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Increasingly often manufacturers are loading their cameras with advanced features such as electronic or optical image stabilisation, face detection systems, and advanced image processing features that can add shadow or highlight detail to compensate for difficult lighting conditions.

While some of these features are genuinely useful, others are really just gimmicks. Effective optical or moving-sensor image stabilisation systems are a real boon, but be wary of electronic systems, some of which merely set a higher ISO to give a faster shutter speed. There are very few cameras on the market that are really any good at ISO settings higher than about 400, so this can result in seriously degraded image quality. Again, check out sample images taken at a range of ISO settings to see if this will be a problem.

The usefulness of face detection is open to question, and some systems definitely work better than others. How useful such technology is depends largely on what type of photos you take. It can be handy for social snapshots of people, but landscape photographers will see little benefit.

Electronic exposure-enhancement systems are also something to be wary of. Again, some systems work better than others. Some just amplify or artificially brighten the image in the darker areas of the picture, which again can cause image noise in these areas.

Things you don’t need
There are some features that are found on a number of digital cameras that are advertised as benefits, but are in fact nothing of the sort. Chief amongst these is digital zoom. You’ll still occasionally see things like “Over 40x total zoom!” on adverts or packaging, but thankfully more and more manufacturers are downplaying digital zoom, even to the point of having it set to ‘off’ by default. All digital zoom does is enlarge the centre section of the frame, discarding most of the picture. The results are blurry and lack detail, and are inevitably disappointing. Really, don’t ever use it. What’s the point of buying a camera with a 10,000,000-pixel sensor if you’re only going to use 1,200 of them?

Some other cameras have additional “features” such as built-in MP3 players, or even rudimentary games. If you want an MP3 player, buy an iPod or something. Hybrid products are always a compromise, and seldom perform any of their features as well as a dedicated single-function device so if you want to take good pictures buy a camera that is designed to take good pictures, not one designed to play tunes.

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