Classic Photography or Digital Photography?
Although digital photography is a new and innovative way to take photos it is still founded on traditional photography and incorporates many of the same ideas. Both digital and traditional photography need a lens with which to focus the light as well as a shutter that lets the light into the camera. The big difference between traditional and digital photography is how the camera captures the image.
In traditional photography a film is used which needs to be developed inside of a darkroom with the use of chemicals. This development process results in a "negative" which you will then to print so that you can see the picture. Digital photography uses what is called an electronic sensor. It's this electronic sensor that catches the image of the picture. Millions of pixels make up the sensor, which then convert the light into a number. Instead of waiting for the photo to be developed a digital photo can be looked at almost immediately in the viewfinder of the camera.
Digital photographs use the number of pixels to determine the quality of the picture. Pixel count is often referred to as "resolution" and is measured in dimensions, such as 800x600. This is also known as the number of pixels per inch. A typical resolution for a computer monitor is 800x600. What this means is that the computer screen can display 800 pixels from one side to the other side and 600 pixels from the top of the display to the bottom. The total number of pixels would be 480,000. Digital photography uses resolutions that are higher than the computer monitor, often resulting in millions of pixels, or megapixels. If a digital camera has a resolution of 2048x1536 it has a total of 3.1 megapixels.
As previously mentioned, numbers represent the pixels. These numbers then determine the scale of colors that can be created. As an example, pictures that are black and white can be represented by megapixels that are only 8 bits long. As with binary arithmetic, an 8 bit number can then represent any decimal number from 0 to 256. This means that black and white pictures can have as many as 255 gray shades as well as black (0) and can also have white shades (256).
Larger numbers represent colors. For example, 16 bits per pixel can have a color scale of 65,536 different color shades while 24 bits per pixel can have over 16 million different types of colors. These days most digital cameras make use of 24 bits per pixel; however some professional cameras can have a color resolution that reaches 48 bits per pixel to create over 280 billion color shades.
The quality of a digital camera is affected by a few factors. Most times pixel resolution is considered to be one of the most important factors. You will want to choose the right pixel resolution for the size of pictures that you want to print. Remember that although the number of pixels in the photo won't change those images with bigger dimensions will have less pixels per inch. This will result in less detail in the picture as the size increases.
Photography labs will print photos that are 300 pixels per inch. This standard measure will let you calculate just how many megapixels your digital camera should come with. The largest print you can get from a two megapixel camera (that has 300 pixels per inch) is a 5.8"x3.8" picture. This is smaller than the standard 4"x6" picture. A digital camera that has four megapixels will be able to print photos up to a size of 8.2"x5.4" at about 300 pixels per inch.
You still have the ability to print larger photos. Keep in mind that photos which are printed at 200 pixels per inch will be less clear, however these photos will still be useable for many purposes. With this type of resolution you can get photo prints up to 8.7"x5.8" with a two megapixel camera. And with a four megapixel camera you'll be able to get pictures up to 12.2"x8.2".
Now that you have some understanding of the differences between classic photography and digital photography you can narrow down your search for buying a use camera.
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