San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) October 11, 2005

Photobird.com, the easy way to share your photos around the world, today announced the immediate availability of the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide.

This comprehensive and frequently updated list of 200 digital cameras and 1000 reviews in 12 languages makes it easy to shop for digital cameras. The intuitive, easy-to-read design assists digital camera shoppers with their research and helps them choose from a myriad of available digital camera features and options. The Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide is available for free at www.photobird.com/buyersguide/ and can be found in the Photobird Learning Center at www.photobird.com/learn/ . A free trial to Photobird.com and more information about easily sharing your photos with friends and family is also available at www.photobird.com .

“There is an overwhelming number of digital cameras available and so many websites that review digital cameras, that shoppers needed a comprehensive, easy-to-read, frequently updated list of digital cameras and digital camera reviews to jump start their research. Shoppers now have a buyer’s guide that’s comprehensive, free from advertising clutter, and makes shopping for a digital camera much easier,” said Ed Krimen, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Photobird.com. “If you’re the type of shopper who just wants some simple details before making a purchase decision, then you’ll really like that the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide helps you quickly find the right cameras. If you’re the type of shopper who spends hours and hours researching every specific camera detail, then you’ll appreciate that the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide links to the highest-quality digital camera reviews and sample photos that are available on the web.”

Using Photobird’s “Top 10 List for Buying a Digital Camera” as a foundation, the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide focuses on the most important digital camera features to help you start shopping. The Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide lists cameras along with:

relative size of the camera

price

number of megapixels

LCD size

zoom capabilities

memory card compatibility

battery type

manufacturer

model name

To expedite your research, the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide also helps you focus your choices by allowing you to sort digital cameras by size:

All cameras

Tiny cameras only

Tiny and compact cameras

Compact and medium-sized cameras

Medium, large, and SLR cameras

Several times a week, the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide is updated with the latest reviews from the best digital camera review websites. The Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide is also updated when new digital cameras are announced and when digital cameras are no longer available. You can track these on-going changes in the Changelog for the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide which is available at www.photobird.com/learn/buyersguide/changelog/ and linked from the bottom of the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide.

While shopping for your new digital camera, if you want some feedback from customers or have a question about the camera you’re interested in, you can peruse discussions and post questions in the new Photobird forums, which are now available in conjunction with the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide. The Photobird forums have individual forums for each camera manufacturer as well as forums for sharing your photos with others and learning new digital photography skills. The Photobird forums are linked from each digital camera in the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide, and are also available at www.photobird.com/forums/ .

Finally, when you’ve completed your research, you can purchase your digital camera online using the “Buy” links that are available throughout the Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide.

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

The Photobird Digital Camera Buyer’s Guide announced today is available for free to everyone who visits Photobird.com. For sharing your digital photos, Photobird.com offers flexible and convenient monthly and yearly subscription options, available at www.photobird.com/subscribe. Photobird.com is currently offering a 50% discount on yearly subscriptions until October 31, 2005. For about $ 2 per month — less than the price for storage space for a website that you would need to build yourself — Photobird.com provides the storage space and the unique, professionally-designed website to make it easy to create your own online photo albums.

ABOUT PHOTOBIRD.COM

Photobird.com makes it easy for digital camera users to share their photos with friends and family around the world. As a family-owned and operated business with a focus on the needs of customers, Photobird.com wants your experience sharing and viewing photos to be the best it can be. For more information about Photobird.com, visit www.photobird.com.

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More Camera Press Releases

The amount of detail that a camera can capture is called the resolution, and it is measured in pixels. The more pixels a camera has, the more detail it can capture and the larger pictures can be without becoming blurry or “grainy.” High-end consumer cameras can capture over 12 million pixels. Some professional cameras support over 16 million pixels (megapixels), or 20 million pixels for large-format cameras. For comparison, it has been estimated that the quality of 35mm film is about 20 million pixels.

Exposure and Focus

Just as with film, a digital camera has to control the amount of light that reaches the sensor. The two components it uses to do this, the aperture and shutter speed, are also present on conventional cameras.

Aperture: The size of the opening in the camera. The aperture is automatic in most digital cameras, but some allow manual adjustment to give professionals and hobbyists more control over the final image.

Shutter speed: The amount of time that light can pass through the aperture. Unlike film, the light sensor in a digital camera can be reset electronically, so digital cameras have a digital shutter rather than a mechanical shutter.

