What's (Really) Important To Me?

Digital cameras in each category tend to offer pretty much the same feature set at the same price point than their competitors. So, how do you decide among them? Having decided on the Category, you now have to figure out what Criteria are important to you. Do you want something you can easily slip into your jeans pocket and take anywhere? Do you need a wide-angle? Panorama capability? Movie capability? At first, you may decide you want all of these, and the kitchen sink thrown in for good measure. Then you look at the price and you realize you cannot afford it. So, you have to decide which criteria really matter to you. As an example, if you're into macro photography, then you need a digital camera that can focus in real close; if you want to be able to carry it in your jeans pocket, then you need an ultra-compact model.

To help you in this quest, we have decided not to feature all the available digital cameras on the market। Only a subset make it in our list. They are the ones our editors believe are the best in their respective categories. That does not mean there are not as good or even better ones out there. There are a couple of reasons why we may not include some digital cameras in our list:

• The most important reason is that we do not know enough about them, either because the manufacturers do not provide enough information, and/or there are not enough users out there who have a positive comment about them.
  

• We try to avoid private labels। What private label means is simply that a company takes the digital camera made by another company (which usually makes a "cheap" generic model) and puts its own brand on it. (Note: This is not the same as two companies which combine their respective R&D and strengths to put out the same camera under their respective brands.)
  
• We already cover one of the "similar" model in case 2।
• The manufacturer has a lot of models which approximate one another on features; so, we select one or two from the group.