Face recognition has become one of the robust means of authentication and hence lots of research has been carried on in this regard. For any face recognition system, the availability of a standard database consisting of appropriate face image samples is very important, since it serves as a benchmark for testing and comparing the results directly for the face recognition algorithms. From the last few decades, the creation of face database by proper acquisition of face images, has been an interesting research topic among research community. While there are many face databases available, the appropriate choice should be based on the task given (age, lighting, poses, expression, etc.). This paper makes a scrutinizing study of the existing face databases. The aim here is to give a clear picture to the researchers regarding the selection of the face databases to build effective face recognition systems.