Image quality not only depends on megapixels of a camera but also on camera's sensor type and size, shooting modes available, zooming type and amount etc. Generally 5-8 megapixels are quite enough for print 9x10, 5x7 sizes.
There are two zooming types, optical zoom and the digital zoom. Optical zoom adjusts the camera's lens to have an enlarged view of the subject. So the image quality is not reduced regardless of how much optical zoom is used. But more digital zoom you use, more quality would be decreased from the image. Because digital zoom crops the centered part of an image and enlarge it back to full screen size. When the cropped part is placed on the full-screen we can notice more details of that cropped area. The digital zoom heavily depends on the resolution of the camera. However bottom line is go for a digital camera that has more optical zoom, despite the amount of digital zoom. As most of current digital cameras under $100 offer 5x optical zoom, anything above 5x would be a plus mark.
Often under $100 digital cameras are found with 16 MB internal memory and card slot to extend the memory capacity up to 2 or 4 GB. Although number of photos that can save in storage depends on megapixels, image file type the camera use etc. Often these cameras use images in jpeg format which can save around 200 images per 1 GB. Some cameras may use different file types such as TIFF, which may offer better quality, but it will take more space from the memory storage.
Find more digital cameras tagged under $100 by visiting DigitalCameraHQStore.com
Check out a video on the Best DSLR Cameras in the market.
Source of the Article