What is difference between 6M, 3:2,3M,2M,and VGA etc?

Question

It says on camera I can get an 8X10 at 6M,a 5X7 at 3M print etc. When I shot 35mm slides I always bought 25 asa, or 50 asa, and shot in bright sunlight figuring slow speed film + bright light would nearly guarantee me an excellent 8X10 and even 11X14 print. So why not leave digital camera at 6M? Camera is 6 megapixels and memory card is M2G.

Answer 1

I say, if you have 6 megapixels, use them! If you always plan to compose your pictures perfectly, you don't need a whole lot of pixels. If you want to allow for cropping, which means enlarging only a portion of your image, the more pixels the better.

Imagine taking a scenic view and then noticing that the middle 20% of the photo would make an even better picture. Suppose you take a picture of a whole group of people and Aunt Clara really, really looks great in the picture, but everyone else looks lousy. If you have the pixels to work with, you can still make a decent print of Aunt Clara that she would be happy to have.

With slides, you always wanted to compose perfectly in the camera. (Those were the good old days, actually.) WIth digital, you STILL want to compose as well as you can, but if you use the largest file size you have, you may have many opportunities for another good picture within the one you already composed properly in the first place.

All those numbers will fall into place for you, but the purpose for them now is to tell you that the MOST you can get out of a 3 MP image would be 5x7. If you have a 6 MP image, you can ALWAYS get a good 5x7 out of it.

3:2 is an aspect ratio that matches up to a 6x4 print. It's actually pretty darn close to the image ratio of a mounted slide, too, so you will feel right at home in this format. It's what Nikon gives you in their DSLR sensors and I imagine many others do as well. I've seen some P&S cameras that let you switch to "TV" ratios, including HD 16:9, but since I print my photos instead of giving a "slide show" on the TV, I don't care about those options.

Answer 2

No problem, just leave the camera on its finest setting.
Overkill for a 4x6? Maybe, but it's better to have more resolution than you need than not enough.
If you are accustomed to shooting slides, then understanding digital capture should be a breeze. For both, the problem is in blowing the highlights. So err to underexposure rather than over and you will be fine.
So feel free to shoot it all at 6 megapixels.

Answer 3

forget everything you think about and take one rule , in bright light of sun make your ISO at 400 and on as to let the shutter close faster and u will not have slow pics taken