What is Camcorder Interpolated Still Resolution?

Question

I wanna buy a camcorder which can take still images. The problem is I don't understand what Camcorder Interpolated Still Resolution means. What is the difference between Camcorder Effective Still Resolution and Camcorder Interpolated Still Resolution? Can I take good pictures with 2 mpx effective and 4 mpx interpolated resolution?

Answer 1

Digital pictures are made up of picture elements, which we now call pixels.  Each pixel represents a dot on the picture and it has information about the colour and brightness of that dot.  Suppose we have two pixels side by side, one has a colour value of 100 and the other has a colour value of 50 - interpolation works by assuming that if there was a pixel between them it would have a colour value of 75, and so it puts one in  (it's not quite that simple, but I hope you get the idea).  When they talk about interpolated resolution, half the pixels are real and the other half are made up.  Does it give you better pictures? No!  It's just done so that the ad men can put in a nice chunky number and hope that no one notices they're trying to con you.  In fact, they're trying to con you twice - more in a moment.  Effective pixels is the number of "real" pixels - the number of pixels in the imaging chip.

Can you take good pictures with a 2 Megapixel camera  - yes!  The number of pixels really doesn't matter (see the article in the link)!!  But notice I said camera, not camcorder.  The image quality depends on the lens, and most camcorders don't take good still images.  You'd be better off buying a cheap digicam.