But I'm confused as to what the numbers really mean and exactly what they will do for you....I realize that more MP means better definition of pictures right? But how much difference am I going to see from 8.0 to 10.0 MP? And then digital vs optical zoom, I think that optical zoom (the larger the number) the better the clarity? Am I even close with this information?

Photo from Canon S1 3MP

Photo's with Canon S3 5MP

Couple with Pentax K100 D 6.1Mp

Hope this has been of some help to you. jim

Here is a 5-inch bird at 50-feet, 12x lense, 5 mp. Not too clear. 10mp would let me blow this up more without loosing definition.

A 7-inch bird at 10-feet, same 12x zoom, same 5-mp. Altho it is cropped a little, 5-mp gives me plenty of detail.

But my experience thus far with digitals verses film SLR has brought forth some interesting peeves. Focussing and jitter control are often automatic and a lot of folks just shoot and let the auto feature handle things like this because they don't want to delve deeper into how to take advantage of all the camera's features. Especially when using the Macro setting, the auto focus can be a huge pain. The autofocus mechanism works by picking a point that IT considers the prime target and focuses on that. However, what it picks to focus on is not always the subject. Admittedly, I haven't had my new digital long enough to get comfortable yet with manual control of shutter speed or focal length settings, something every good photographer should have control over. But for the neophyte or beginner, it's not that big a problem as you aren't wasting film and you can review your shot and go back and try again.

Most cameras have features to adjust for camera shake or jitter. It can be tough to control this though, even with those features and a tripod is valuable. However, I have tended to repeat shots hand-held because it is so easy and quick to review a shot and try again.

I tend to take reasonably good pics and if you go view the photo tours, 'A Place for a New Garden', 'I Think I'm Going Japanese, #1 and #2' and 'Walk Like an Egyptian', you'll see examples where I did not go back and redo a shot that suffered focus problems or jitter problems. For an example of jitter, look at the Golden Head of the Mummy Sarcophagus in 'Walk Like an Egyptian'. That is not a focus problem. It is jitter. Note that in other shots, there is a pane of glass between the camera and the subject and the shots suffer from light reflection off that glass. But OK. So what I'm saying is that the very good device that cameras have built in to control jitter ... does not always do the job. Be aware and use a tripod or be prepared to make several tries if the shot is important to you or you want to make sure your work is good.

I've generally found that the digital cameras are extremely flexible and useful, but the old SLR can still do things that digitals can not.

When rating digital cameras, a lot of folks condemned the early ones because their controls were hard to finger and they made 'noise'. The newer cameras are very quiet and the control surfaces and interfaces have been much improved.

You can find my latest photo tour of South Bay Gardens in the California Gardening Forum. It is called 'China Grove' and covers San Jose's Overfelt Gardens.

As for MP: It doesn't matter. You could spend $25 on a Holga, and shoot award-winning photos, or you could drop $10K on the latest 32MP Hasselblad and shoot crap. My recommendation? Get a decent little DSLR (the convenience of digital for anyone who doesn't shoot professionally is well worth the *SLIGHT* loss of clarity, which only shows up at %100 magnification or more [for an 8MP camera, that's a final print size of over 5 feet]), and invest in the lenses. Your camera, quite literally, doesn't matter. It's all about the lenses, and how you use them.

And if you want any shots to turn out even halfway decent, DO NOT USE DIGITAL ZOOM. It ALWAYS looks like crap.