A digital compact camera will most likely have a fixed lens with a zoom range that can go from a wide angle to full telephoto. The compact camera will not allow you to change lenses so you will want make sure and find a camera where the lens will meet your requirements. When doing product photography it is important to use a camera that has a good wide angle function. You will find that many of the compact cameras have a very close macro capability, some can be as close as 2 centimeters or 1 inch. On most cameras the macro will only work on the wide angle setting.
When using this function your images can sometimes suffer from wide angle distortion and make some of your product shots look odd. If you end up using your digital camera in macro mode you can place your product so it takes up a small portion of the frame. You can then take the photo into an editing software program and crop the image tighter. You will loose some image resolution but if you have a camera that has a pixel count of 12 mega pixels or higher the image should still be good enough for displaying online. This will help get rid of the wide angle distortion you may see if you end up filling the frame in a wide angle macro setting. There are many new compact digital cameras that have touch screen technology. This allows you to touch the screen to be able to set focus points which is a big benefit when doing product photography.
Pros
- Custom white balance control on most models
- Ability to adjust settings with touch screen on some models
- Manual focus control on some models
- More compact than a DSLR
- Multi exposure control modes
Cons
- Some the older digital cameras may not have a manual focus control or macro mode