Instruction manual

3
1.1 Basic Components
"Pixel" stands for picture element. A single pixel is the basic building block of
a digital image. A photograph composed of more pixels will have more detail than
one made from fewer pixels. Digital camera capture levels are rated by
megapixel (one megapixel equals one million pixels). For example, the Kodak
DC290 is a 3-megapixel camera and the Nikon D200 is a 10.2-megapixel camera,
when set to the highest pixel resolution (more on this later).
Pixels (or megapixels) alone do not define a camera’s picture quality. Quality
is also determined by type of lens, zoom, shutter speed, and shooting modes.
These are covered later in the text.
1.1.1 Lens and Zoom
Digital “point-and-shoot” models have a single fixed focal length lens or a
fixed zoom lens. For example, the Kodak DC290 has a 3x zoom lens, making it
roughly equivalent to a 35mm camera with a 38 – 115 mm lens.
The Nikon D200 is a digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera that can be
fitted with many types of lenses. The term Single Lens Reflex designates a type
of camera which incorporates a viewing system where the subject is seen through
the lens. The subject’s photo is reflected on a mirror which passes through a
prism that can be seen in the viewfinder. In fixed lens cameras, subjects are seen
through a viewfinder that is near the lens, which makes the photographer's view
different from the lens' view.
Digital cameras (as well as digital camcorders) offer two types of zoom -
optical and digital. We make good use of optical zoom and we try to forget we
ever heard about digital zoom.
• Optical zoom means that the actual glass lens of the camera zooms
through a range that goes from a wide angle view of the scene in front of
the camera to a narrower (telephoto) view that makes a distant target look
bigger.
A zoom lens provides tremendous flexibility during framing. This will be
discussed later.
• Digital zoom means that the camera's electronics provide an even larger
photo that can be captured optically; this is done by interpolating the
photo captured by the optical lens. Digital zoom simply crops a center
part of the captured photo; other slightly more sophisticated digital zoom
implementations take this same center crop and then interpolate it back
up to the cameras full (native) resolution. Because of this function, the
camera’s viewfinder cannot accurately depict a subject that is digitally
zoomed; you must use the LCD to preview the target.
On most cameras, digital zoom is activated when you hold the zoom
switch all the way to the maximum zoom, release the switch, and then
move it in the zoom direction again and hold it. While there may be times