The purchase of a new Canon Camera can 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.

When taking into account pixel counts, it is also important to differentiate between “Total Pixels” or “Effective Pixels”. Total Pixels takes in consideration every pixel in an image. However, normally in the final image, the edge pixels are not used at all. Thus Effective Pixels refers to the numbers of pixels used after the edge pixels of the image are discarded.

With a 5 megapixels Canon Digital Camera, you will achieve excellent picture quality prints of 5″ X 7″ prints. 8″ X 10″ prints will be off decent quality. However, if you are going to print more of 8″X 10″ size images; it is recommended that you purchase a 8 to 10 megapixels Canon Digital Camera.