Importance of Pixels in Choosing Digital Camera

      At this time of year, many of us are out there looking for christmas presents.  One of the top electronic items that are purchased for christmas presents are digital cameras.  There are a few things that you look for when purchasing digital cameras and more importantly pixels.  
     What is a pixel?  A pixel is very small rectangle of material that changes its characteristic when briefly exposed to light.  When millions of them are applied to a flat rigid surface, they become "film" in the digital camera.  Almost immediately, the camera's built-in computer reads the information, clears the sensors so that it is ready to accept another image, and then processes the data, creating a photo file, so that image can be viewed on the camera's LCD screen and saved for further future use.
     Are all Pixels the same? No, there are two major factors that need to be looked at: (1) material used to make the pixel and (2)  the size of each pixel.
     But here is the bottom line.  Camera manufacturers and sellers have sensitized us to pixel count as some sort of categorical measure of a digital camera's capabilities; that is wrong! While an 8MP point & shoot, pocketable camera may be capable of making many photos suitable for such as illustration on a Web site, an 8MP sensor in something such as the Canon Rebel series, or Sony D-SLRs, will, under similar conditions, make significantly superior images. Indeed, a 10MP sensor, in something such as a Canon EOS-1Ds (which has the largest available CMOS sensor) is capable of making photos dramatically better than those made similarly, but using a 20MP sensor in a pocketable camera (if such was possible). So you see, the number of pixels isn't as important as you might have thought it was.