PIXEL PRICE

How much digital camera can you get for $300 (Rs 12,000)? For years, that low price pretty much guaranteed low picture quality. Camera makers spent all their effort grovelling at the altar of megapixels, in hopes that the public would come to associate megapixels with picture quality.

But the manufacturers are finally turning their attention to features that really do help your photos, like image stabilisation (reduces blur in low light) and face recognition (ensures proper focus and exposure on human subjects). They haven’t eliminated shutter lag (the delay before the picture is snapped), but there’s some improvement this year.

Here they are, then, presented roughly in order of photo quality: the cameras that the nine major manufacturers consider their finest sub-$300 work. Except as noted, they’re credit-card-size, eight-megapixel models with 3X optical zoom, SD memory cards and no eyepiece viewfinder.

Pentax Optio Z10: This sleek camera offers some unusual features. For example, it can help recover photos you’ve deleted accidentally. And its 7X zoom lens is astonishing, considering that it’s completely contained inside the camera. Unfortunately, that zooming apparatus eats up a lot of space, leaving only enough room for a cylindrical battery the size of your pinky. You’ll get 180 shots per charge if you’re lucky (compared with 330 on, say, the Sony). There are other problems, too: no image stabiliser, no autofocus-assist lamp for low light and severe graininess indoors or at night.

Samsung i85: One thing is for sure: this is the only camera here that comes with earbuds. That’s because it doubles as a basic MP3 music player and even acts as an e-book reader; it can page through text files copied onto it from a Mac or PC. The Samsung is a looker, too: shiny stainless steel wrapped around an enormous three-inch screen. Its photos usually look good, and the flash is powerful. But because there’s no image stabiliser, flashless indoor or nighttime photos are blurry and doomed.

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