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Chapter 12: Taking Great Pictures
Megapixel rating
One of the main factors
in the price of a digital
camera is its megapixel
rating. The megapixel
rating indicates the
maximum number of
pixels (in millions) that
are captured by the
camera’s image sensor.
Instead of film, a digital camera uses an image sensor—usually a CCD
(charge-coupled device) or CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor)
chip—to capture the visual information when you take a picture. The image
sensor on a simple, low-resolution camera might capture just over 76,000 pixels.
The image sensor on a high-quality digital camera might capture more than
6 megapixels. As you can imagine, the 6-megapixel camera can produce very
large, high-quality pictures (with very large files). The 76,000-pixel camera can
capture a relatively small number of pixels, so photo quality would be fair to
poor, even at small print sizes.
On many cameras, you can set the resolution at which the image sensor
captures the picture. As a general rule, always use the highest resolution possible—you’ll get higher-resolution pictures that you can print in larger sizes.
However, in some cases you might want to lower the resolution so that the files
will be smaller. This allows you to store more photos on the camera’s storage
media, but you must sacrifice some quality for quantity.
Make sure to check your camera’s manual to find out what resolution you will
get from the photo-quality settings on your camera. Beware of settings that
offer "enhanced" or "interpolated" resolution. These features add extra pixels
not found in the original photo to product a higher-resolution picture, but might
reduce overall sharpness or quality.
Microsoft Digital Image Suite User’s Manual