Digital Camera Guide @Computer-Cameras.com

Digital cameras use a CCD light sensor array in replacement of film in a traditional camera. When the shutter opens on a traditional camera the film is exposed and then chemically treated later. In the digital camera the light collected by the array is converted into data that represents the color of the light and it's intensity. Each one of these points of data is called a pixel, and when you see "1600x1200," for example, imagine a grid of pixels 1600 wide by 1200 high.

In order to envision the pixel grid compare the digital photo to that of the standard computer monitor settings:

1024 x 768= 786,432 pixels
800 x 600= 480,00 pixels

These common monitor settings actually have less pixels than that produced by the a typical modern digital camera, but lets look at them for comparison purposes. If you took a picture in 1600x1200 as noted above, it would fill the screen and more! For the purpose of understanding pixels, lets compare 800x600 to the same setting on a monitor (this number of pixels is common on older digital cameras and still very common for computer monitors). If you take a digital photograph at the 800x600 setting it will fill the screen, that is, every pixel in the photograph will correspond to a pixel on the screen. This will make a very average looking print, however, because there are simply not that many pixels in the picture. In fact, consider that printers are now typically over 1200 dpi (dot-per-inch) and realize that there more dots in a single inch of the printed picture than the entire length of of 800 x 600 photograph. Thus, in order to obtain the full value of the tremendous resolution of the printer even more pixels are needed.