So, what’s your budget for a digital camera? That’s one of the first questions a salesman will ask, when they catch you skulking around their shop trying to inconspicuously check out their lineup of digital cameras. It’s a hard question for many consumers to answer, when you’ve never priced digital cameras before. Digital camera prices vary widely, depending primarily on quality and functionality.

Asking what your want your camera to do for you and how you plan to use it would be a far better question to consider before starting your digital camera search. Since digitals range in price these days from $100 to around $5000, price is really to vague a consideration to think about in the beginning. For the sake of discussion, though we could break digitals down by price category. This should at least give you a baseline to start from.

All camera manufacturers have been guilty of over hyping the latest and greatest technical features on their models for some time now. Some photography aficionados have even gone so far as to suggest that manufactures latest tech features have more to do with marketing timing, then true technical advancements.

Going for under $150, it comes with some advanced features like face recognition and image stabilization. For $20 or $30 dollars more, you could get the more compact Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital Elph. Less image quality, but substantially smaller and portable.

I’ve always believed buying the top digital camera today was a mistake. You usually end up paying too much, and are far more likely to end up being a guinea pig for Canon, Nikon, Sony or whomever builds your favorite brand name camera.

I prefer to stay one or two steps away from the bleeding edge. that way you get a proven and tested product, often at a considerable prices saving over the latest golly-gee whiz-bang features of the new models.

Once you have all the information you need, you should be able to buy the best camera for your needs. Take some time before buying any digital camera and check reviews to see what other users have to say about the camera.

If your looking in the over $1000 price category, then to be quite honest you don’t need my help. The best digital camera prices for these cameras is really less of an issue. Anyone looking to spend this much money for a camera should let their own personal preferences be their guide. Camera functionality and image quality are far more important at this point.