Camera questions?!?

ok so i have a question.. this might sound silly but seriously.. is higher the mega pixels tha better? and which is better fine or normal wen it comes to the picture? and which name brand digital camera is the best? thanks (:

Mega pixels is the least important of the four things that go into making a good picture.
Lens
Analog to digital converter
Sensor size
Mega pixels

The sensors on a point and shoot camera are tiny so a DSLR will always be better even if the p&s has twice as many megapixels.
DSLR's have much better lenses as well.

If you plan to print and blowup some of your photographs you should shoot on the fine setting. It does make the largest file size but it will be worth it.

Bottom line is I wouldn't worry to much about the megapixels most digital cameras today have an ample amount of megapixels. 6mp or above should be fine. Find a camera that feels right for you and has the features you want.

Brands to look at are Nikon and Canon for DSLR's
For point and shoots most of the major well known brands will be fine.

Most important is type of camera.Digital Single Lens Reflex DSLR is the top. Point n clicks by DSLR makers next. Then you have all the other cameras by whoever. A 12 megapixel photo from a $150 no name camera will be inferior to a 4 Megapixel photo from a several years old DSLR. Optical zoom is better then digital zoom. Fine vs Normal? Most cameras allow you to choose how large an image file to save to the memory. The larger the file the better the picture BUT fewer pictures that can be saved in the cameras memory. So you have the option of saving images at lower resolution.The memory can now be streached to save more pictures. Camera makers may use terms like fine normal and small to say the image is recorded as 3 Megabytes vs 1Mb vs 500Kb labels and sizes vary with each camera maker. As for Brand I prefer Canon, others like Nikon, Olympus etc. For quality DSLR's, then point n clicks by DSLR makers then every one else.

A higher mega pixel is better. That is how many little dots of red, green, and blue make up a square inch of a picture, so the more the better quality. Fine and normal settings probably has to do with lighting and file size of the picture, so use fine for those postcard worthy shots and normal for friends at a party. I don't know what the best camera is, but I know I hate Olympus brand cameras due to their generally unfriendly computer interfacing.

sure, higher megapixels is better, but you should know that the SIZE of the sensor is important as well. In virtually all of the point and shoot models, the sensor is TINY compared to
a Digital SLR.

So lets say a camera was 10 megapixels. A 10 megapixel Digital SLR will be much clearer than a 10 megapixel point and shoot.

Go to digitalcamerareview.com for reviews

Yes, more is better. You get better resolution. Nikon probably has the best cameras, though they are expensive, and if you don't know a lot about photography, I would go for a cheap one

nikon D80s are awesome, small light, something like 12megapixels... =)

oh and yeah the megapixels determines how clear the image will be... im pretty sure XP

the higher mega pixel camera gives a better picture on the resolution. these are only able to be seen if you print the photos out or want to blow them up.