Newbie looking for help.

I am in the market for a digita camera.

I am looking at the
Canon A85
Nikon 4100
4800
Sony DSCP73
Kodak DX6490
Fujifilm S3100

My question is, in the literature I have seen they all refer to 4.0 million
"Pixels".
Except the Fuji refers to "Effective Pixels"

When I asked the salesman, his response was that its the same thing. Is this
true.
Are "Pixels" and "Effective Pixels" the same thing?


Thanks

"Chuck" wrote in message
...
I am in the market for a digita camera.

I am looking at the
Canon A85
Nikon 4100
4800
Sony DSCP73
Kodak DX6490
Fujifilm S3100

My question is, in the literature I have seen they all refer to 4.0
million
"Pixels".
Except the Fuji refers to "Effective Pixels"

When I asked the salesman, his response was that its the same thing. Is
this
true.
Are "Pixels" and "Effective Pixels" the same thing?

They should be. The CCD has slightly more pixels than are actually used (by
any camera), and previouslly manufacturers would quote the TOTAL number of
pixels, which somewhat exaggerated the resolution. For example, a camera
maker might advertise "5.1 megapixels" which was the total pixel count,
though only about 4.9 megapixels were actually used by the camera. Today
such a camera is called 5.0 megapixels--still a slight exaggeration, but not
enough to be concerned about. This is the usual practice--the effective
pixel counts are always approximate and always rounded upward.

Checking the specs for that Fuji S3100 just now, I see that it has a maximum
resolution of 2272x1704 pixels--that's 3,871,488 pixels, or just under 3.9
million effective pixels, not 4.0 million. The Canon A85 and Nikon 4100 have
exactly that same resolution, as do most other "4.0 megapixel" cameras--my
Minolta S414, for example. Kodak and some others use very slightly higher
resolution on some of their 4.0 megapixel cameras, but still not really 4.0
million pixels. The difference is too small to worry about, though.

N.