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11. INTERNAL MEMORY

Less than meets the eye
Only a handful of cameras have a truly usable amount of built-in memory -- enough for a whole day of shooting stills and video. Although capacity has increased, so have file sizes. Unless it's a once-in-a-lifetime moment, or you're using one of the few compacts with more than 1GB of memory (such as the $500, street, Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G1, with 2GB of internal memory, or Sony's just-announced Cyber-shot DSC-T2, with a whopping 4GB of internal memory ), we recommend shooting on the removable memory card. Use internal memory only for copies of your favorite images, to look at whenever you want.

12. MEMORY CARDS

Format? Forget it.
With capacity climbing and price per megabyte dropping all the time, memory card format isn't the issue it was a few years ago. SD and SDHC cards are extremely popular, but you'll find compacts and EVFs that accept xD, Memory Stick, and CompactFlash cards. Avoid retailers' bundled-card upsell, as the cards included in package deals are often either low-speed, small-capacity, or both -- and you can probably get a bigger, faster card that will let you shoot and store more photos for less than the price of the bundle.

13. BATTERY STANDARDS

What battery standards?
Most ultraslim cameras use proprietary batteries (usually lithium ion) that must be recharged using a dedicated charger and electrical outlet. Larger compacts and EVFs may use higher-capacity proprietary batteries, which also require a dedicated charger, or they may be powered by standard AA-sized cells. Proprietary batteries generally last longer between charges, but disposable (alkaline) AA batteries are readily available worldwide, so you don't need to pack a charger when you travel. Long-life, high-capacity, rechargeable, NiMH AAs are also available.

14. BATTERY LIFE

CIPA estimates
Buried in a camera's technical specs is the CIPA battery-life estimate. (CIPA stands for Camera & Imaging Products Association; almost every camera maker belongs.) So while batteries aren't standardized, the formula for determining how long they last is. The CIPA rating is usually based on the life of the battery if the flash is used half the time and the LCD is used often for looking at pictures after they're shot. So your battery may last longer than the rating indicates if you don't use your flash or review your photos a lot.

15. MOVIE MODE

An extra that DSLRs lack
Almost every camcorder can snap stills, and almost every compact and EVF camera can shoot video -- but it's the rare beast that excels at both. Of course, you'll get a better video with a dedicated camcorder than with a still camera. But if you just want the occasional snippet, video is a great add-on that even pro-level DSLRs generally don't include.

For smooth playback and video bigger than a YouTube window, you need at least VGA performance (640x480 pixels at 30 frames per second). If you've got a widescreen TV or computer monitor, look for 16:9 video (848x480 pixels). We also like cameras that don't limit clips to 30 seconds, but instead write until the card is full or the batteries dry up -- the Casio Exilim EX-S770 ($250, street) and the Pentax Optio A30 ($250, street), for example.

Make sure your camera records sound. But beware: On compacts, the proximity of the zoom motor to the microphone mean that you rarely can zoom while shooting video. On those models that let you, such as the Canon PowerShot S5 IS ($350, street), you'll likely hear the low buzz of the motor.

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