Technology and more specifically cameras, have come on a long way since the point and shoot instant cameras of the seventies, no matter what language you speak. Appareils de photo in France and digital cameras in Germany as well as cameras in the UK now boast some amazing features, unheard of just a couple of years ago.

Even many of the basic cameras today have the facility to take videos – good, high quality videos that are worthy of playback on the big screen, not fuzzy films that the first ones used to be so proud of.

Then of course there are the advanced features that many people don't know exist, even on the cheaper cameras for home amateurs. Automatic red eye reduction and light detection are standard on many cameras.

Features such as smile detect are a great asset – when set to smile detect, the camera will automatically take a photo when it recognises that someone in the frame is smiling, so no more excuses for taking bad pictures before everyone has said "cheese".

Another amazing new feature on some cameras is GPS mode. When taking a photo outside, the camera will pinpoint the co-ordinates of the photo and so you will never be able to forget whether your photo is of Tower Bridge in London or Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, as the file image will be able to tell you!