The Fuji E550 is one of now many Fuji models that have within them the controversial "super CCD" image chip. Basically, CCD chips have rectangular shaped diodes that gather light and detail, and to make this very basic, produce an image from them. In most cameras, a 5 megapixel camera has roughly 5 million of these diodes, a 6 megapixel camera has roughly 6 million, and so on. Fuji however, uses diodes on some of their chips that are shaped like octagons. Their claim is that the unique shape and size of these gather more light and detail than traditional rectangular diodes.

As a result, even though the E550 has 6 million of these unique diodes, it will produce images at a 12 megapixel size, and in some areas and markets, Fuji has advertised and sold it as a "12 megapixel camera". Rather than get into a long and complex description as to how the camera does this, I'll simply leave it at this: The camera typically will produce an image at 2848 x 2136 pixels (6 megapixels) in size, but you CAN set the camera to take images at 4048 x 3040 pixel sizes (12 megapixels), however, you should not compare the image quality at this top size to those of a more expensive camera such as a digital SLR that has a "real" 12 million pixel chip in it.