EDR writes:

In article om, Peter
R. wrote:

I used to have a 2.1mp but I found that cropping more than half the
picture would result in a remaining picture that was too grainy. Having
more megapixels means having more cropping options for those times the
subject was too far away.

"Grainy" describes film. (grains of silver-halide crystals)

"Pixilated" describes digital images. (little square elements, pixels,
that make up the ccd image sensor)

What you're most often actually seeing that looks sort-of like film
grain in digital photos is CCD noise. "Pixelated" tends to mean you
can see all the pixel boundaries, which dosn't happen with modern
techniques (bicubic interpolation and such).

(And there does seem to be a word "pixilated", but it means
"whimsical, prankish, behaving as if mentally unbalanced, very
eccentric", deriving from "pixie", and doesn't seem to have anything
to do with picture elements).

I'd venture to guess that "grainy" is going to hang around in the
language to describe that appearance of digital photos.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: noguns-nomoney.com www.dd-b.net/carry/
Photos: dd-b.lighthunters.net Snapshots: www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: dragaera.info/