″ x 6″ prints up to 13″ x 19.” Prints dry almost immediately to the touch after coming out of the printer, but they look best after sitting a few minutes and letting the ink settle into the paper.

Printing time is very reasonable even at the best quality. On average, it took the printer about 1:30 for a 4″ x 6″ print, 2:30 for an 8″ x 10″ print, and 5:50 for a 13″ x 19″ print. These are with the printer at the highest quality, and times were definitely better at the normal setting.

Advanced users have the option to let their preferred application manage the colors using the provided ICC profiles from HP. Beginning users can let the printer manage the colors and tweak the output as they desire.

One thing I noticed when letting the printer manage the colors: the images tended to be a little darker than what I personally preferred. The other thing to note is areas of prints with a lot of very dark shadows tended to have a slight green cast to them, whereas the rest of the picture looked normal.

The printer also offers the ability to print directly from a memory card, camera or USB storage device. A nice little side note is you can use the printer’s memory card slot as a card reader for your computer if you don’t already have one.

Printing directly from a memory card was very easy and offered fifteen print layouts for various different paper size/print combinations (for example: 2 5″ x 7″ prints on an 8.5″ x 11″ page). There are also options for things like album pages, cropping, adding frames and special effects. I personally preferred working directly from the computer, but I can see direct printing being very useful for quick prints.

An inherent trait in a lot of entry-level printers is they tend to consume a massive amount of ink. From my experience, this was definitely the case when using the Best quality setting. After about a dozen prints on the best quality setting (a mix of mostly 8″ x 10″ and 13″ x 19″), the yellow and photo black cartridge were giving a low ink warning. Interestingly enough, both magenta and cyan had at least 75% of their capacity left.

Ink consumption improves quite a bit when printing on the normal setting, and I honestly could not see a drastic difference between a best and normal print at a reasonable viewing distance.

The one caveat here is I could only select normal when letting the printer manage the colors. When letting Photoshop manage the colors, only the best and max DPI settings were available. I’m not sure if this is only limited to Photoshop but should be noted.

Conclusion

As I had mentioned earlier in my review, the HP Photosmart B8550 is an excellent printer for photo hobbyists and enthusiasts. It’s a great choice if you enjoy photo projects like calendars, scrapbooks, etc. HP has a whole set of free photo printing projects at the HP Creative Studio.

Like most entry to mid-range printers, it does tend to eat ink at the highest quality setting.

My advice for potential buyers would be to look into the larger capacity inks that HP offers, which tend to only be about $5 more than the regular cartridges ($15 vs $10). The quality of the prints and potential print sizes make it a great value for the money.

The HP Photosmart B8550 Inkjet Photo Printer is available from Amazon.com for about $220.

Images courtesy of HP.

A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting is the latest in Nikon School educational DVDs. It’s mainly designed to show off the versatility of the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS), but also offers a lot of useful information about light and lighting for photographers of all skill levels.

Before the DVD goes into flash photography, host and National Geographic photographer Bob Krist starts with the basics of light: direction, color, and quality. This may seem rudimentary for some, but these concepts are applicable to any type of photography and very important in understanding flash photography. Krist then explains some of the benefits of using flash and how it differs from using available light. He does an excellent job of explaining some of the more technical aspects of flash photography, such as sync-speed, with animations to illustrate the point.

Once you have down some of the basic concepts, the DVD starts getting hands-on with some basic portrait setups using speedlights. The demos work one light at a time with Krist explaining the rationale behind light positions, additional lights, and how to overcome problems as they arise. You’ll see a three light setup and understand how to balance flash and ambient light using slow-sync and gels. There is even a brief demo of the R1 and R1-C1 close-up set. The best part of these demos is being able to see each shot as changes are made and the excellent diagrams to see the overall setup.

