Digital Camera Glossary


Id

The camera's unique identifier.


Name

The camera's full name.


Manufacturer

Who makes the camera.


Manufacturer's URL

A URL for the manufacturer's page.


Steve's DigiCams URL

A URL for a review from Steve's DigiCams.


Digital Photography Review URL

A URL for a review from Digital Photography Review.


Imaging Resource URL

A URL for a review from Imaging Resource.


megapixel.net URL

A URL for a review from megapixel.net.


Amazon ASIN

Buy the camera at Amazon.com.


Announcement Date

When the camera was announced.


Max Horizontal Pixels

Maximum real horizontal pixels.


Max Vertical Pixels

Maximum real vertical pixels.


Megapixels

Maximum real megapixels - millions of pixels.


Sensor Size

Physical size of the sensor. The weird names of the sizes are historical, based on Vidicon vacuum tubes used in television cameras from the 1950s.


Sensor Type

Whether it's a CCD or CMOS sensor, or one of those weird Foveon ones.


Pixel Pitch

The center-to-center distance between individual pixels, in microns. Generally a larger pitch is better, because it means less noise in the image.


Min Focal Length

Minimum focal length in mm, 35mm equivalent.


Max Focal Length

Maximum focal length in mm, 35mm equivalent.


Zoom Ratio

The ratio of maximum to minimum zoom. Optical zoom only, digital zoom doesn't count.


Pixel Angle

The angle seen by a single pixel at maximum zoom, measured in seconds of arc; in other words, the smallest feature that the camera can resolve. Smaller is better. The formula for this is: 2 * arctan( image_width / ( 2 * max_focal_length ) ) * 180/pi * 60 * 60 / max_horizontal_pixels


Image Stabilization

Whether the lens has optical image stabilization or not.


Macro Focus

The closest distance the camera can focus in macro mode, measured in inches.


Local Storage

The type of memory for pictures not yet downloaded.


Download Interface

The type of interface for transferring photos off the camera.


Battery

What kind of battery it uses.


Eyepiece

What kind of eyepiece it has - digital through-the-lens, optical through-the-lens, viewfinder, or none. Viewfinder means a second optical path, which is very bad. Optical through-the-lens is the best but is rare except on high-priced "Digital SLRs".


Panel

Whether it has a digital view panel.


View Freeze

Some cameras will freeze the image display for half a second while they are figuring out the auto-focus and exposure. This is horrible for framing your shot.


Other

Miscellaneous info.


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