Digicam jargon

Kantankerous

just wondering does anyone know what it means when a digital camera is quoted as being interpolated to 5 mega pixels, instead of just being 5 mega pixels?
the camera i was looking at (cant remember the url ) said it had effective pixels of something like 3.1 MP and total pixels of 3.3 but it was interpolated to 5 MP!
Is this just a level of marketing BS or is it happening in all (or some reasonable quality) digital cameras nowadays?

Also relateing to cameras did any of ye hear of binoculars with digital cameras in them? what do ye think? are they availbale in ireland yet?
all opinions welcome,

cheers,

k

PS: feel free to add in some good digital camera websites, i want to learn how to discriminate between cameras.

Kali

It just means its using a digital transform to enlarge the picture from its normal size to a larger format, would equate to a slight loss of quality and focus in the final image (also happens using digital zoom... make sure to also compare optical zooms when purchasing digital cameras).

Quigs Snr

It's marketing BS. Anything that says interpolated, avoid, no matter who makes the camera.

Good sites are

dcviews.com
dpreview.com
and also steves-digicams.com

dcviews in particular will hunt for reviews and sample pics on all the professional review sites and also has user reviews. Great site.

Kantankerous

thanks for the info guys