The Digital Future - A Guide to Digital Camera Reviewing

Storage

Storage options for digital cameras seem to come and go at breakneck pace. It seems that new technologies for not only storing pictures but also moving them to one's computer change almost monthly. However, with all this change, there does seem to be one constant in the world of picture storage: Compact Flash memory. This is not to say that Compact Flash is the best storage solution for the future, it is just that the vast majority of digital cameras out there take advantage of this technology, making it the mainstay of many digital cameras.

Obviously there are other, and perhaps better, storage options out there, from the Sony Memory Stick to the IBM Microdrive. In each review we will investigate the camera's storage option, noting everything from write speed to maximum capacity. In addition, we will rate these storage options in terms of other ones out there.

The function of transferring images from the camera to one's computer varies greatly from camera to camera. Some offer only basic TWAIN support accessible via an onboard parallel port connection, while others go as far as including firewire support. For the most part, cameras use the USB port to transfer data from the camera to the computer, but other options such as a dedicated drive or floppy support are out there as well.

The Interface

User interface is crucial to proper camera function. Unlike conventional 35mm cameras, the vast majority of digital cameras provide a menu-based system to change everything from the camera's recording size to the noises it makes when taking a picture. While still subjective for the most part, the menu system of a camera usually strikes the user as either somewhat intuitive or not intuitive at all. The buttons used to access the menu system as well as how many layers deep commonly used features reside both influence the ease of the user interface.

How image review is gone about is also very crucial to the camera's interface. What good is being able to delete images from the camera if it takes many steps just to see the picture you took seconds ago?

In this section of digital camera reviews, look for screen shots as well as our personal input on how well the menu system of a particular camera works.