Do Megapixels Matter?

When I got my digital camera originally I thought I'd be printing out lots of photos, so I got what was at the time a high-megapixel camera (five megapixels, bought in 2003). Of course I'm still glad for the option to print my photos, but I've yet to make anything more than a few small prints.

It seems like anything more than six megapixels would be overkill for the average consumer, most of whom are probably like me and unlikely to be making lots of giant prints. And I agree that they eat up storage space. I shoot most of my photos on a large setting, just in case I ever want to print them, and wind up with lots of big files, only a few of which will ever make it into print.

I like to think I'm all about the megapixels, but in reality the camera I use the most has only 1.3 megapixels (cameraphone). I have a 5.0 megapixel Sony (DSC-T1) that I can't wait to retire for a Nikon N80. The difficult part is that I always feel like there's something bigger, better, and cheaper right around the corner.

Megapixels in digital cameras are like the processor speeds in computers. Once you get to a certain point it doesn't matter that much for most jobs. While it is important to have more megapixels if you are going to be getting your photos printed in large sizes or selling them (A lot of online photo selling services require the photos to be in a higher megapixel format so when people buy them they have the freedom to crop and still have great quality, etc.

I recently bought a Canon Digital Rebel Xti for my business. It's 10 megapixels but I bought it for the shutter speed, ability to changes lens, quality of lens and options to control light, focus, etc.

I got a 4 mega pixel in I believe 1999. It has been my favorite possession! I paid about $700.00 for it. It is rather large and I can get inter-changeable lenses for it.

This year I bought a purse size digital 7 mega pixel camera. Of course I use it more because it is always with me.

They both seem to have the same quality of picture.

I have found that the only reason I want mega pixels is for what you suggest. When using Photoshop I can enlarge small areas of photos and they look great. I tend to take pictures with to much in the frame and like to focus on a small portion of the photo. I'm learning now to fill the frame with what I really want...so, mega pixels become less important.

Storage space might be a good spot to focus when getting a new digital camera. I love that I can take thousands of photo's at a time.

If you don't plan to be a pro I don't see the need for anything more...

The mega pixels are important for the size of the photo and detail you want. You need a higher number if you do a lot of cropping and editing, because when you save JPG images there is compression. If you crop more than once you lose more pixels.

If your picture ends up less than 400 dpi it will not look very good if you print at 5 x 7.

At 7 or more mega pixels you can shoot farther out, crop in and still get what you want.

However, if the image processor on your camera is not good you still won't get sharp pictures without noise.

The newer cameras, even shirt pocket size, have a lot of great features like Bright Capture, face recognition, image stabilazation, scene modes,

sequential shooting, etc.

Download your photo disk (use one a gig or higher) to Photoshop Album,

using a card reader like Digital Concepts USB2.0 multicard reader, tag all the shots in that batch, and then burn them to a CD or DVD. You save in native format and can bring them up to play with them later in Photoshop or whatever editing program you like.

Sorta depends on what you want to do with a photograph. If you only want to make prints up to 8x10 inches lets say, a general rule for hq sharp prints is 300 pixels per inch. So an 8x10 inch print needs 8x300x10x300 = 7.2 megapixels. You CAN still make very nice 8x10 inch prints with less megapixels, but the lower the pixel count, the softer the image gets. So, if math holds... if you want a 4 foot by 5 foot print that appears very sharp, you need over 250 megapixels (?!) I find other important factors are shutter lag, startup time, and frames per second. Shutter lag is the time from when you press the shutter button to when the camera actually takes the picture. The camera must focus, determine exposure, close the aperture then trip the shutter. Cheaper cameras use slow electronics and can take a second or more before taking a picture. If you are photographing your baby's first step, you will likely miss it with such a camera. Similarly for any action, such as sports or wildlife: you need a fast response if you do not want to miss that "moment". DSLRs generally have fast response with lag less than 1/10 second. DSLRs use dedicated circuits for each camera function and independent focusing sensors for fast focusing. These added electronics add to the bulk, weight and cost of our toys. All things said I go for optics!