Expert: John Oliverio - 3/26/2004

Question
John, you are absolutely right.  I was not specific enough.  Well, I am certainly not a professional photographer, but more your 'casual' photographer, so basically a point and shoot camera is what I had in mind.
You see, for the vast majority of digital cameras I see out there, the optical zoom is of the order of 3-4x (or thereabouts).  That seems limited to me NOT so much because I travel to the wildlife in the jungle but because I, like many of us, do take that occasional trip and it seems logical or reasonable that 3x just does not offer enough of a range to capture something that's a tad distant.
The problem is, that for the most part, onnce you delve into the 8-10x optical zoom range, the number of cameras is limited, they tend to be large in size and prohibitively costly.  
The other issue is of course the megapixels.  Now I DO know that the MP alone is not sufficient to detremine relution OR picture quality (namely, I am aware that some really good 3 MP cameras can easily rival and even beat a 4 MP cameras), but still, I would think that a 6 MP is definiytely expcted to yield a shaprer and more vivid picture compared to, say, a 3 MP camera.  
There are only 1 or 2 cameras that give you BOTH the zoom and the megapixles and those are certainly NOT point and shoot.
Thus, after all this, I got to basically deciding between an Olympus C-750 (4MP, 10x optical zoom) that comes highly recommended on all digital camera sites versus an Olympus C-60 model (difference in price between those is not very significant, < 100 dollars). The C-60 is freshly new so lacks the 'track record' but does offer a zoom of 3x (the typical order of magnitude) and 6.3 MP.
I guess What I was trying to convey to you is my debate between 2 such models without really asking you to pick a specific model (because I don't think that's even fair to ask anyone).
Given that kind of perhaps more elaborate discussion about my thoughts...can you address this again?:)
Thanks, Igal Fligman

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Followup To
Question -
A simple question that I have in my mind -
regardless of questions of cost or computer memory requirements, I am interested to know what is conceptually a better camera to have--
One that has 4 megapixles and 10x optical zoom OR one that offers 6 megapixles but only 4x optical zoom.  Please try to compare those 2 camera regardless of any other parameter.

Answer -
Igal,

Sorry, I can't make an honest comparison within those limitations.  Your parameters are too broad. For example, can I consider pro and consumer cameras?  If not pro, can I still consider digital SLR's?  Or am I only to consider point and shoot cameras?  I have a feeling you are talking about point and shoot cameras.  Also, please tell me what you mean by "conceptually better camera".  I feel that could mean different things to different people.  For example, I may personally may feel that a large zoom is more important than pixels because I want to take wildlife pictures and am not worried about larege print size.  Where you may be mroe concerned with the cropable area of an image which would require more pixel information.

Please re-phrase your question.

John

Answer
Igal,

Well that puts some light on it.

Your concern about pixels in this class of camera is unfounded.  Pixels have little to do with the quality of a picture.  I admit they have to be "good" pixels.  But the quantity of pixels really only affects the size of picture you can print and maintain print resolution.  And I happen to own a C740 (3mp) and can make 8x10 prints that are acceptable.  The 750 would be even better.  Plus, the difference between 4 and 6 isn't that much.  You see, it's the lens and the processer that is the most important when it comes to actual quality.  You can have all the pixels in the world, but it the light hitting the chip is coming from a poor lens, you have a very big, bad picture.  Not that the C60 has a bad lens.  It's just that the 750 is better.  So, if you can get past the size of the camera, I would say that the 10x lens is a more important feature.  (not because it is 10x, but because it is a higher quality optic)

John