This time, we're looking at actual pixels captured by the camera. This has its highest relevance if you're taking pictures for print publication. With the camera capturing 1600 x 1200 pixels, an 8 inches by 6 inches print would have a resolution of 200 dpi, which is about as low as one can safely go for a 133 line screen.

So, there's not a lot of maneuvering room for an image intended for print. What the camera gets is just about what you can print, although, of course, you can always use Photoshop to enhance the image somewhat.

For the record, the camera comes with a software package called "Camedia Master" that has some capability for enhancing images, but because I have Photoshop in my arsenal, all I've actually used Camedia Master for is downloading images from the camera and viewing them as a slide show.

Later in this discussion, I'll compare the effects of increasing the size of images in Photoshop with what the camera manages via a digital zoom because, as I thought before I bought the camera, what is the point of a digital zoom if all it does is enlarge the "real" image by using some kind of bicubic interpolation?

But let me not get ahead of myself. The first thing to do is look at the raw pixels generated by each of these settings. That's what these four images do. Step through the next four pages for a closer look at each image.