Pentax

Regardless of the focal length of your favorite lens, I'd venture to say you've been in situations where you've tried to focus in tight on your subject and inevitably hit the wall—the minimum focus point of your lens. Sure you can crop, but in a perfect world it would be swell if each of our lenses would focus as close to our subjects as our mind's eye focuses. Alas, the world isn't perfect... but we do have macro lenses.

At B&H, we currently stock about 100 point-and-shoot cameras; all of them are capable of shooting terrific photographs, and in most cases, video. The choices are far narrower, however, for those seeking digicams that can take an occasional dunk in the drink, an accidental fall, a tropical schvitz, or a high-altitude freeze. If this describes your lifestyle, the following 10 digicams are specifically designed to take a rougher ride than most of the larger, pricier cameras we sell at B&H (and at a fraction of the price!).

For many shooters, telephoto lenses are a means of bringing distant scenes closer, and for the most part, this is an accurate description of what telephoto lenses do. But there's more to telephoto lenses than narrow fields of view. Perspective, compression of spatial relationships between subjects within the frame and the dynamics of selective focus are equally part of the game.

When categorizing the many DSLRs we carry at B&H into three groups—entry level, midrange and professional— there are some models that, depending on their attributes, price points or your point of view, fall into more than one camp. Our selection of mid-range DSLRs is no exception. You can call them "Mid-Range" cameras, but a few of them are well up to the challenge of full-time pro shooting.

In the right hands, almost any lens—including a fisheye lens—can be used for portraiture. Wide angle, normal, even super-telephoto lenses can be used successfully for portrait work. But if you had to narrow them down to select an optimal focal length for shooting portraits, it would have to be a lens in the range of 85 to 105mm.

In the process of trying to organize the dozens of DSLRs we sell at B&H into their respective price and performance categories for our 2010 Holiday DSLR

The Pentax X90 Super zoom camera features a 26X zoom that extends from 26-676mm. The interface makes it easy to access all the menus and make fast adjustments.