You will be hard-pressed to find a beginner digital camera today that has a single focal length lens instead of a zoom. A zoom, after all, is like a team of different lenses in one. It lets you get up close for telephoto shots, or back away to get wide angles, without having to move your beginner digital camera an inch. Where built in flashes are concerned, I can say this with confidence that hardly any beginner digital camera can be sold today if it doesn’t have one!

These must-have elements of the beginner digital camera come with a range of features, and I’ll let you on about some of the secrets of the trade so that getting those wonderful shots can be a cakewalk.  First, let’s talk about zooms. 

Battle of the Zooms:  Optical vs. Digital

You’ll find most manufacturers or stores advertizing their beginner digital camera models telling you that a camera has so much “optical zoom” and so much “digital zoom”. So what are these, anyway?

Optical zoom: Digital Camera for Beginners

These zooms create the telephoto (getting close to the subject) effect with the help of the lens. This is true magnification – the image will not suffer if you use it. So whenever you want to get up close and personal with the subject, photographically speaking, that is, use the optical zoom on your beginner digital camera wherever feasible.

Digital zoom: Cheapest Digital Camera

A digital zoom, I am sorry to say, does not offer you true telephoto effect at all. It does nothing but crop the image, something you can very well do with most image viewing software, let alone photo-editing software on your computer. You shoot only a part of the image using digital zoom, and that too at lower resolution than full frame, and it could easily pixelate the image.

However, when the optical zoom in your beginner digital camera is not enough to zoom in on your subject, and you can’t frame the decisive moment without getting closer, digital zooms are the only option left. 

Flashing it

Flashes built into your beginner digital camera pack much less punch than those that fit into the hot shoes of higher end “prosumer” or digital SLRs. However, the can be extremely useful in low light situations where you wouldn’t get a shot otherwise.

Here is how you can get them to create a better result:

Diffused flash

Just tape a piece of white tissue over the flash – you’ll say goodbye to the hard shadows in your flash-lit shots! Keeping some distance between the subject and backgrounds like walls will also help. Diffusing reduces the quantity of light, but the effect can be very pleasing indeed! 

Slave flash - Best Digital Camera for Beginner

Many separate flashes have a “slave unit” built in, or can be fitted with one. Positioned at another location within the range of built-in flash of your beginner digital camera, it fires simultaneously with the camera flash. The result is superb studio-quality lighting, though you’ll need to practice to get it perfect.  

Red Eye Reduction - Digital Camera for Beginner

You can get rid of that red spot bang in the middle of the subject’s eyes by using the red-eye reduction feature, which fires tiny multiple flashes to contract the pupil of the eye. This has become such a big necessity that nearly all models of beginner digital camera have this feature.