In the market for a new digital camera? Don’t fall into the megapixel trap! Megapixel counts are a technical specification of all digital cameras that are exploited by marketing people to convince consumers of a camera’s superior image quality. The truth is that megapixels are just one part of a much larger picture.
Just as matter is made up of atoms, digital photos are made up of pixels. Pixels are the many, many, tiny little elements that come together to form a digital image. The term “megapixel” is commonly understood to mean “one million pixels”. A 6 MP camera can thereby produce images that are constructed from six million pixels. Megapixel counts are often the most advertised spec of any digital camera. You are lead to believe that more megapixels correspond to better images, but is that really the case?
Do more megapixels make better photos?
The answer is not yes or no, but rather that megapixels are one ingredient in the formula for high-quality digital photos. If you purchase a camera based on megapixels and ignore its other features, you will most likely make a poor decision.
Most of us are taking family portaits, vacation snapshots, and other photos that will be stored on a computer, e-mailed around, and printed on small and medium-sized pieces of paper. For these purposes, an 8, 7, or even 6 megapixel camera is perfectly adequate. I have many 8 x 10 photos hanging around my home. I even have a 60 inch poster on my dining room wall of a Hawaiian vacation photo that always gets a “wow” from visitors. All of these photos were taken with a 6 megapixel compact digital camera.
So what good are lots of megapixels?
A high megapixel count is not a bad thing, it is often just unnecessary for the average photographer. Professional photographers who are shooting magazine ads, advertisements, and billboards - stuff that ends up as large, high-quality prints - are the sort of people who get the most out of high megapixel counts. You will often find pros shooting in the studio with 12, 15, and 20+ megapixel cameras.
Is there a downside to lots of megapixels?
You can’t expect an economically priced consumer digital camera to handle a ton of megapixels with the same grace as a professional camera costing many thousands of dollars. A compact digital camera with too many megapixels will often turn out “noisy” photos. Noisy photos are plagued by colored spots, grain, and a lack of sharpness — in other words, cameraphone-quality pics from an otherwise expensive camera.
What is noise?
In order to illustrate noise in digital photos, I now present a completely unscientific experiment. Both of the following photos were taken at 1600 ISO. In Photo A, the digital noise is extremely pronounced. You can see pink splotches around the perimiter, and a lack of sharpness in the subject. In Photo B, the subject is sharp and the colors are much less grainy.
Photo A is noisy, while Photo B is much less so. As more megapixels are crammed into the same size camera sensor, the risk of introducing more digital noise increases.
Full disclosure of unscientific bits: photo A was taken with a 7.1 megapixel Sony Cybershot, and photo B was taken with a 10.1 megapixel Canon Digital Rebel XTi. The overall difference in camera quality makes much more of a difference than a few megapixels.
Instead of looking for an upgrade that has more megapixels, try putting some weight on the following features, which all contribute to a well-rounded camera:
- Optical zoom instead of digital zoom. I would take 3x optical zoom over 5x digital zoom any day of the week.
- Choose glass lenses over plastic ones.
- Low shutter lag. High shutter lag results in missed photos.
- Image stabilization.
- Extended battery life.
- An optical viewfinder is a nice complement to the LCD screen.
- Manual controls. You never know when you might want to start learning about controlling exposure.
- Ergonomics - the camera should feel comfortable in your hands, and be large or small enough to fit your personal taste.
How many megapixels are enough?
I will end this article with an answer to the question you have probably been asking since the very first sentence. If I were to put myself in the shoes of the average shooter, taking photos at parties, family events, and on vacation, making small prints, a few 8×10s, t-shirts, and maybe even the occasional poster, I would be perfectly happy with a 6 or 7 megapixel camera with a well-rounded feature set.
