The Canon Guide about Camera Pixels
Your purchase of a new Canon Camera may at times be trying as there are many technical terms which are foreign to a layperson. For a person to be able to make an informed choice, they will need to learn some of the terms that are commonly used. Terms like Pixels, DPI, PPI and white balance all are used to describe some of the qualities of a camera. This guide will seek to explain to you what a pixel is all about and how this term is used for rating a camera quality.
The word pixel is the acronym for PICTURE ELEMENT. All Canon Digital cameras capture pictures in pixel format which is in essence small squares. Although digital images looks smooth like a photograph, it is actually made up of tiny squares patched together like mosaic tiles. Each pixel recognized by 3 numbers which represent the blue, red and green color channels. These numbers can range from 0 to 255. For example, you can represent a pixel using the number 30 in the red channel, 200 in the green channel and 75 in the blue channel. With these combinations, you can have possibly 16 million colors. It is with these numbers that allows a computer can recognize and display a pixel color and hue.
Not only do we use pixel counts for displaying digital images, all camera manufacturers nowadays also uses pixel counts for grading the ability of their cameras to take quality images. For Canon, a pixel count between 5 to 10 megapixels is the norm for their range of cameras. What this means is that, a Canon digital camera can take a picture with 5 to 10 million pixels in the picture. Although a pixel count do not significantly affect the quality of images displayed on the monitor, they do matter very much when you decided to print the digital images. The more pixels there in a digital image, the sharper and better looking the printed image is.
You need also to consider whether when talking about pixels counts that you are referring to "Total Pixels" count or "Effective Pixels" count. Total Pixel count refers to the fact that all pixels that we see in a digital image are counted. Because in the final digital image, the pixels at the edge of an image are not used. As such the actual pixel count will be less. Effective Pixel count refers to the count only after all these edge pixels have been discounted.
Depending on the actual size of the pictures that you wanted to print, a 5 megapixels Canon camera, makes very good quality 5" X 7" printouts and decent 8" X 10" printouts. But if you are going to make 8" X 10" printouts most of the time, then a 8 megapixels or 10 megapixels Canon camera will be more than ideal choice to purchase.
