Tyepes of Digital Cameras

The Digital Consumer Cameras
These are made as an all-in-one device. They typically have a fixed lens, and are often loaded with a lot of gimmicks to make them attractive to the average consumer. Consumer cameras can be roughly divided in two subcategories:

Point-and-Shoot Cameras
These are generally designed with form in mind over functionality, and are designed to have a high form-factor for the stylish crowd. They tend to have very basic user control or have predefined modes, and often don't allow for much manual adjustments. Typically, these cameras have fewer pixels and other features.

These camera are a good choice if you always want to have your camera with you; they tend to have good form-factor and are lightweight, and most of them can fit into your pocket. Point-and-Shoot cameras can be used without any special knowledge, so they are attractive for those who just want to document events in their lives and do not want go deep into technical aspects of photography.


High-end Consumer Cameras
These have additional manual control features to allow more creativity and flexibility. For the photography enthusiast, these tend to be the bridge between Point-and-Shoot, and the almost inevitable progression to Digital SLR.

In fact, some of these cameras try to look like Digital SLR cameras but do not have interchangeable lenses and Through The Lens viewfinder. As they are built with components similar to those found in the Point-and-Shoot cameras, they also suffer from the technical limitations of the Point-and-Shoot cameras. However, better quality control and the use of better optics means these camera can deliver images that are quite good.



Digital Single Lens Reflex Cameras (Digital SLR)
These have Through The Lens viewfinder, and typically have an interchangeable lens (there are a few digital SLRs which have fixed lenses. In general, however, SLR cameras, both traditional and digital, will have interchangeable lenses). The image sensors on digital SLRs are much larger and of a different construction than on consumer cameras and contributes to higher image quality.

Digital SLR focuses on giving high manual control to the user, and when combined with possibility to change lenses, gives a high degree of flexibility to the user. Entry-level Digital SLRs usually have several different automatic modes (similar to Consumer cameras) to make them less intimidating for beginners.

The high degree of quality control and the array of high-quality optic lenses has a correspondingly huge drawback: cost. A Digital SLR tends to cost a good deal, and a professional level Digital SLR can be 10 to 20 times the cost of a Consumer camera.. before adding the cost of the lens.

source: wikibooks