It's this simple: Digital cameras are requisite tools for all serious Webmasters. They're just too well-suited to Web design for producers to ignore. Essentially, what you get is a device that has all the trappings of a traditional camera, but instead captures images on light-sensitive elements rather than on silver halide film. A finite number of images are stored in on-board memory; you then download them to your computer via cabling, and, in some cases, removable PC cards. The current market supports myriad cameras, ranging from entry-level cheapies that run about $100 to professional tools costing more than $1000.

Pluses Of all your imaging options, only digital cameras afford you the opportunity to roam the world at large and bring back small documentary bits for immediate posting online. No waiting for the film lab to screw up your prints, and no scanning once you get the prints home. (You can also use a conventional camera with conventional film, and have it specially processed to produce a PhotoCD CD-ROM with digitized images; however, this is both costly and time-consuming.) With a digital camera in hand, online real estate agents can post images of houses as soon as they go up for sale, news organizations can post breaking news photos just moments after an event occurs, and you can post shots of your company beer bash before the last hungover straggler makes it to work at 11:00 a.m. the next day.

Some digital cameras come with color LCD preview screens. This means you can shoot an image, and immediately check the results. Don't like what you see? Erase the image, and recycle its memory space for something better (almost all digital camera let you save at two different resolution settings; the higher res images typically consume twice as much storage space as the lower res images).

While digital cameras are relatively expensive compared to traditional cameras, they can eventually pay for themselves by negating the need to ever pay for film or lab processing. What's more, all but the cheapest digital cameras offer resolutions that are more than sufficient for online postings.

Minuses Get out your wallet and say "aaahhh"; this is going to hurt a little. The cheaper cameras lack some important features (for example, flash, zoom, glass lenses, LCD previews, and erasability), and the costlier cameras enter into most hobbyists' "no-buy zone."To help justify prices, almost all digital cameras vendors are hyping their products as value-added alternatives to traditional cameras. Well, it just ain't so. The basic maxim is that the best digital cameras designed for use in the field can produce images comparable to those coming from good disposable cameraswhich is great for the Web, but insufficient for shots destined for your mantel piece.

Options We evaluated six cameras, all priced under $600. All produce 24-bit color images, but their resolution capabilities and storage capacities vary.

The Connectix Color Quickcam ($299) offers 640 x 480 resolution, which is pretty good for a "novelty" camera. While you can indeed use the Quickcam to shoot individual images, it's really designed as an input device for CU-SeeMe and Web spy cams. It's shaped like a ball, sits on a pyramid-shaped pedestal, and lacks flash, LCD preview, and storage (the camera stays connected to your computer, and saves directly to disk).

The Kodak DC25 ($499) is a great buy, offering flash, LCD preview, and erasability. Even better, it comes with a PC card slot, which means during the heat of an exciting situation, you can continually load fresh storage cards into the camera, and not worry about hitting maximum on-board capacity (14 images at 493 x 373 resolution, 29 at 320 x 240). The Kodak DC20 ($299) offers the same resolution specs, but storage space for only eight images at high-res, no flash, no LCD, and no erasability. Still, for the price it's a nice entree into digital cameras.

The Agfa ePhoto 307 ($549) is a solid camera with a good glass lens. It comes with a flash, and stores 36 images at 640 x 480 and 72 images at 320 x 240. Unfortunately, it lacks an LCD display and erasability, which you'll really want once you understand the utility of this feature. Before we hit our Net Rave pick, we round out our tour with the