Digital Camera question. Is 5.1-megapixel good. And what is optical and digital zoom? Which one is best?

Answer 1

To a point, more megapixels is good, however, camera quality has a lot to do with it, a $99 dollar 6 meg camera will never take as good a picture as a $300 4.0 megapixel Camera, meaning, You get what you pay for.

As far as zoom, Optical zoom is FAR better than Digital, Digital zoom is "fake", In My opinion, and makes for grainy photos. Optical zoom actually adjusts the lenses in the front to make objects appear larger to the image chip, so the camera still takes a nice, crisp picture, and the object you were looking at is larger. When I look at Digital camera's, i dont' even bother looking at the digital part of the zoom, all that matters to me is the optical! 4x (power) is pretty good, some of the really pricey camera's may have more, but even at 4x, the object looks 4 times larger to the eye, which is a lot!

as far as 5.1, yes, that's very good, it will take nice, clear photos that are able to be enlarged, or it you're just taking pics of things for the internet, where the pics will be much smaller, you can set the quality down a few notches, and the pictures will have less pixels, but load faster. Use the highest quality you can for things you may want to keep and print, like vacation photos. Hope I helped!

Answer 2

The more pixels you have, the sharper the image. If you only plan on showing your photos on the computer, you will not tell much difference between 1 megapixel and 5.1. If you plan on having the photo printed and enlarged to an 8x10, there will be a noticeable difference, especial if you crop the picture and want to blow up one small section, like one person out of a group picture, the 5.1 is much better.

A digital zoom is similar to what you do inside the computer when you zoom in and out. The bigger the image, the more noticeable the pixel size when viewing. An optical zoom changes the light that hits the sensors. The image is magnified, but the pixel size remains the same.

Answer 3

Don't get trapped by the megapixel myth, where more is always considered to be better. The question you really need to ask is, "Is 5.1 Megapixels good FOR ME?" The answer will depend on how you intend to use your camera, whether or not you'll be printing, and what abilities you want to have to crop photos while being able to print them at large sizes. This is a fabulous article that explains megapixels, and why you'd want higher or lower: http://www.techlore.com/article/17089/The-Megapixel-Myth/

I also found another article at the same site that clearly explains optical vs. digital zoom: http://www.techlore.com/article/16902/Optical-Zoom-vs.-Digital-Zoom/

Answer 4

Even though I personally own this ultra compact camera, I would still like to highly recommend the purchase of a Nikon Coolpix L10 for the following reasons:

1. Besides taking well-exposed hi-quality 5 megapixel pictures, it uses a standard set of rechargeable double AA batteries which last a very long time;
2. Has a 3x optical zoom;
3. Has a macro feature which allows closeups under 6 inches;
4. The flash setting for "red-eye" correction is on the navigator wheel and not within a submenu;
5. It's very small and light;
6. Uses inexpensive SD memory cards;
7. The digital video feature takes wonderful "sound" videos which are noise free. It records the piano very well with it's built-in microphone;
8. It comes with a USB 2.0 transfer cable which you connect to your USB computer port;
9. Has tripod mount on bottom of camera;
10. And the price is a mere $99 [sold at Samy's Camera - www.samys.com, and Staples.com.]

Review(s) can be found at www.amazon.com [Query: "Nikon Coolpix L10" along with pictures provided by satisfied purchasers.]

Good luck!

Answer 5

5.1 MP is quite adequate for most people.


Optical zoom is good and digital zoom sucks. Optical zoom is "real" zoom done with the camera lens. Digital zoom is really just a way to enlarge pixels and degrade the image. Ignore it completely when you are comparing cameras.

Here are three sample pictures taken with my Canon Powershot SD900, which is a 10.0 megapixel camera. All three pictures are taken with the optical zoom maxed out at 3X or 23.1 mm, which is the equivalent of 111.6 mm after calculating for the lens crop factor. There is no image processing at all done with any of these pictures. All were taken using the self-timer to (hopefully) eliminate camera shake as the camera sat on the top of my car. (Okay, I'll use a tripod next time, but I think they are pretty sharp images.) Please click on "View All Sizes" and then view each image at the largest size available, which should be 3648 x 2736 pixels. The first picture (3xOpticalFull) is the full frame image at 3x optical zoom, or 111 mm. The second picture (4xDigitalFull) is the result of zooming out the additional 4x in digital zoom, for an equivalent of 444 mm. The third picture (3xOpticalCrop) is actually a cropped version of the original image, maintaining the full pixel dimension. In other words, I accomplished the "digital zoom" entirely in the computer and not in the camera. If you compare the full-sized images, I think it is immediately obvious that the third picture is far superior in any aspect that you care to examine. I think it is much sharper (Check the tower and the antenna up near the top of the frame.), has better color, and less digital noise and artifact (Check the plain sky and the shadows on the building.). These images are all tagged "digital zoom."

3xOpticalFull: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/459603923/
4xDigitalFull: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/459603931/
3xOpticalCrop: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/459603939/

In other words, please ignore any claims of superiority based on "digital zoom" when you choose your camera. It is only "in camera cropping" and it is not anywhere near as good as "in computer cropping." Any attempts at cropping a digitally-zoomed picture will be a waste of time.

Answer 6

Optical Zoom means it zooms in using optics.
Digital zoom is not very good on the other hand, it just re-crops the image and fills the selected reigon with the image.
And 5.1 megapixles is okay.

Answer 7

5mp is plenty for almost everyone, in fact, is better for picture size and sometimes color saturation. A lot of people are unsatisfied when they move to a higher resolution camera as the pictures look more "washed out".

I only reccommend using optical zoom, by far the best method of zooming.

Answer 8

5.1 mp is ok. Optical zoom is good, digital zoom is garbage.