Good resolutions
HOW MANY MEGAPIXELS? That's always the first question people ask about digital cameras. It seems like the most logical question because that is what manufacturers tout about their new models. If you dream about making large prints from an inkjet printer in a digital darkroom, then megapixels are something you need to consider. The number of pixels, or megapixels as the marketing folks like to say, is directly related to resolution. The more pixels, the higher the resolution.
But resolution has nothing to do with image quality. Resolution is proportional only to image size. Higher resolution will not make the colour look better or make the images look more 'photorealistic'.
Four million pixels may seem like a wonderful thing, but what are you really going to do with all that resolution? It should allow you to make a sharp A4-sized print on an inkjet printer, but how often are you going to do that? Most people want to use digital images in a digital format, such as e-mail, and in those situations extra resolution may be more of a hindrance than a help.
Four million pixels is going to make a fairly large file that will slow down e-mail. For most on-screen presentations an image made up of a few thousand pixels is sufficient.
That said, if you buy a camera that produces lower- resolution pictures you are likely to be buying older technology with inferior components that produce lower- quality images.
So what should you look for in a digital camera? Start by buying one with a decent lens. In the past, traditional camera manufacturers were a better bet in this department, but now many electronics makers use lenses made by leading German companies such as Zeiss and Leica.
Secondly, consider your own size and connection requirements and the included software. Some buyers are simply looking for equipment that will enable them to e-mail images as simply as possible, others demand high image quality while some insist on a Photoshop import function. If you start by forming a good idea about what you want to do with your digital images, it will narrow down the long list of available models. But don't worry too much about making a bad choice; I have yet to meet a person who says their digital is a dud.
A final word on editing digital pictures. Most digital cameras store images in JPEG files but you will run into problems if you edit in that format, because it will increase compression noise or fuzziness. Always work on a copy of the image, not the original file. If you intend to print the altered image, save it as a Tiff or Photoshop file to avoid compression problems.
