What are some helpful features my digital camera could have?

What are some helpful features my digital camera could have?

Mark Comon (Vice President, Paul's Photo, Torrance, CA) gives expert video advice on: What are some helpful features my digital camera could have?; What are features of some digital cameras that I don't need?; What is the difference between an "optical zoom" and "digital zoom"? and more...

Well, for me, one of the best ones is multi-point auto-focus, so that you can have the ability to choose different parts of the scene to have the camera focus. That's cool. We talked about image stabilizer before. That's a really hot feature. The other things you might want to consider: can you add an additional flash to it? We talked about flash for red-eye. If you can add an additional flash to your camera, you can eliminate the red-eye or shoot farther. Some of you want Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on your digital camera. Realistically, in the camera business, that's been a non-issue; people don't really care about that, because you're going to hook the camera into the computer, or take the memory card out and put it into a card reader to download it. But if you want to shoot wirelessly in an environment, the Wi-Fi capability is pretty cool. There's all kinds of features on your digital camera. For my customers, most of the time, an average digital camera has 8-10, features. The average customer uses 4. That's it. Turn it on, zoom in, zoom out, and take the picture.