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There are many other factors affecting the performance of a digital camera that are more important than sheer megapixel-power. The first and most important is the quality of the lens. It’s hard to judge the optical quality of a lens without seeing sample shots taken using it, which is the main reason that we now started provide full-sized samples with our reviews. Things to look out for are barrel distortion at wide angle, as well as blurring and chromatic aberration around the edges of the frame. However there is one factor of lens performance that is usually printed right on the front of it.

The maximum aperture range, or “speed” of the lens describes how good the lens is at capturing light. If you look on the front of the camera, often printed around the front of the lens you’ll see a series of numbers, something along the lines of “1:3.2-5.3” or “f/2.8-f/4.7” or something similar. If it’s not there it will be in the manual, and it’s well worth looking up. This is the range of maximum apertures at the wide-angle and the telephoto ends of the zoom range, and ideally you want both numbers to be as low as possible. A low number means a wide maximum aperture, which means the camera can use faster shutter speeds in lower light conditions, which will produce steadier, sharper photos. High-powered zoom lenses often have slow maximum apertures at the telephoto end, which can make them difficult to control in all but the brightest sunlight.

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