Let your peers pick your next camera
Are you one of those people who needs a new digital camera but who's a little insecure about where to plonk down a few hundred bucks? Perhaps you should let the wisdom of crowds chart your course.
Flickr, Yahoo's popular photo-sharing site, provides a Camera Finder site that details what cameras are most popular among its users and which produce the most photos on the site. The company bases its figures on camera data that's embedded in about two-thirds of photos.
The answer, if you're curious: The Canon Rebel XT, a digital SLR, wins hands down, with about twice the number of users posting photos from one, compared with the second-place camera, Nikon's D50. In terms of photos taken, the Rebel XT also won, with 8,416,371 shots uploaded in the last month, compared with the Nikon D70 in second place, with 4,868,440 photos.
If you're leery of buying into the costly realm of digital SLRs, Flickr shows statistics for point-and-shoot models and camera phones as well. All five of the most popular point-and-shoots are from Canon, but all of them are trending downward. Sony Ericsson and Nokia divide up the camera phone list.
If you prefer to factor in aesthetics while succumbing to peer pressure, you can also narrow down your view to a specific camera and see sample photos from Flickr users.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
