When it comes to photography, the digital wave is very much in evidence and yet, both operate on the same principles. Both have a lens, an aperture and a shutter. The difference lies in how the image is formed. Classic or traditional photography uses film on which the image is captured and then developed in a darkroom with chemicals to give you negatives. These need to be printed before you can see the picture in its final form. In a digital camera, you bypass all these processes because the image is captured by an electronic sensor. You aim, click and almost immediately, you can see the picture you took in the viewfinder. There is no developing, no negatives, no printing. Just the sensor which is actually millions of pixels or megapixels where light gets converted into a number.

The pixels in a particular camera are constant. So if you were to print out a picture that is larger than the usual size you print, you would find that it is not as sharp as the smaller size. So you should keep this in mind when you are buying your camera. If you feel that you will probably want to print larger pictures, go in for one with a greater number of pixels. If you are not terribly particular, it does not really matter. Apart from a slight difference in sharpness, the picture quality does not suffer. You could find out from your photography store just how big a print it would be all right to print from your camera.

The greater the number of pixels or picture elements the sensor has, the better the picture quality and of course, the higher the price. In fact most cameras have a greater number of pixels, also referred to as ‘resolution’ than a regular computer screen. The resolution is expressed in megapixels. The number of pixels for black and white photographs can be a smaller number as it only involves the two colors and the many shades of gray in between. The number of pixels needed for color photography, however, is much more. The greater the number of pixels, the better the color quality. Digital cameras usually come with the capacity to produce 16 million colors expressed as 24 bits a pixel. Professional cameras have been known to go up to 48 bits a pixel which translates to nearly 300 billion shades!

To find out more about image storage and printing digial images visit http://www.digital-photography-help.com