Holiday shopping season is on and people are flocking either to the online stores or the Super Stores to buy gifts for their loved ones. Nowadays, people are inclined more towards buying a gadget or an electronic product for their loved ones because these gadgets and products are increasingly becoming essential must-have items to perform day to day tasks. Smartphones, Tablet Computers, 3D-TVs and portable music players are the hottest items on the shopping list. According to a survey report released, this year it will be all about gadgets and their marked increase in sales.

Gadgets like Apple’s hottest selling item iPad and Google software powered 3D TV are on the A-list of gadget buyers all over the globe. Digital camera is also a consumer electronic device that is always on the list of shoppers and is must-have buying item for people who love to capture every precious moment in pictures. So, if you are an eager shopper and you are in the market exploring a new point-and-shoot camera either for yourself or for somebody who is on your shopping list, the multitude of choices available in the market will make it very much difficult to find the right product.

Following are some guidelines that you should definitely follow before buying a point and shoot camera:

Megapixels

If you are on a hunt mission for a point and shoot camera, you should never get confused in this number of mega pixel thing. A lot of point and shoot cameras have a monstrous 12 Megapixel capability or even more, that very much exceeds the total number of Megapixels that many of the professional cameras used to boost of almost 5-6 years ago. The enhanced mega pixel counts for the very little sensors that are employed in many of the compact cameras; it will grab more clatter and not inevitably any kind of sharper images.

So, if you are on for buying a point and shoot camera then there are some characteristics that you should definitely focus on; these namely are: local focal range, size, ergonomics, and quality. Depending on the person for whom you are going to buy the camera, some of the above mentioned characteristics will narrow down your options to buy one.

Camera Lens

The first thing that you should definitely look for in a digital camera is the Lens. The lens in a compact camera should be of very high quality. Lens is what basically forms the image for all the different kinds of sensors to capture the image, so even if the camera is having 10 Megapixel, a crappy and useless lens will give you a 10 Megapixel crappy image. Majority of the varieties of point and shoot lenses that are available in the market possess a zoom lens that onsets somewhere around 35mm equivalent. Although, this is decent, but it is quite tricky when we compare different products. A lot of new cameras offer a wider range of visual view at the short sight end, normally 28mm equivalent. So if the person on your shopping list is an enthusiastic photographer and he/she likes landscape or architecture, then you should definitely opt for a camera that has a wider lens. Some of the cameras available in the market offers wide lens equivalent to 24mm.

Now coming over to the longer range, anything in between 100-150 mm is pretty much the standard. This is quite fantastic for the head and shoulder type of portraits, but this range is not sufficient for games or environmental photography. Lastly, in the lens domain you should be careful about the eminence of lens. Well, when shopping for a point and shoot camera, there are not any good ways of pointing this out, but higher the price the better the lens will be ( That’s what the general criteria is ). The expensive cameras tend to have lenses that have larger maximum aperture size which is very much helpful for capturing better pictures in very low light conditions.

Camera Size

Now coming over to the camera size, it is a very important consideration but generally it expresses a trade-off. Size will often limit the zoom range of a point and shoot camera because size and zoom range have to be in consonance with each other, so that zoom can fit inside the body of the camera. Especially, women prefer cameras that can easily fit inside their purses. So in some instances, you primarily have to select size and give zoom range the next shot.

On the contrary, larger cameras can pack a good quality and larger number of lens inside. Moreover, the larger cameras can also house a considerable larger sensor that very much performs better in very low light conditions and captures amazingly better colors in brightly lit conditions. Moreover, if you are buying a camera for someone who has big hands then he will definitely not be happy with a tiny camera in his hands.

Ruggedness

Ruggedness and electronic products don’t go along in consonance but there is always a niche for digital cameras that can survive some basic elements of the ruggedness. For example, the people who spend a lot of their time outdoors or they are adventure freaks will definitely prefer a ruggedized camera like Olympus stylus Tough.

These special weather resistant cameras have special seals that make them waterproof or weather proof. They have additional shock protection that can handle drops. They are powered by way better components for extended thermal conditions. These kinds of cameras have casings that are unreceptive to dust and sand. Some of these ruggedized models may shoot undersea to an amazing depth of more than 30 ft or even more. But these models are comparatively uncommon, so if these kinds of protection prerequisites are required then you should definitely have to restrict your choices. You must keep this thing in mind that if you are buying a camera for a person who spends a large chunk of time outdoors or near to water or is a participant in extreme sports kind of things, then that camera must be boasting all of the above mentioned ruggedness criteria.

Lastly, whenever you are shopping for a camera, try to shop from a place where you are allowed floor handling; means that you are allowed to keep your hands on the camera and get a feel of it. If you are eager to know about the newest models that are hitting the shelves, then you must frequently visit different product review sites.

Owing to the fierce competition in the market, getting your hands on a simple digital camera is definitely becoming a difficult task, because day-by-day latest software features are being added to these camera lines. So, if you are buying a camera for a person who is not so tech savvy then simple interfaced camera having lesser buttons is the product that you should go for.