These two aspects work together to capture the amount of light needed to make a good image. In photographic terms, they set the exposure of the sensor.

In addition to controlling the amount of light, the camera has to adjust the lenses to control how the light is focused on the sensor. In general, the lenses on digital cameras are very similar to conventional camera lenses — some digital cameras can even use conventional lenses. Most use automatic focusing techniques.

The focal length, however, is one important difference between the lens of a digital camera and the lens of a 35mm camera. The focal length is the distance between the lens and the surface of the sensor. Sensors from different manufacturers vary widely in size, but in general they’re smaller than a piece of 35mm film. In order to project the image onto a smaller sensor, the focal length is shortened by the same proportion.

Focal length also determines the magnification, or zoom, when you look through the camera. In 35mm cameras, a 50mm lens gives a natural view of the subject. Increasing the focal length increases the magnification, and objects appear to get closer. The reverse happens when decreasing the focal length. A zoom lens is any lens that has an adjustable focal length, and digital cameras can have optical or digital zoom — some have both. Some cameras also have macro focusing capability, meaning that the camera can take pictures from very close to the subject.

Digital cameras have one of four types of lenses:

1) Fixed-focus, fixed-zoom lenses – These are the kinds of lenses on disposable and inexpensive film cameras — inexpensive and great for snapshots, but fairly limited.

2) Optical-zoom lenses with automatic focus – Similar to the lens on a video camcorder, these have “wide” and “telephoto” options and automatic focus. The camera may or may not support manual focus. These actually change the focal length of the lens rather than just magnifying the information that hits the sensor.

3) Digital-zoom lenses – With digital zoom, the camera takes pixels from the center of the image sensor and interpolates (alters) them to make a full-sized image. Depending on the resolution of the image and the sensor, this approach may create a grainy or fuzzy image. You can manually do the same thing with image processing software — simply snap a picture, cut out the center and magnify it.

4) Replaceable lens systems – These are similar to the replaceable lenses on a 35mm camera. Some digital cameras can use 35mm camera lenses.

Storage of Images

Most digital cameras have an LCD screen so you can view your picture right away. This is one of the great advantages of a digital camera — you get immediate feedback on what you capture. Of course, viewing the image on your camera would lose its charm if that’s all you could do. You want to be able to load the picture into your computer or send it directly to a printer. There are several ways to do this.

Although most of today’s cameras are capable of connecting through serial, parallel, SCSI, USB, or FireWire connections, they usually also use some sort of removable storage device. Digital cameras use a number of storage systems. These are like reusable, digital film, and they use a caddy or card reader to transfer the data to a computer. Many involve fixed or removable flash memory. Digital camera manufacturers often develop their own proprietary flash memory devices, including SmartMedia cards, CompactFlash cards and Memory Sticks. Other removable storage device include floppy disks, hard disks (external, or microdrives), and writeable CD’s and DVD’s.

Regardless of what type of storage they use, all digital cameras need lots of room for pictures. They usually store images in one of two formats — TIFF, which is uncompressed, and JPEG, which is compressed. Most cameras use the JPEG file format for storing pictures, and they sometimes offer quality settings (such as medium or high).

To make the most of their storage space, almost all digital cameras use some sort of additional data compression to make the files smaller. One compression routine takes advantage of patterns that repeat. The image can be reconstructed exactly as it was recorded, reducing the file size no more than 50%, often much less. Another compression routine called irrelevancy eliminates some of the more meaningless data, taking advantage of the fact that digital cameras record more information than the human eye can easily detect.

Since the introduction of its first camera in 1952, Pentax has been consistently delivering constant photography innovations to the people. It has always been a technological leader in the ever changing technology. Its prominent contribution has been the 35 mm SLR camera. The dedication and development of Pentax as a camera company has always been on the winning note and it continues to be stronger than ever. So, Let us study about the digital cameras of this company which it has offered to the world.

Pentax has released many cameras over the period of 80 years. It has helped people capture precious moments of their life with new and improved cameras. The legacy of Pentax Digital Cameras continues to grow with pride. Well, talking about the legacy, Pentax has basically two categories of cameras. The first is known as the Optio Digital Cameras and the second is known as the Pentax’s *ist Digital Cameras. So let us take a look at each of these categories one by one.

