Creative Compact Cameras

Creative compact cameras aren’t much larger than compact digital cameras, however they offer a good bit more user control. Typically the lenses are bigger, heavier, and of higher optical quality. You will also find that almost all creative compact cameras have the option of saving your images in RAW format, usually proprietary but sometimes in Adobe’s standard DNG format.

The standard JPEG format is convenient for uploading images to the Web, sharing with friends, or getting prints. Unfortunately you will usually find that a lot of shadow and highlight detail that was captured by the sensor can be lost with a standard JPEG.

Using the RAW format, the photographer has the opportunity to bring out that shadow or highlight detail in an image using an editing program on a personal computer (or letting a professional lab do it and make a really great print).

Unless you are prepared to spend an evening reading the manual and learning the settings I don’t recommend you buy one of these cameras. Otherwise your results will be the same as if you had used a simpler compact camera.