Let’s talk Megapixels
Posted: December 10th, 2008 | Filed under: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »Here’s a topic I’ve been asked about a good bit recently, so I thought it would be a good idea to briefly address what this mysterious megapixel is and how it effects your pictures. Digital images are made up tiny squares pieced together, called pixels. Literally, a megapixel is equivalent to one million pixels. So naturally, the more megapixels your camera has, the higher the quality of your image (this is called resolution).
Now, you’re probably thinking that all of this technical mumbo jumbo is great and all, but how does it effect me and how many megapixels does my camera need? Well, it depends on how you want to use your images. If you’re only planning on storing and viewing your pictures on a computer screen, then you won’t need a camera with as many megapixels as someone that wanted to blow up their images poster-sized.
There is a great chart over at digicamhelp.com that shows you the minimum megapixel count to get a certain print size. Here’s another similar chart for those that are a little more technically savvy. So if you’re never going to print anything larger than an 8″ x 10″, you don’t necessarily need a 10 megapixel camera. Another thing to consider is that the higher the megapixel count, the larger the images will be when you download them to your computer (and the more hard drive space the images are going to take up).
So, in short, don’t get glossy eyed when the sales person pitches you a 25 megapixel camera swearing that it’s the biggest, best and it’s exactly what you ought to have. Choose a camera that has a megapixel count that will suit your needs.
Some further reading:
- Digicamhelp: What is a megapixel?
- Breaking the Myth of Megapixels
- Pixels, on Wikipedia
- Why the Megapixel Race Needs to End
Great post man! It is funny, when my brother was visiting a few weeks ago he was making fun of my camera (a five year old Kodak digicam) and that his had twice as many megapixels (mine only has 4 . . . but works fine form my use). I asked him if he even knew what a megapixel was. He didn’t. I just emailed him the link to this post hoping that maybe it will clear things up for him.
My first digital camera back in the day was a 3.2 megapixel Kodak and it actually took some really decent shots. Of course, my current camera has three times that, but I guess I kind of need it.
My first digicam (we still have but need to replace) is 3.2 megapix. And you know what? It does great. We have some 8×10 prints that actually look good from it though the charts say you can’t. The problem now is since I want to replace it (there’s nothing like a small point and shoot) I’m hard pressed to find anything below like 8 mp. And you’re right, they take up more room on the memory card/hard drive, but do you know if they also take longer to record the shot? You know, if it’s having to record and save all that info, do you know if the cameras are faster now to handle the ‘download’?
one other mystery that exists is that I can’t always tell if the camera is recording at 300dpi or 72dpi. The box info isn’t usually specific on that.
Larger files definitely take more time to write to the memory card, but the write speed depends a lot on the memory card, memory card type and the camera itself. Each size/brand of memory cards have different write speeds, so that factors into the save time.
I’ve seen cameras record at both 300ppi and 72ppi – that would be a good topic to research online and ask the store help before buying a camera because I think it depends on each individual model.
[...] may remember my post from a while back, Let’s Talk Megapixels. In this post, I talked about what megapixels actually are and how they affect your images. Well, [...]