Lab

Digital cameras

While £100 is enough to buy a dependable camera, you only need to spend a little more to get something that's really worth getting excited about.

In this Labs round-up, we review a selection of cameras that have gorgeous ultra-compact designs, lightning-fast performance, enormous screens, huge zooms, optical image stabilisation, face detection and fantastic image quality.

Picking your ideal snapping companion can be tricky, but we will tell you exactly which cameras are worth buying, and why.

For years, digital cameras have been evolving to offer bigger images, faster speeds and smaller, smarter designs. But now that even a budget camera can take beautiful photos at breakneck speeds, and look rather dashing in the process, where does that leave the premium compact camera?

Fortunately, manufacturers are coming up with novel ways to improve the quality of their upmarket cameras and the photos they take. The 12 models here are gadget-laden marvels. We're delighted that these innovations are designed to improve image quality rather than bog you down with frivolous features.

Quality control

There are some things you should be able to take for granted when spending up to £200 on a digital camera. Fantastic image quality is one. Image quality depends on many variables, from the lens and sensor to the focus mechanism and how well the camera adjusts to different lighting conditions. Most cameras take a great picture on a sunny day, but when you're spending a little more on a camera, you should expect it to take a great picture on cloudy days, at dusk, indoors with and without the flash, and under complex lighting, such as a portrait taken in the shade with a sunlit background.

Performance is another area where you shouldn't compromise. One major benefit of digital photography is the ability to snap away without worrying about film or developing costs, and it's often worth taking a handful of shots of a particular scene so you can choose the best one afterwards. However, a slow camera will make this difficult, and a slow startup time or a fussy autofocus may mean you miss the moment altogether.

We consider a healthy battery life another essential quality in a premium digital camera, but it seems not everyone agrees with us. All the cameras in this round-up come with li-ion rechargeable batteries. This helps keeps running costs down and the cameras compact. However, the combination of large LCD screens and slim batteries doesn't bode well for battery life. The average result in our controlled test over the last couple of years is 397 shots, but six cameras reviewed here took less than 300. This is disappointing, but we'd be willing to live with cameras that manage over 250.

Premium rates

If the basics are in place, it's time to consider what else you can get for your money. Our favourite extra feature is an augmented zoom range over the bog-standard 3x zooms common to most compact digital cameras. Six of the cameras offer a little - and in some cases a lot - more. A large zoom makes the difference between a shot that documents a place or event, and one that finds an interesting composition and draws the eye to a specific point of interest.

Large zooms are more susceptible to blur from camera shake, so optical image stabilisation is particularly important. It's useful in cameras with smaller zooms, too, allowing photos to be shot in lower light without resorting to the flash.

If you like to get creative with your photography, manual exposure and manual focus are a must. These can be useful for getting the lighting and focus just right when the automatic settings are behaving erratically, and they can also be useful for special effects such as deliberately under- or overexposed shots, motion blur and depth-of-field effects. The latter are dependent on the aperture used, with larger apertures focusing only on subjects a specific distance away and smaller apertures keeping the whole scene sharply focused. Aperture- and shutter-priority modes let you experiment with depth-of-field and motion-blur effects, while leaving the camera to set the overall exposure.

One of the newest extra features to emerge is face detection. Faces are often the most important part of a photo. If the camera can identify where they are, it can use this information to find the ideal focus, exposure and flash settings. All but one of the cameras on test include this feature, but their effectiveness varies widely. Some take a few seconds to spot a face, and then only if it's evenly lit and looking directly at the camera, while others can spot multiple faces almost instantly. However, even for the cameras that can track faces reliably, their success in using this information varies. All can ensure that the autofocus locks on to the face, but some struggle more with the exposure, getting distracted by bright or dark backgrounds.

Top of the class

With so many extra features on offer on top of the intricacies of image quality, it can be hard to pick your ideal camera. Sadly, no single camera offers all of the above in abundance. However, no fewer than eight cameras seriously impressed us, and we'd be happy to recommend any of the 4- and 5-star rated cameras. Two models really stood out for us, though, so turn the page to find out which is right for you.