Shoot To Kill - Digital Camera Buyers Guide

Anyone owning a compact digital camera is probably frustrated at its sluggish performance when shooting action. You press the shutter button and the camera has a mind of its own before it takes an image, and the moment you wanted to capture has gone. You need a digital SLR camera, just like those cameras you see slung around the necks of the pros. You don't have to spend $20,000 to get equipment like theirs; there are plenty of choices that need not set you back more than a grand or so.

Canon and Nikon are the two brands most widely used by professionals. But don't limit your choice to those two companies, check out Olympus and Pentax. Soon, Sony, Samsung and Panasonic will also enter the digital SLR fray. In case you're not sure, a SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera is one with interchangeable lenses that incorporates a flip-up mirror so you look through the actual lens, giving an exact view of the picture being captured.

What's the minimum you need to get decent auto racing images or good pictures of your buddy's car in action? The lowest priced SLR bodies will work fine. Although they may not be as rugged or as fast in operation as top-of-the-line models, they are still far faster than any compact camera. The more pixels the better, but even cameras with only five megapixels can produce great images. Sensors in SLR cameras are physically larger, consequently they don't need more pixels than their smaller brethren to produce better images.

I have been using a Canon EOS-10D and an Olympus E1 for auto racing photography for the past three years, and the images they produce are fine. If your budget is tight, consider buying one used. I've shot in rain at a WRC event in New Zealand, been covered in dust on the Dakar ,and even pelted with rubber bits at a drifting competition. Dust is a pain as it gets onto sensors and shows up as blotches on images. Olympus has an effective, unique supersonic wave filter that removes dust. My Canon gets dust specs that have to be carefully blown off the sensor periodically. Expensive pro level cameras and lenses offer some weather protection. However, the Nikon D200 and Olympus E1 are the only two lower priced cameras that have any weather sealing.

The lens department is a little trickier, as you definitely get what you pay for. Lenses run from under $100 to more than $5,000. In reality, a couple of mid-priced zooms such as a wide angle 18-55 and a 70-300 zoom will cover your needs nicely. Consider used lenses-good ones last a long time. Remember, if you're familiar with lens sizes on film cameras, there is a crop factor in all but the expensive Canon cameras as digital sensors are smaller than a piece of 35mm film. Most cameras have a multiplier effect of about 1.5x, so a 200mm lens has a field of view equivalent to a 300mm lens on a 35mm camera-a great benefit on long zoom lenses. Wide angle lenses suffer, as a 24mm lens has a cropped field of view to that of a 36mm lens.

The size of the image files captured is entirely dependent on the number of pixels and the amount of compression. The cost of storage cards used to be prohibitive, so one had to download images quite often. All current digital SLRs use Compact Flash cards; a 1 GB card can now be purchased for less than $75, and it'll hold anywhere from 100 to 500 images (unless you shoot in raw).

Many photographers swear by raw, which is essentially an "unprocessed" image captured by the camera. The image is processed on a computer and it's possible to correct many errors for best possible quality. In reality, a majority of photographers find shooting in JPEG at low compression is adequate.

Once you've taken pictures there's the question of long-term storage. Ideally, you want a large external hard drive so you can quickly access the pictures. Don't forget to burn copies onto a CD or DVD and keep them in another location as archives. Naysayers say digital pictures are not as safe as negatives, but if you reliably make backups you'll have several copies, something you could not easily do with film.

Nowadays, digital SLRs don't cost much more than film cameras, but they give you far more freedom to experiment without worrying about the cost of film or processing. Plus, you can see what you've captured immediately. Have fun shooting!