Digital Camera Megapixels – Who Needs Them?

The best Summary about Camera Megapixels by Steve L Thompson

The camera industry promotes megapixel ratings as though they are a measure of photo quality, and lots of customers fall for it. Every time a manufacturer brings out a higher megapixel camera, some people just have to have it!

Megapixels measure the maximum size of each photo. For example, a six-megapixel camera captures pictures made up of six million tiny dots, a 12-megapixel is made up of 12 million dots – and so on.

In reality, there are really bad twelve-megapixel images, just as there are fantastic six-megapixel shots. And of course, more megapixels means you have to buy bigger, more expensive memory cards to hold them!

Megapixels are something to consider only in a couple of circumstances:

a) when you want to make giant prints (20-by-30-inch posters, for example)

Six megapixels will do the job really well.

It’s worth noting that large files take a long time to download, so photos intended purely for display on the computer (the Web, e-mail, slideshows) – need very few pixels.

If it’s gallery quality prints, then go for the highest megapixel you can. But if you are taking product shots for Ebay, save yourself a bundle and keep it simple!

Why Digital Camera Megapixels Don’t Matter

The best Summary about Camera Megapixels by Kurt Hansen

You see it every time you look at an advertisement for a digital camera. The ad screams 8 MP or 10MP. It’s persuasive. Nope. Many people understand what a 4 cylinder versus a 6 cylinder car means. The number of megapixels is a measurement of the ability of the camera to capture light and color. A film camera uses film that is exposed to light and color through the camera lens. When the film is exposed, it changes chemically and when processed captures the picture. A digital camera uses an electronic circuit board to capture light and color. This circuit board consists of millions of light and color sensing charge coupled devices (CCDs). That’s electronic speak for thingamajig. When the CCDs are exposed to light they capture the picture. Unlike film, digital photos don’t need to be processed. The CCDs are arranged in an array. The number of squares is calculated by multiplying the number of rows by the number of columns. An 8 MP camera would have around 8 million CCDs. The circuit board might have 3,000 columns and 2,650 rows of CCDs which equals 7,950,000 CCDs. “Doesn’t a 10 MP camera capture more and thereby make my pictures better?” you ask. Yes, it captures more pixels. The camera manufacturers keep telling me I need more megapixels. How does resolution come into play?” you wonder aloud. Resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi). It determines how many pixels are needed for a specific size display or print. Digital photos are displayed and printed at specific resolutions. Increasing the resolution will display or print more dots per inch but the image size will go down. Decreasing the resolution will increase the image size but display fewer dots per inch.

Let’s say you have a 10MP camera and take photos with the highest number of megapixels. Your camera might produce images of 3,888 pixels by 2,592 pixels. If you multiply these two numbers, the result is just over 10 million or 10MP. Send your pictures over to Walgreens and the standard resolution for printing is 128 dpi. If you want to print an 8 X 10″ print you only need ((8 x 128) x (10 x 128)) = 1,310,720 pixels or 1.31 MP. Not needed!

In this example, a camera with the ability to capture 1.31 megapixels will be sufficient to print a quality 8 X 10″ print. More megapixels simply allow you to display a larger picture on your computer monitor or print a bigger picture without decreasing quality. That’s all megapixels will buy you – bigger pictures.

Camera manufacturers still focus their ads on the number of megapixels. But when buying a camera, don’t focus on the number of megapixels. You’d be hard pressed to find a camera with less than 2 MP today. Megapixels are mostly irrelevant unless you want to print or display very large pictures.

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