Chris Pirillo: He's got a top five camera buying tips, pretty glad to hear from Ben, I haven't heard from him quite a while. He says, hey Chris, I thought it was time I send you one of these. You see I don't do a lot of comparison shopping. Most of the time I know right away what to buy, for example, when I buy a computer, I know I am getting whatever Apple just dropped out.
However, I have discovered buying a camera can prove to be difficult. Unlike with many other products, it's harder to tell which camera companies are better and which model to get, because sometimes there will be three cameras that are really similar from the same company and there will be a slight differences between them. Anyway, here are my tips for choosing a new camera and this goes for any Compact or Digital SLR to Camcorder.
Number one, this is important, read the reviews. Especially important if don't know much about photography or cameras. Camera reviewers tend to be really knowledgeable and passionate people. Uh! Tell me about it. There are many sites that have extremely thorough reviews that bring up very specific things that you probably wouldn't have ever noticed or have bothered to check out. Like whether or not the camera has manual focus controls. I suggest dpreview.com for still cameras and Camcorderinfo.com for camcorders.
Number two, make sure you see the sample shots and footage, in fact, I would say that it's more important than reading reviews. Do web searches for sample shots from the camera you are looking at. Don't go to the company's website, because their pictures are usually done professionally in optimum lighting situations. Search on Flickr for the camera, like flickr.com/cameras and I have posted all of my digital photos on Flickr. If you come into our chat room at live.pirillo.com and type in, what is frame, you will see a direct link to my Flickr account. To see samples on videos such are -- to see samples of the videos of shot, check video sites like Vimeo, YouTube, blip.tv etcetera.
These will be from regular camera owners and you are just playing around with their cameras and it will give you a good a idea of what you can do with the camera. In fact, when I went to look at the Casio Exilim shots, since it's a YouTube camera, that's how they brand it, I looked on YouTube for shots that were taken specifically with this model, the EX-Z1080 and they look good, they look good enough at least for me, for what I knew I would use it for eventually overtime.
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