The Optio Digital Cameras are perfectly suited for novice camera users and photo enthusiasts. The various cameras under these categories are very easy-to-use and some of them are highly sophisticated and advanced. These cameras provide many user-friendly features and many image-enhancing options as well. The usages of these cameras elevate the experience of real time photography. Let us study some of the specification these cameras offer us.

These cameras are available in a range of 2.0-6.0 megapixels resolutions. These cameras have a 1/ 2.5 inch interline transfer CCD. The LCD monitor is a TFT 1.8 inch color screen with 100% LCD resolution and a resolution of about 130,000 pixels. These cameras are available in different picture modes like landscape, portrait, sports, night scene and many more. These cameras have an in-built setting for language preference from English, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, French and Swedish. The computer system requirements of the system for data transfer through these cameras are a standard USB port, Windows 2000, XP, Me, 98, 98SE.

The other category of Pentax Digital Cameras is known as Pentax *ist. This category marked the second entry of the company into the market of digital SLR consumers. These cameras are available as 6.1 megapixels resolutions, an APS format sensor and 2.5 inch LCD display with 210,000 pixels resolutions. These cameras have an in-built option of ISO setting up to 3200. The storage format of these cameras also includes the RAW file format along with the JPEG and TIFF formats.

The white balancing modes in these cameras are auto, cloudy, daylight, shade, fluorescent light, tungsten light and manual setting. The storage media of these cameras is SD card. The camera allows depth of field view before clicking the photographs. The LCD monitor of the camera provides slide show, digital filter and image rotation capabilities. These cameras also have a single and all delete function. These cameras would certainly cater to the needs to the advanced camera users and amateur enthusiasts.

So if you are thinking of buying a new Pentax Digital Camera, you should definitely consider choosing the one from the above two categories.

If you are going to buy a digital camera for yourself, to compare different digital cameras is a must for you. It will make your buying simple as well as less time consuming. If you want to know a few basic guidelines for drawing fair comparisons between a plethora of options available in the market, read the article. It will definitely help you make the best deal for you.

There are many factors that make a particular camera better or worse for you. The pixels, optical, memory, camera size, digital zoom and cost of various digital cameras should be compared well before picking any camera. The important task is to put through a sieve all the hype and get the best digital camera suiting your needs.

But before you start comparing the features of different cameras, it is important for you to make certain basic decisions. They are related to identifying your basic needs and prerequisites for the camera. Decide on why you need a digital camera. The purpose should be well-defined. Ask yourself, is it for taking candid snapshots or for serious photography. If you are buying the camera for clicking pictures for an exhibition or a photo website, the criterion of purchase will definitely change. There are different sizes of models that include compact, miniature and big size cameras. Be clear about the size you need to buy.

Then you may start comparing the specific features of the digital camera. You can compare the quantity and quality of the pixel. The more the pixels in the camera, the clearer and quality pictures it would produce. The pixels are nothing but tiny squares of color and light. Thus to get the best camera, you should have the best pixel quality. The sensor of the camera can be called as its eye. Generally, the digital cameras with larger sensors have better quality diodes, which result in sharp and clear pictures.

You should also compare the digital camera on the grounds of its memory. All the digital photographs require the storage capacity of several megabytes. You should compare the capacity of built-in memory of the digital camera. You should certainly go for the one with more battery capacity. A general guidance principle is to have a battery with at least 256 to 512MB of memory. It is important to check the memory compatibility while comparing the digital cameras.

You can also compare the SLR digital camera with compact digital camera. There are many features that you may find in a compact digital camera but not in the SLR digital camera. It can also be vice versa.

The SLR cameras are big cameras, efficient in producing clear, sharp and quite colourful images. While the compact cameras are very small in size and can be slipped in to your jeans pocket quite comfortably. They may not compete well with the SLR digital cameras when you compare their features. But, their size is the feature, which is the major attraction for purchase to many users. When you would compare the working and results of both of these cameras, you can decide as to which one suits the best to your needs.

There are more features that should be compared before buying a digital camera. Optical zoom is much better than digital zoom. Compare the speed of the shutter, time taken to start up, the level of manual override and how instant is the auto focus of the camera.

Keep these things in your mind before the purchase. I am quite sure that you will make the best-for-you pick, prior comparing various digital options. Happy Shopping, for happy digital Clicking!