What to Look for in a Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera

Overview

Learn how to look beyond megapixels and sort through the choices, varying features, and capabilities to choose the right point-and-shoot digital camera for you.

What to Look for in a Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera

If you're in the market for a digital camera, you've likely noticed the vast amount of choices, varying features, and capabilities. Since digital cameras hit the market, we've been conditioned to focus on the number of megapixels on different models, so it's easy to think you should make your purchase decision based largely on this number.

While megapixels are important, the fact is that digital cameras have evolved greatly in the past few years, and high quality models use much more than megapixels to help you capture a great picture, even if you're shooting in less-than-ideal situations. And when you start looking past megapixels, you can begin to consider other issues, such as: How will the camera perform under tricky lighting conditions? Will you be able to capture the best action shots? Do you have to sacrifice any features to get a smaller camera size?