Once you’ve seen how easy it is to work with the CLS, you get an overview of how to set up the various components of the system in master and remote modes. Every aspect is covered from the speedlights to using certain cameras’ built-in flashes as a commander. You even get to see Bob Krist’s personal location kit, all of which fits nicely in a carry-on size Storm Case.

With the basics behind you, the second half of the DVD follows lighting expert Joe McNally in the field on three different on-location shoots: the Boston Ballet School, a bride preparing for a wedding, and a dock. McNally applies all of the concepts from the first half of the DVD and, as he puts it, “improvises endlessly.”

Just like Bob Krist did in the studio, McNally works in pieces when setting up for his shots. You get a clear explanation of why additional lights or diffusers are being added and get to see the results instantly. He also identifies problems as they arise and shows how to overcome them. Watching McNally connect and communicate with his subjects is a treat, and you can clearly see that connection translate into his pictures.

Joe McNally and Bob Krist make it a point of getting the light off the camera throughout the three on-location shoots. You see a lot of inventive uses of umbrellas, diffusers, reflectors, and gels. There’s a lot of great advice on filling in shadows and maintaining a balance between flash and natural light to make it look as if no flash was used at all. There are great examples of both slow and high-speed sync, indoor and outdoor shooting, and still and moving subjects. McNally goes by all the rules but also shows that some of them are meant to be bent or broken. This is evident in many shots, especially the finale at the dock that starts with nine Nikon speedlights and ends with a total of twelve.

The DVD is much more informative compared with Nikon’s last lighting DVD The Speed of Light, which showed what the system was capable of but gave little in the way of how to use it. It does still have its moments where you feel like you are watching an infomercial, but these are very tasteful and should be expected considering the DVD is put out by Nikon. Some people may balk at the price tag ($39.99), but it’s reasonable considering the length of the feature (over two hours) and amount of information presented.

Overall, A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting is an excellent guide to the Nikon CLS, as well as lighting in general. The DVD should appeal to just about all levels of photographers because it moves at a pace easy to follow for beginners, but also provides lots of useful tips and tricks for intermediate to advanced users. It even includes a handy cheat sheet with instructions for setting up all of the various CLS products, as well as some lighting terms mentioned throughout the DVD. Whether you’re new to Nikon’s speedlight system or have experience, A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting is definitely worth checking out.

Images Courtesy of Nikon USA.

Understanding exposure is an extremely vital part of photography but can often be very confusing for beginners. If you or someone you know is looking for a book to provide a little insight into understanding exposure, Rick Sammon’s Exploring the Light is an excellent resource.

Exploring the Light starts off with the basics: composition, shutter speed and aperture. There are also quite a few sections on camera settings, modes, metering and operation for digital SLRs. Once you have the basics down, the rest of the book relies on these principals in order to get a better understanding of light and exposure.

Rick Sammon provides a lot of excellent tips and insight into many common lighting situations. There’s a section about seeing the different types of light and making the most out of it, as well as one on overcoming difficult lighting conditions. There’s even an entire chapter dedicated to flash photography, which can be very intimidating for a lot of people.

Sammon does drive the point that “the more we know about getting the best possible exposure, the less time we have to spend in the digital darkroom rescuing our pictures, and therefore the more time we have to take pictures.”

At the same time, he does also realize how powerful programs like Photoshop can be and closes the book with some simple yet very effective Photoshop techniques for enhancing your photos, not completely transforming them.

Perhaps the best part of Exploring the Light is the fact that Rick Sammon provides examples of the photos that lead to the “keeper” shots – providing advice on seeing creatively.

He also supplies technical information on the majority of the shots in order for readers to better understand the camera settings.

Exploring the Light is an excellent guide to composition, exposure, and understanding the basics of light and lighting. Rick Sammon does a great job explaining the basics and uses his work to help illustrate the point.

I would definitely recommend this book to someone just getting into photography or intermediate users. The lessons in this book are fundamentals that every photographer should learn.

Rick Sammon’s Exploring the Light: Making the Very Best In-Camera Exposures is available at Amazon.com.