The best digital camera for Mom

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. If you’re thinking about getting her a new digital camera, Nikon has provided some tips on what to look for. Of course, I couldn’t resist putting in my two cents as well.

Mother’s Day is next month. If you’re considering buying that special lady in your life a new digital camera, you might want to become well versed on what to look for so you have time to scout out some deals. Nikon has provided us with some helpful tips on buying a digital camera for Mom. After that, I’ll tell you what I think is important…

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Photography Tips for Mom this Mother’s Day 

This Mother’s Day, look no further for the perfect gift to show Mom how much you appreciate her. Rather than just buying flowers, give her the technology to capture the vivid colours and beauty of the bouquet in the form of a digital image. To ensure she can make the most of it, here are some tips that will come in handy with Mom’s new digital camera. 

View it from a different angle – Let Mom get creative with angles and take her photography to a new level.  A camera with a Vari-angle screen that swivels, swings down and rotates allows users to comfortably shoot from interesting angles in Live View mode. This will help create bold compositions from virtually any shooting perspective (i.e. over crowds or close to the ground) and is ideal for self-portraits. 

Get up close and personal – Explore the beauty of finer details. Often faces, flowers, food or any objects of sentiment are more compelling and beautiful close up. Cameras with macro ability help to achieve a closer focus with clarity. 

Make it picture perfect – Uncentered or tilted photos can sometimes distort the image intended for or be displeasing to view. Utilize camera features such as on-demand grid lines and in-camera editing features to avoid lopsided portrait shots of loved ones and skewed perspectives. 

Animate your compositions – Mom can create, shoot and direct her very own picture show! To create an animation of a blooming flower or setting sun, take advantage of an interval timer, which allows for setting a length of time between pictures taken, as well as the number of pictures to capture over a period of time. Showcase pictures in continuous sequence using a stop-motion feature. 

Get on the move – Moms love to take pictures to look back on special family events and milestones. School trips, road trips, concerts and camping excursions are just a few examples of opportunities for taking pictures. Using geotagging technology automatically pinpoints the location of where a photograph was taken on a world map, documenting where and when memories were made. 

Let the good times roll – If a picture is worth a thousand words, then HD video will leave you speechless.  Video shot with a digital SLR camera is of superior quality and low noise compared to a standard video recording device. You can even swap lenses, opening up a wide range of possibilities for dramatic expression including fisheye, wide-angle and extreme close-up. Mom’s home videos will be taken to a whole new level. 

Light your fire – The beauty of a campfire scene or blowing out birthday candles in low-light conditions can provide some of the best summertime memories.  If a camera has a candlelight setting, fire can be better photographed through emphasizing the reds and oranges of the light it gives off. Quick shutter speed ensures never having to worry about missing that perfect moment. 

Submitted by Nikon Canada 

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Okay, my turn. Here are some tips on what to look for in a digital camera which I think are important. These are all very basic tips, but are often overlooked:

1. Don’t worry too much about the megapixels

Pretty much every digital camera on the market today offers a sufficient amount of megapixels for the average consumer. A high megapixel count (I’m talking over 5 or 6 MP) is only important to those who will be enlarging their images significantly or cropping and enlarging a small object from a larger picture. Even a 5MP digital camera will produce decent 8×10 prints.  

2. Concentrate on the optical zoom, not the digital zoom

When looking at cameras, you might see one with a huge zoom number for a very affordable price. Before thinking you’ve scored the best deal ever, take note on what type of zoom it is. What’s important is the optical zoom, which is where the camera lens actually zooms closer to the subject you’re photographing. I refer to digital zoom as fake zoom; the camera simply takes a portion of your photograph and makes it bigger, similar to what you would do if you cropped an image in a photo editing program. Digital zoom will affect the quality of an image. So when the camera is shown as having 25X zoom, you could only be getting 5X optical zoom, so pay attention.

3. Consider the battery type

I’ve had cameras in the past which used a special battery instead of your standard AA batteries. As far as I’m concerned, this is a hassle and a total put-off. In fact, I will avoid buying such cameras all together. I want my camera to use normal AA batteries. I buy NiMH rechargeable batteries and always have some extra charged ones in my camera bag. Cameras which use their own unique battery can be expensive and totally inconvenient.

4. What does Mom want the camera for?

If your Mom has recently become passionate about photography and has showed some interest in manually controlling the camera’s exposure settings, you might want to consider getting her an entry-level DSLR camera; these cameras offer the photographer full manual control but also take excellent photos when shooting in auto. There are advanced point-and-shoot cameras on the market today which also offer some manual exposure control. If, however, Mom wants the camera to do all the work for her and has no interest in learning about photography, don’t waste your money buying her a digital camera that has too many features because, chances are, they won’t be used. There are some excellent compact point-and-shoot digital cameras on the market which cost less than $200.

What camera do you use?

What type of camera do you own? Do you love it or hate it? Let us know by commenting below! You might also be interested in checking out some photography tips posted here.