We recommend you not to purchase a digital camera before you understand the points below. Lens Image sensors Image processing Image compression Image storage Accessories Standard equipment Components within a digital camera Lens Lenses are a crucial element of a camera and their quality will determine the quality of the final picture. Lenses can be made of plastic or glass. Glass lenses are more expensive but provide the highest quality. Lenses are made of different elements grouped together which maximise the image quality.
Aspherical elements reduce the distortion and improve the sharpness at the edges of the image.
Two types of focusing are available. Additionally the camera suffers no performance restriction when used in portrait orientation. In digital cameras the CCD is very flat, requiring accurate focussing in a flat plane, this is difficult to achieve, normally resulting in pictures which are not sharp at the centre and edge. Therefore, it is recommended to purchase cameras that have lenses which are made out of numerous aspherical elements and which offer autofocus and evaluative metering auto-exposure. CCD technology and CMOS technology.