Digicam Details

This is my camera, a Minolta DiMage 7i. I don't think they make these anymore; digicams have gotten both better and cheaper since I bought it four years ago.

Buying a new digital camera, like buying a car, means you need to consider a number of different features and options. Two of the most basic questions are about megapixels and optical vs. digital zoom.

Megapixels
A five megapixel camera can record up to five million pixels of data every time you take a photo; a four megapixel camera stores four million, etc. The more pixels you record, the greater the detail in your photo. However, more is not always better. For printing photos up to 5x7s, you need three or four megapixels. Four or five megapixels are plenty for good-quality 8x10s.


Optical vs. Digital Zoom
Zooming in with optical zoom is very different from using digital zoom, resulting in vast differences in the quality of your photo. Optical zoom physically moves the lens elements in the camera, to magnify the image before it is recorded digitally. If you are using a five megapixel camera, up to five million pixels of data will be recorded when you click the shutter, even if you have zoomed in with the optical zoom. However, when you use the digital zoom, you are "throwing away" pixels at the edges of the photos and enlarging the pixels that remain, resulting in a loss of detail. This procedure has identical results to cropping the photo on your computer. I never use digital zoom when taking a photo, preferring to record as many pixels as possible. I can always crop (digitally zoom) or "size down" the photo later, but I can never add accurate detail to what I recorded when I pressed the shutter button.

If you are thinking of buying a new digicam, there is a wealth of information and reviews on the internet. Steve's Digicams (http://www.steves-digicams.com/ ) is a very good site that I used extensively when shopping for my Minolta.