What is the difference between a mini digital camera then a regular sized camera?

I plan on buying a mini digital key chain camera I need to know is it any different from a regular digital camera or the same.|||the resolution the mini key chain is going to give you bad quality pictures but for the size and the price is a good inversion|||you know how a cell phone camera looks on a cmputer? try deviding the quality by 10|||Smaller cameras will have less robust optics (less, if any optical zoom), will probably use a non-standard battery (AA is preferred, AAA is acceptable, anything else is a liability), definitely will have a smaller LCD screen (again, if any), and probably won't have an image capture chip worth sneezing on. If you can get it for $20 or so, it might be worth having as a cheap alternative to carrying around a real camera, but I'd still suggest getting a decent digital camera for primary use.|||Don't expect to produce any decent photos from a mini digital key chain camera.


It will never happen!!!|||Like a regular camera, a digital camera has a lens and a shutter that lets in light. But the light strikes an array of image sensors or photosensitive cells instead of film. The sensor array is a chip about 6-11 mm across. Each image sensor is a charged-couple device (CCD) which converts light into an electrical charge. The charge is stored as analogue information then digitized by another bit of technology called an analogue to digital converter (ADC). Every receptor in the array of thousands creates one pixel, and for each pixel a certain amount of information is stored.





Some digicams use CMOS chips as image sensors. CMOS stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor; this refers to the process by which the sensor is made. The process is the same one used to mass produce DRAM and microprocessors so CMOS sensors are significantly cheaper and easier to make than CCDs.





Other advantages of CMOS sensors are that they consume less power and can have other circuits included on the same chip. These additional on-chip features can include analogue-to-digital conversion, cameral controls, image compression and anti-jitter stabilization.





However, these other circuits use space that would normally be used for light sensing. This makes the sensor array less sensitive to light, resulting in lower image quality when shooting indoors or other low light conditions. In the final tally, CMOS cameras are smaller, lighter, cheaper and more energy efficient, but be prepared to sacrifice some image quality.|||A key chain camera will produce unacceptable pictures. Really awful!





If you're wanting prints, go with an entry level Canon, Nikon, Olympus or Kodak. Expect to pay at least $100 for a decent camera, better at the $200 range.