Subtitles of the Movie

Resolution. Well, I know this is a term you've heard over and over because every time you go look at digital cameras all you ever really see is the megapixel rating. Well, what does this really mean? Well, in simple terms it's a description of the number of pixels on the sensor available to gather light. Now there are further discussions we could have that involve high-level mathematical calculations but for simplicity sake I'm not going to bore you with all that minutiae, but again, in simple terms now keep in mind, this is grossly oversimplified for explanation purposes but the greater the number of pixels the sharper and more detailed the image will be. And again, as we have learned in the previous lesson there are other factors that go into getting a quality image out of a digital camera and resolution is only a starting point. Other considerations are the sensor size and, as we have learned, the size of the photons, the signal-to-noise ratio, the bit-rate, et cetera, all considerations you should consider when sizing up your digital purchase. Let's take a look at this website at BizRate, at a collection of some 8-megapixel cameras and I think we can illustrate that point by looking at the prices on the right. We start with the lowest priced camera from Polaroid at only 95 dollars. There's a very limited set of features on this camera and it's very, very poorly constructed, and you know, for the money you'll get a picture, but it won't be anything near the quality that you can get out of other cameras. Keep in mind there is a definite quid pro quo on price versus quality. Now as we go down the list we can see that the prices begin to go up and the cameras begin to get bigger, more solidly built, and have more features on them. Until we get up to this level, and let me point out this camera to you, the EOS 20D and when this camera first came out it was about 1200 dollars brand new. This camera is about, oh, I would say, 3 models behind the current model in the mid-level range, which is now the Canon 50D and the 40D and the 30D are still available, but the 20D seen here is shown brand new at only 500 dollars. Now, I can tell you, from personal experience, this is an excellent camera. You'll get very good results out of it. It'll last you forever, it's built like a tank, and it'll be the best 500 dollars that you've ever spent. I still use mine shooting basketball and it probably has 200 or 300 hundred thousand shutter actuations on it, which is far above its rated shutter rating. So, just an example, that if you study the product lines and the brand names and you know the model names and so on, and when they came out, you can get some of the lower models available at lower prices, but it involves a lot of research and becoming familiar with the various digital cameras, but on balance, generally speaking there is a quid pro quo versus price versus quality. Now we can go to the next page and we can see that these cameras can go as high as over a thousand dollars. Here's the 30D, and now this comes with a good lens on it, so it's close to two thousand dollars, but it is a very good camera. Here's the 30D, again, with a very good lens on it for eleven hundred dollars, so there's lots in here and again money equals price. Let's take a look at another website, one that I think you should become familiar with and that is Digital Photography Review. Now this website features a review, or at least a specification list of every single digital camera that has been produced, oh say, in the last 10 years, and you can see the brand names that go along here, and let's just take a look at Nikon and I'll show you exactly what you can get out of this. One thing I would like to point out to you is let's look at this camera right here, the S630. It's a 12 megapixel camera, relatively new as of February of 09, which is when this camera came out, it was a sophisticated, very high quality compact digital camera but let's look at this statistic right here. See there where it says 43 megapixels per centimeter squared pixel density, which means 43 megapixels per centimeter is the number of megapixels in the sensor. It's a very, very small sensor. Now, let's go down to this camera, the Nikon Coolpiks, not the P90 but the D90. It's also a 12 megapixel camera, but look at this Ð 3.3 megapixels per centimeter squared pixel density. What this means is that the pixels on this camera are substantially larger than they are on the S630, which means the image quality out of the D90 is going to be so much better there's no comparison whatsoever. Now let's take a look at some of the information that's available on this camera, and this is what they call an in-depth review. Now not all the digital compacts get in-depth reviews because the model numbers change so quickly that they just don't have time. It just doesn't, it's not an effective use of their time to rate these smaller digital cameras because they change out so often, but the specifications are on here, you can go back and look at every single specification for these cameras. There are such things as body and design, all of the controls are explained, all of the displays, the menus, some of the features, and this particular camera, the D90, also records video, it goes over the software that goes into it, and it also gives you comparisons of the noise levels that come out of this camera, and as we had mentioned, noise is one of the factors that determines your quality. And see here, this is an ISO of 800 and the Nikon D90 is compared with several camera models in the same price range. So, dpreview and of course BizRate is only one of the online companies that sells digital cameras, but certainly dpreview should be your first stop when determining which camera you want to get. And once you determine the model you want then it becomes a matter of price, but educating yourself about digital cameras and the specifications that are involved and all coming together to get a quality image are very important to do your research on.