Under threat from smartphones and hybrid compacts, the classic compact camera could soon be struggling to hang onto its place in the market. Manufacturers are coming up with all kinds of new features to help their products stand out, and while we're not convinced by web-connected cameras, superzoom compacts are well worth a look.
A good compact by today's standards should take pleasant, sharp photos at all focal lengths (at all zoom settings) and in all situations. It should also film decent-quality video. Here are a few things to look out for when shopping for a compact camera:
- Sensor. Look for a BSI CMOS rather than a CCD sensor, as pictures taken in low light will come out better and look less grainy. The number of Megapixels doesn't have much importance these days.
- Zoom. Look for a lens with a wide-angle setting of 28 mm or less. This is essential for landscape photography and group photos. Anything under 25 mm is an ultra-wide-angle lens, which can capture wide landscape scenes or a whole skyscraper in portrait mode, for example. For natural portraits, the lens should zoom to at least 100 mm, and 300 mm should be the minimum zoom to look for when shooting far-off subjects like wild animals.
- Screen. The onscreen image shouldn't look black when you look at the screen from below (a common problem with TN screens) and the LCD should have a resolution of at least 460,000 dots for pictures to look sharp and precise.
- Responsiveness. A camera shouldn't really take more than two seconds to start up, although some superzooms can take a bit longer due to their monster lenses. The autofocus should work in well under a second too, otherwise you'll be hanging around waiting for the camera to catch up.
- Video: 720 HD is the lowest acceptable resolution you'll need for videos to look decent on today's HD TVs. Although 1080 HD files are bigger, picture quality is sharper. Sound should be recorded in stereo too, as poor-quality sound can ruin an otherwise perfectly good video. With these factors in mind, here's our pick of the best compact digital cameras out there right now.
The HX9V is a feature-rich superzoom compact that takes excellent pictures and has manual controls for advanced users. It films great-quality video too, in 1080 p/i HD resolution complete with good stereo sound and optical zoom. The Sony Cyber-shot HX9V is our favourite compact camera of 2011 even if, to be honest, there's not much point in it having 16 Megapixels—these mainly serve to push up file size and encourage the image processing system to get rather heavy-handed (some of you may find the pictures look a bit over-processed, in fact).