What’s the difference between electronic and optical image stabilization?
Optical image stabilization helps eliminate blur from your photographs by physically shifting either elements within the lenses, or the sensor itself. Although different companies use different (very sophisticated) techniques to make it happen, they’re usually quite effective, and don’t produce any real drawbacks besides a higher price for the camera. Electronic image stabilization, by contrast, is typically only a minor camera trick that bumps the speed of the sensor up when motion is detected. While it might capture a less blurry picture, digital noise typically becomes a problem as a consequence. Always opt for optical image stabilization, if you can afford it.
DPReview.com offers an excellent explanation of the difference between electronic and optical image stabilization.
What should I look for in an LCD display?
Camera manufacturers market display size quite prominently because it’s easy to visualize, but other factors also come into play. Resolution (usually measured in the number of pixels, like 461K) will determine how clear the display looks, and brightness will help determine whether it gets washed out when shooting outdoors. An optical viewfinder makes a great backup when shooting with a less-than-ideal LCD.
What about shooting video?
Within the past few years, video has gone from a novel sideshow that yielded almost unusably bad results, to a legitimate secondary purpose for many point-and-shoot cameras. Although you probablt won’t want to replace your dedicated camcorder with a camera that also shoots video, many will do the job just fine for short, impromptu clips.
First off, pay attention to the resolution a camera can capture – VGA (640 x 480) is now common on point-and-shoot cams, while 720p is getting more frequent and 1080p sometimes crops up on DSLRs. Video in the AVCHD format – the same type real digital camcorders shoot – is preferable to other formats. Pay attention to the encoding bitrate, measured in megabits per second (mbps). The higher the rate, the more detailed the videos will look, although they will take up more space on your storage card as well.
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