Lab

Digital Cameras

Digital cameras are turning us into a nation of photography enthusiasts. Rather than picking up dull, badly composed and poorly exposed shots from the chemist and wondering what went wrong, you can now take a picture, instantly see how successful it is and, if necessary, have another go. This is the best photographic education you could hope for. The instant feedback and recyclable nature of digital allows us to experiment with creative photographic techniques.

If your compact digital camera has opened your eyes to the artistic side of photography, perhaps it's time you rewarded yourself with a more capable camera. We've gathered the leading models aimed at amateur enthusiasts, bridging the gap between top-of-the-range compact cameras, which have never been so capable, and entry-level digital SLRs, which have never been so affordable. If you're itching to take your photography to the next level, we're here to make sure you do it in style.

Choosing a... Digital camera

If you're serious about photography and your budget is between £400 and £500, you have an important decision to make. Do you want an entry-level digital SLR or a high-end fixed-lens digital camera? Both have their merits, so you need to consider what you can expect from each type.

LIGHT FANTASTIC

The most obvious benefit of an SLR camera is that light passing through the lens is sent straight to the optical viewfinder. This provides a large, detailed preview of a scene, complete with focus and zoom settings. The difference between this through-the-lens (known as TTL) facility and an LCD screen preview is huge. After all, a 235,000-pixel screen can't hope to do justice to an 8-megapixel image. Manual focus is delightfully easy on a digital SLR, whereas on a fixed-lens camera it's practically impossible to achieve without some kind of workaround.

Digital SLRs also tend to be more responsive. Startup is often instantaneous, and in manual focus mode you usually won't experience any kind of perceptible gap between pushing the shutter and taking a picture.

Digital SLRs invariably suffer less from image noise, thanks to the use of larger sensors. The difference is most noticable at high ISO settings, as these involve capturing less light and boosting the brightness digitally. In practice, most fixed-lens digital cameras can capture images without intrusive noise at ISO speeds of 100 or 200. Digital SLRs, however, often reach ISO 800 or 1,600 while maintaining low noise. This allows the user to increase the shutter speed and thus reduce blur from camera shake or fast-moving subjects.

Another inherent benefit of digital SLRs is the option to change lenses. Budget DSLR kits come with fairly basic lenses, but when your finances allow, you can add specialist lenses for macro, telephoto, super wide angle and all sorts of other specialist functions. Canon makes nearly 100 different lenses that can be fitted to its EOS 350D.

COMPACT VISION

But £500 non-SLR digital cameras have plenty to offer, too. Their lenses are far more capable than a budget DSLR's, with huge zoom ranges and more intimate macro functions. Many also have optical image stabilisation, enabling you to take long-range telephoto shots without blur. An image stabiliser is useful in low light, as it allows you to use longer shutter speeds to capture more light without blur.

Previews on an LCD screen have their advantages. They don't have the detail of an optical viewfinder, but they can reveal the camera's exposure and white balance settings before the shot is taken. Because an SLR camera directs light from the lens straight to the optical viewfinder, light doesn't hit the sensor until you take a picture. As a result, live previews on a DSLR's screen aren't usually possible, although Olympus has found a way around this in its E-330. DSLRs can't record video files, whereas all the fixed-lens cameras on test can record video at 640x480 resolution and 30fps.

Non-SLR digital cameras don't get much better than those in this group, and many of them are adorned with superb controls and huge, high-resolution screens. These areas are sometimes stripped back when designing a budget DSLR.

PICKING A WINNER

Most of the criteria for a good digital camera apply to SLR and fixed-lens models. As always, image quality is paramount. We paid attention to sharpness and detail, image noise, flash performance and problems such as blooming and purple fringing, and we also examined how easy it was to use manual settings to get the pictures we wanted to achieve.

Enthusiasts' cameras are unlikely to spend much time in full automatic mode, but we wouldn't want a camera that we had to battle with to get the desired results. With this in mind, we looked for an exhaustive set of options, an efficient set of physical controls with which to access them and clear feedback as to what effect they would have.

Performance is just as important. A camera that starts up quickly and is fast to use can help you to get the pictures you want, and it's important to have a battery that's good enough for a whole day's shooting if need be. Handling comfort can have the same effect, although this is one area in which all the cameras in the group scored highly.