Digital Photography Basics – Differences Between Compacts and DSLRs

The basics of digital photography are pretty much the same whether you’re using a digital compact or DSLR (also referred to simply as an SLR), but there are a few important differences.

Digital Compacts

One of the biggest benefits of digital compacts is the low cost. Also when you purchase a DSLR you will also need to purchase at least one lens, and if you want to take pictures from afar, you’ll also need a good telephoto lens. Digital compacts come with a built in lens and often a zoom.

If you have an optical zoom on your digital compact, you can get some good quality telephoto shots too. An optical zoom is always far better than a digital zoom because a digital zoom works like cropping – it takes away pixels. The more you zoom with a digital zoom the lower the image quality. Unlike regular zooms, an optical zoom maintains the quality of your picture.

Some compacts produce such high quality photographs that many a pro will grab the compact if they dont’ want to carry all their DSLR gear. The quality of the photo depends largely on the photographer’s skill.

While digital compacts don’t have as many mega pixels as DSLRs, with only 5 mega pixels, you can produce an 8×10 print of the type of quality you’d be proud to display in an 8×10 picture frame on your wall.

And lastly, learning how to use a digital compact is a lot easier than learning how to use a DSLR with all of its functions.

Digital Single Lens Reflexes (DSLRs)

A Digital SLR is the digital version of a single lens reflex camera or SLR. You can call a DSLR a single lens reflex camera but you can’t call an SLR a digital camera. With the debut of the Canon Rebel and other more moderately priced DSLRs (relatively speaking) a few years ago, more photography enthusiasts are discovering the advantages of a DSLR.

One of the big benefits of a DSLR is its versatility and creativity. 

For example, by adding a long telephoto lenses, you can capture a close up of an osprey at the top of a towering pine tree or a child at the soccer goal post when you’re at the other end of the field. With a DSLR, you can find a lens or filter to suit almost any photographic need.

Another advantage to the DSLR is its ability to take crisp, focused sports and other action shots in places with low light where flash isn’t allowed. The larger sensor on a DSLR allows you to do this; whereas with a compact, if you set the ISO high enough to take the shot in the dim light, it would have digital noise (sort of a multi colored grain).  If you are taking still photos, it’s not a problem. The problem with Sports mode in a low light setting is that the shutter must close so fast that in spite of a larger aperture setting, there’s just not enough light hitting the image sensor. The only way this can be compensated for is with a flash or a higher ISO setting.

However, there are software programs that once learned can often can work wonders in eliminating digital noise created with compacts in these settings.

Another advantage of using a DSLR is that you can use an external flash instead of always having to use natural light.

Another benefit of DSLRs is that they have more megapixels than even the best digital compacts so you can take and print high quality big pictures for framing in large photo frames like 11×14 picture frames. Finally, digital cameras are slower to take the picture, but DSLRs are far faster than compacts.

Although the digital photography basics do start with selecting a camera, the quality of your images will largely depend upon how you use your camera. Regardless of what type of camera you have or will be buying, you have to be willing to practice and enjoy taking lots of pictures with your camera.

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