The Beginner Buyers Guide To Digital Cameras, Or The Ins And Outs Of Megapixels

The most important part of buying a digital camera is making sure that the one you select meets all of your needs.

Digital Camera 101

Better digital cameras uses a chip called a "Charged Coupled Device" (CCD) instead of film. Light enters the camera, through the open shutter, and strikes the CCD where it is converted to digital data before being stored in the camera's memory.

While that is the simple description, things can get pretty complicated from there.

Megapixels & Resolution

Resolution is a measure of how many pixels are used to make a digital copy of an image. Pixels are tiny dots of light that make up a digital image.

The quality of a digital camera's image is usually measured in 'Megapixels' where each megapixel represents one million pixels.

Here's how to determine how many megapixels you'll need depending upon the type of photos you will be taking and what you intend to do with them.

1 megapixel

Almost obsolete, you might still find these in cell phones, PDAs, and desktop "web" cameras. They're OK if you only intend to email pictures to other people and those people aren't going to be printing them.

1.1 to 2 megapixels

Only slightly better than the 1.0, this resolution is OK for an average 4x6 snapshot, but it isn't going to be a production quality image.

2.1 to 3 megapixels

This is the beginning of the decent camera range. You get very good 4x6 images and reasonably good 5x7 images. These cameras are low cost and provide a good platform for beginners.

3.1 to 4 megapixels

You are qualified to say that you have a "pretty good" camera. You get professional quality 4x6 images, real good 5x7 and 6x9 shots, and somewhat decent, but not great 8x10 images.

4.1 to 5 megapixels and up

People will be saying "Hey, great pictures!". You can count on professional images all the way up to 8x10's. Of course, as the megapixel count goes up, so does the price.

If you are only going to be viewing your pictures online, such as posting them at a photo site or using them on your web pages, keep your money in your pocket and pick yourself up something in the 1.5 megapixel range.

If you will be shooting pictures that will be printed at a print house, such as for brochures, postcards, etc, then you will need at least a 5 megapixel camera if not higher. Of course, you'll also need to have a fat wallet or a lot of open to buy on your credit card because, even thought prices are steadily falling, these puppies aren't cheap!

Once you've solved the megapixel puzzle, the rest of a digital camera's features, such as lens types, storage capacity and shutter speed are pretty routine and easy to understand. You shouldn't have a problem deciding on those features.

About The Author

Warren Lynch http://www.wlynch.com has been shooting commercial photography since 1979 in Louisville, Kentucky. Clients include Makers Mark Bourbon, Heaven Hill, Yum Brands, GE, Fruit of The Loom and many more highly recognizable brands. Have him make your product more recognizable too.

Sign-up for Photopheed's Daily Syndicated Newsletter, the Daily Digital Dose and also receive Bi-Weekly Digital Photography Tips and Techniques from Warren Lynch an award-winning commercial photographer . http://www.photopheed.com

Visit his website or call him at 1-502-587-7722.

RELATED ARTICLES

---

Black and White is Beautiful
Think about Laurel and Hardy for a moment, or Charlie Chaplin, and even Harold Lloyd. All true examples of early cinema genius. Today's DVDs offer the opportunity of not only watching these classics in their pure black and white format but also in the DVD provides a colorized version. Essentially though the colorized version never quite looks right, even though it's meant to look more modern and more realistic to latter day cinema.

---

Better Photos with Your Digital Camera
Everyone has a digital camera today and we all take a lot of photos. But if your photos still have trees coming out of your father's head, mom has red eye, and your beloved pet is never facing the camera then here are some tips to help you take better photos.

---

The Best Wildlife Camera To Take On Safari
Good wildlife camera equipment on safari can make the difference between pictures you will be proud to show your friends and family when you get back and ones where it's difficult to figure out exactly what you were photographing because it's only a fuzzy black dot surrounded by green vegetation.

---

Cropping Digital Photos Into Shape
Did you know that in many cases digital photos are cropped by the time they reach paper? If you have never "cropped" your photos manually, you may not be aware that it is happening.

---

How to Take Great Photos of Your Child
Children are naturally photogenic. Ive worked in studios and children are so easy to photograph. What I hear from parents is that they dont think that their kids are that easy to photograph. Thats only because they dont know some basic tips.

