What are the pluses and minuses of small cameras?

By Gary Moore

Looking for a camera? Thinking about small cameras? Here's some things to consider as you shop.

Cameras have evolved a lot over the years, getting faster, easier to use, more compact, and more portable. We’ve come a long way from the accordion-style glass plate cameras, though things stalled out a little bit with the 35mm camera, since the size of the film canister and the amount of film which needed to be exposed at once limited how small the camera could physically get. Manufacturers experimented with smaller film canisters to get more compact cameras, but the image quality was never good enough to justify enlargements past 4”x6”, so the smaller films never became very popular. Then the digital camera happened onto the market and things underwent a revolution.

Not only did the digital revolution bring about cameras which could take an infinite number of photos, it brought about a whole different breed of small cameras. Suddenly the possible size of a camera wasn’t limited on the bottom end by a big film canister. Batteries and lenses soon became the only limiting factors in the race of manufacturers to get the smallest camera, and soon even these considerations took a backseat to overall usability. Though small cameras are easier to carry around then their larger, bulkier relatives, manufacturers realized that there was such a thing as too small. Things plateaued again, setting the small end of the pocket camera market at a size roughly equivalent to a deck of standard playing cards. Anything much smaller than that meant that the buttons and view screen or view finder of the camera became too small to effectively use. If buttons can’t be manipulated and you can’t see what you’re taking a photo of, a camera becomes pretty much useless.

Small Camera Resources

Five Small Digital Cameras - All have large screens. Review by CNET

Compact Cameras Get Faster, Smarter, Thinner - PCMagazine review of three small cameras.

eCoustics.com - If you can't find what you are looking for here, it doesn't exist.

Though there are a host of small cameras on today’s market, most of them do come with some disadvantages to larger point and shoot cameras. Their obvious advantage is their small size; they fit easily into shirt pockets and purses, making them popular for parties or casual photos with friends since they can really be taken anywhere. However, they usually have little or no optical zoom, which can be problematic especially in outdoor situations. In the past the small cameras have had fewer mega pixels than the larger cameras, though better image capture technologies have been closing this gap. They also usually have shorter battery runtimes and fewer features than larger digital point and shoot cameras, though again these are categories where many manufacturers are gaining ground. Perhaps the largest threat to the use of the small digital camera is the refinement of the camera phone, which is also making up ground quickly on dedicated digital cameras.