question about Digital cameras vs digital camcoders

[amahmood]

I am not a pro. I have a digital camera and I am thinking about buying a higher quality one. I need a 3.5 M pixels above.
I see in advertises that a digital camcoder can be used to take photographs.

Can't I buy a digital camcoder and use it as both a digital camera and a digital camcoder? is there any down side to this?

 

[chris12345]

The cameras built into camcorders are genrelly gimicks, they wont have good controls and settings, and you may have to go through a longer process to import the photos onto a PC, the benefit is not having to carry 2 things....
The glass used in camcorder lenses is also usually lower quality.
If you are even half serious about photography you will want a dedicated digital camera, also remember, these are designed for taking photos of things like your kids birthday or your holiday in wales... they arnt designed with manual controls and the seroius user in mind, if you want to have full control over photos your better off using a 35mm and scanning the negatives, or buying a digital slr...

What would you want to use the camera for?

 

[amahmood]

Thank you chris12345.

I nearly reached the conclusion with your answer. I think I have to buy a good camera.

I need the camera for digital panoramic photography. A prototype of what I want to do is at this address www.glasgowpanorama.com.
images there are going to be replaced with much better and higher quality images.

 

[chris12345]

For something like that you could pull off with a regular digital camera... just like your average sony or canon 4/5mp compact... that will be the least hassle way of doing it and could do that job well... however if you plan on doing more jobs in the future a 35mm SLR will be more versitile...

 

[amahmood]

One other thing that I wanted to ask is about extra lenzes.

I need a camera to be capable of replacing lenzes. Do these types of cameras have a name?
what I mean is that when I look at an adv how i can find if their lenzes can be screwed off and replaced or not? or if I want to ask at a camera store how I can refer to them?

 

[kfoster]

In order to replace lenses you need to buy and SLR (single lens reflex) camera. Either film or digital.

The least expensive digital slr is the canon digital rebel (or 300D) which costs about $1000 with a 18-55mm lens. Nikon, Minolta, Olympus, and Pentax also make digital slr's. You can get a decent film slr for about half the price of digital.

Another choice to consider is a ZLR (zoom lens reflex) camera. These cameras have a permanent lens but it has good zoom capabilities and are usually less expensive than slr's.

Hope this helps