This weekend I saw an advertisement for a Bell and Howell digital camera with 10 megapixels. The asking price was $200 and I just had to read about it.
The ad said that the 10 megapixels were due to interpolation. I don't know what that means, but I do know a 'buyer beware' when I see one. Sounds like the 10 MP's were really something else.
I found two resources...I did a search at google.com
Interpolated - Software programs can enlarge image resolution beyond the actual resolution by adding extra pixels using complex mathematic calculations.
Interpolation is basically a way to guesstimate the value of something, based on what is around it. In the case of digital camera images, the camera actually sees and remembers a "holey" image, and then fills in the holes based on the colors around the holes. As a very simple example, say you have a hole, with a white pixel on one side and a red pixel on the other side. The camera's processor would fill in the gap with pink. If one side were blue and the other side green, the hole would be filled in with blue-green.
What you end up with is a 10MP picture, but only a certain number of those pixels are originals that the camera actually saw. The others are the filled-in holes. For the best quality image, the greater the percentage of "original" pixels, the better.
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