Summer be will soon here. It will be time to get out and enjoy the great outdoors. Spring and summer are great times for family fun along with taking pictures of those events. The quality pictures you take from those events will determine how you remember them. This will be determined the camera used in taking those pictures.

Before you look to get a new camera or maybe up grade to video camera there are few important facts that can save you a lot of money and frustration down the road.

Almost everyone with a cell phone has a camera built into their phone. These cameras are good for 3 to 10 feet, usually with the subject posed.   Taking pictures of kids on a stage in a school play,  or playing soccer does not produce good results.

I have a 5 mega pixel camera on my phone. Every time I have taken a picture where the subjects were at a distance, I deleted it in disappointment.  The camera has what is know as digital zoom.

Some point and shoot digital cameras have optical zoom. However, most digital cameras have what is known as digital zoom. They both claim to make your target image 10x or 30x larger.

Optical zoom uses the lens, thus the name optical. Through the use of a magnifying len the camera brings the subject closer.

Digital zoom is not a true zoom.  Digital zoom does not make the image larger larger. It takes the target portion of the image, and simulates optical zoom by croping a portion of the image and then enlarges it back to size.  When this is done the quality of the image is lost.

Optical zoom cameras will cost you more than digital zoom camera. However, the lost of image quality done by digital zoom can be made up, by getting camera with a higher image quality, i.e. increased mega pixels.

Most cheap cameras today fall into the 5- to 10-mega pixel range. You might run into trouble if you really enlarged a picture. The 5 to 10 mega pixel camera will be good enough to take pictures of the family vacations and outings.

Tags: Camera, Digital or Optical Zoom, mega pixel, Pictures