Self-advising to buy a camera: Useful resources on the net

This hub belongs to a series of hubs pre-titled "Self-advising to buy a camera" talking about the advantages of taking decisions when buying a digital camera, and what we need to succed in the choice: knowledge and good information.

In this hub I talk about the information: what resources on the net are reliable enough to help taking a decision in that matter.

Once you have a criteria and you know what you need, then you can start searching. You will find so many cameras that fullfill the requirements, that you will need tools to select your camera.

I have find a lot of useful resources on the net, but I definitivelly use these three sites:

• Very accurate comparisons. Very good suggerences of other similar cameras. In DSLRs it even counts the number of lenses avalaible for each camera. This is one of the features used to compute the score. It's a very useful site.

• It's probably the most reliable and complete of all the review sites in digital cameras. In the newer reviews (not in previews), in the page resume, you can compare several characteristics between two other cameras. Very good at this.

There are other web sites of reference, useful in any way for some relevant aspects. I have listed two of them because their usability. The first one is a review place for electronic gadgets that IMHO is very useful although not so smart and ordered as dpreview.com, that is just focused in camera reviews. The second is a place for comparisons of electronic gadgets attending the collection of their reviews all over the net.

• It makes a major distinction between user reviews and expert reviews and with the compilation of all them the site builds a score for every gadget and use them to compound a ranking for every category. Useful. It's no very reliable but is useful when you want to compare the reviews you have seen in other serious review sites.

You can find several user forums grouped by brand, where to seek for camera and lens reviews made by their owners. It is a place to find pictures made with different lenses and where users show everybody why they consider a lens merit a good score or not. Forums are a good place to start if you want to make yourself an idea of what apparel you need to buy, new or used. At ebay.com you can find real bargains if you know what you are looking for.

If you have read and understand all the hubs of the SATBAC series, or at least all the hubs that you have considered relevant for your needs, then you are ready to start making you own choice. It is not an easy travel, but becoming informed to be able to make your own decision might be an amazing experience. And most important, you will be sure to have made the best choice, making your inversion more profitable. Don't forget it.