Digital Cameras and Resolution Tutorial

The amount of detail that the camera can capture is called the resolution, and it is measured in pixels. In general, the more pixels your camera has, the more detail it can capture. The more detail you have, the more you can blow up a picture before it becomes "grainy," and starts to look out-of-focus.

Some typical resolutions that you find in digital cameras today include:

• 256x256 pixels - You find this resolution on cheap cameras, like those you would buy for a child. This resolution is so low that the picture quality is almost always unacceptable. This is 65,000 total pixels.
• 640x480 pixels - This is the low end on most "real" cameras. This resolution is great if you plan to e-mail most of your pictures to friends or post them on a Web site. This is 307,000 total pixels.
• 1216x912 pixels - If you are planning to print your images, and want them to look nice, this is a good resolution. This is a "megapixel" image size -- 1,109,000 total pixels.
• 1600x1200 pixels - This is "high resolution." Images taken with this resolution can be printed in larger sizes, like 8 inches x 10 inches, with good results. This is almost 2 million total pixels. You can find cameras today with up to 3 million pixels.

• You may or may not need lots of resolution, depending on what you want to do with your pictures. If you are planning to do nothing more than display images on a Web page or send them in e-mail, then using 640x480 resolution has several advantages:
  

  • Your camera's memory will hold more images at this low resolution than at higher resolutions.
  • It will take less time to move the images from the camera to your computer.
  • The images will take up less space on your computer.
  
  On the other hand, if your goal is to print large images, you definitely want to take high resolution shots, and you need a camera with lots of pixels.