Digital Cameras: Impress With Pixels

Compare Top Digital Cameras

Top Digital Cameras chart

From a bird's-eye view, all digital cameras do the same thing: When you press a button, they capture a picture. Look closer, however, and you'll find that cameras vary tremendously in the quality of images they take. If you're not at all fussy about image quality, you can get a digital camera for less than $80--no coupon necessary. Or if you're extraordinarily picky, you can spend thousands on a high-end SLR and optional lenses. Fortunately for photographers, both casual and serious, many digital models fall between those two extremes, all of which can make pleasing photos. Our list of hot digital cameras offers something for the budget-minded buyer, the point-and-shooter, and the advanced photographer looking for a model with a full range of creative controls. (We tested a dozen cameras for this roundup, using our new digital camera test suite.)

We certainly understand that not everyone wants to drop many hundreds of dollars on a digital camera, especially if it's their first one. If price is more important than quality to you, consider the three models we tested that cost less than $300--relatively expensive by film camera standards, but a bargain for a digital camera that is more than simply a toy.

For those shoppers with bigger budgets and more discriminating tastes, advanced cameras offer high resolutions, accessory lenses, and extensive creative controls--and high prices to go with them. Midrange point-and-shoot models, on the other hand, emphasize simplicity over sophistication, making them the best value for taking quality snapshots.