---

Disposable Underwater Cameras
Disposable digital and film cameras (also called single-use cameras) provide a cheap and easy alternative for photographers. They offer an option for times when you don't want to risk your expensive equipment but you do want to take some photographs. For example, what could be a scarier combination for a photographer than an expensive piece of camera equipment and water? While professional underwater photographers (or serious hobbyists) are willing to spend a lot of money on their underwater cameras, what about the rest of us? Disposable underwater cameras offer an inexpensive alternative. After all, we may only want to take pictures one time on a snorkeling vacation. Why should we have to buy or rent a lot of expensive equipment?

---

Digital SLR Camera versus a Compact Digital Camera
Digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras are excellent cameras that produce clearer, sharper and more colourful images than most point and shoot digital cameras available. With prices falling rapidly, they are now more affordable then ever. With the price gap between an entry model digital SLR camera and the most expensive compact digital camera narrowing; the question is? do I spend the extra money and get a Digital SLR camera? or save a few hundred dollars and purchase the best digital compact camera.

---

Seven Ways for Saving Your Digital Images Forever!
So, you have taken lots of pictures with your new digital camera, the memory card is full, and you are wondering how to store and archive your images.

---

Removing a Textured Pattern from a Scanned Photo ? 5 Minute Digital Fix
One of the most common problems when dealing with scanned photographs as part of a digital restoration activity is that after scanning, the digital image appears to have a textured pattern to it.

---

Passionate Organizing: How To Create A System To Organise Your Digital And Traditional Photos
Digital photography promises much. Store your photographs on your computer, print them when you want, email them to friends and family ? share them to your heart's content. Couldn't be easier, could it? So how come that for most of us storing and sharing our photographs is a bit of a nightmare?

---

Olympus Digital Cameras - Digging Into The History
One of the oldest companies, Olympus has had a long and historical journey. Olympus digital cameras are being used all over the world today. Let us take a look at the glorious history of Olympus here.

---

Inspired Vision
A picture is worth a thousand words, so goes a Chinese proverb. A picture of a smiling child always brings a smile to our face and a picture of hungry and sick people always arouse feelingsof compassion. Every picture if carefully looked at is a story, a piece of art and not just a two dimensional image.

---

7 Things You Must Do If You Want To Make That Perfect Camera Shot
Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand. Margaret Bourke-WhiteThese tips should help you relive those moments back where you've said "if only I had a camera." Now you will have it captured on film. These tips should help you to be camera ready.

---

Taking Panoramic Landscapes - The Easy Solution
I love panoramas. There's something very appealing about their shape. It's probably because we see the world more in these dimensions than the near square format of standard film/sensor frames. It might also explain the upsurge in the popularity of widescreen TVs!

---

Your Mobile Digital Darkroom ? Five Tools of the Trade
While digital photography offers you the ability to review photograph instantaneously, it also offers you the added convenience of editing photos on the fly as well.

---

Getting The Right Digital Camera For You
There are really great advantages in digital photography:

---

The Venice Rookery
Love is in the air at the Venice Rookery. The birds (and the bees) are there doing the thing they are so famous for, and you can take pictures of it! Seriously, though, the Venice Rookery is an ideal spot to photograph birds mating, building their nests, fighting for territory and feeding their chicks. It's a requisite for bird photographers, and sheer delight for the rest of us.

---

Photography Contest - a fun and rewarding experience
Do you like to take photos? Are you always standing by with your camera waiting for that moment that is meant to be captured on camera? You may even be taking photography classes or maybe you have already completed a photography course and you want to share your photos with others. You may want to get into photography as a career and winning a photography contest will help you get recognized. Maybe you are just an amateur that has a favorite photo that people keep telling you to enter.

---

Guidelines for Printing Great Photos at Home
So you have this great digital camera and you've taken lots of great photos. Now what? Well you could go to a store and have them print your images for you, but isn't that what you did with film? The point of all this great digital technology is that you can print your own photos at home without having to pay someone else to do it. Here are some tips to help you get started:

---

How Can I Preserve My Lifetime of Memories in Photographs?
Like most folks you have probably have organized and sorted your photos atleast once. The problem is they never seem to stay organized no matter how hard you try, and even if they do they seem to lack that original impact that they had shortly after you took them or if they do, you never drag them out until sadly, someone passes on.

---

Photography site map      Photography Information New Homes Photos Ridgefield Washington Photos - Phuket Thailand