Before you buy any cameras, A Guide

[kombizz]

Before you buy any cameras, FIRST you should ask yourself what kind of application do you have and what you would like to do with it?
Then you have to think how much your maximum budgetfor it. Because any camera specially the digital one has many hidden costs such as:

1- A memory card with higher capacity such as 256MB, 512MB, or 1 gig.
2- A card reader
3- A case
4-If that camera comes with battery charger then it would be nice, otherwise you have to buy it separately

When you add the costs of above items then might be beyond of your budget.

Now you decide everything. Then where you go to buy?
As you mention you do NOT buy a camera from Argos, or those supermarket that sell everything!! You should buy it from a camera shop who is specialised in handeling them.
I am sure, there are so many of them in your area.

Before you go and buy, you should find the BEST ONE. So go to the following sites and check them out by looking at their full review and even they have facility to compare them side by side. These following website are EXCELLENT in explaining all of the details to you:

http://www.steves-digicams.com/
http://www.dpreview.com
http://www.dcviews.com/

Then you should find the righ price. In order to DO that you have to know that ALL of the main photography stores MATCH the prices either with internet shops or in a raduis of few miles around thei shops, and so on. The reason is because they want to compete.
For finding the right prices there are few sites that you could check with them as all of them have a search engines:

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/
http://www.ciao.co.uk/
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/

Then after you find the cheapest price from 2 or 3 places on the internet, print them out for your documentation to show the sales person.
(Do not forget, before you show the printout to them, ask about the availibility of the camera, otherwise they would lie to you that they do NOT have them once they hear your cheap price !!)

The last not least TIME of buying is very important.

You might ask HOW?

Do NOT forget these main photography shops in order to compete with the intenet sites, and because they have a huge overhead expenses, THEY DO EVERYTHING when there is not many customers around in a shop !!!!!!!!!!!!
SO, the best time to buy would be Sunday morning whenthere is anybody around and the chief of store needs to sell million £/$ at the end of that day.

HOPE all of these info help you to find the best deal of century for you.

Good luck

 

[Sw1tchFX]

sssspam!

 

[Don Simon]

Interesting advice. Sign of the times, it's automatically assumed that the camera in question is digital. Ah well.

The bit about the "hidden costs" is actually really good advice. Although the costs aren't really hidden at all, some people simply don't seem to understand or don't want to believe that they're not buying a toaster. There are plenty of other costs beyond the basic ones you mentioned; this is true of any camera but especially with SLR systems; so many people seem to buy SLRs and then are incredulous when it's suggested they might end up paying as much or more for a lens as for the camera. Then there's flashes, tripods, meters, and this is before we even think about studio lighting.

I disagree with the part about finding the best camera though. You're buying a camera, not a PC, and comparing specifications only tells you so much. And what is important to one user is not necessarily important to another. Then again if we're only talking about point-&-shoots for snapshots maybe it doesn't really matter.