Compact Digital Cameras – Helping You to Understand the Technology
If you are a new compact digital camera user you might be baffled about a number of features of digital camera technology and terminology. We have written this guide to assist you through the confusion in order for you to begin to comprehend this subject better. In addition we also hope to help you when choosing your new digital camera. Some of the important expressions you need to recognize include ppi, pixel, sensitivity and white balance and we will try to explain all of these in this article.
What are Pixels?
The name is derived from picture element and every digital photo is made up of several millions of these picture elements. Taken together the overall visual effect is of a continuous, smooth image. One method that digital cameras are categorised is by the pixel count, which is the pixels present in a photograph. ppi refers to the number of pixels per inch. The number of pixels is directly related to the image quality and the larger the image can be blown up. In most modern cameras the pixel count is mostly between 1 million and 14 million. Cameras are designated as 2 Mp or 5 Mp (Mp =million pixels) for instance. Most of the most popular digital cameras will have somewhere between 2 million and 5 million pixels for every photograph.
Excellent 4×6″ prints could be made from a three million pixel digital camera while 5×7″ prints will probably be slightly lower in quality. If you want to produce 8×10″ prints a 4 or 5 Mp camera would be a better choice. For even larger prints a camera with more pixels would be needed. Occasionally effective pixels and total pixels are described for a camera. The number of pixels actually used in the image is, of course, the effective pixels so this is the number to take notice of.
Sensitivity Settings
The sensitivity settings on a digital camera are comparable to film ISO ratings. Most digital cameras will have settings similar to the ISO 100 or 200 ratings seen on film. Some have settings that are similar to film’s ISO 400 rating. Some of the pricier SLR digital cameras have even higher settings, even up to ISO 6400. Most cameras will automatically adjust to the best sensitivity setting for the lighting and mode.
Digital and Optical Zooms
The majority of digital cameras have the choose of optical or digital zoom. Digital zoom will result in lower picture quality since the way ot works is to crop the image then enlarge it to the the size needed. This is the same method a program to edit images on your computer uses. Optical zooms work in a similar way to the zoom on a film camera by adjusting the focal length and magnification. The image quality is not affected by this so this will always be a better choice than a digital zoom.
The White Balance
The white balance can be adjusted depending on the light source. This lets you ensure, in different lights, that white actually looks like white, and not yellow or blue. Nearly all cameras adjust automatically depending on the light source but you can usually manually change this if you prefer. It can be set for fluorescent lighting, tungsten lighting, shade, electronic flash or sunlight.
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