Digital Photography - How Many Mega pixels Do We Need?
July 29, 2008
Are you having megapixel envy each time you walk by the camera section of your favorite electronics store? So do I. But, do we really need more and more pixels? The answer depends on what we intend to do with the images. First, a quick definition of megapixel:
A single pixel is the smallest unit of color that a camera’s sensor has the ability to capture. The more pixels the sensor can hold results in a sharper image the camera duplicates. The technical term for a unit of “a million pixels” is a megapixel. Many cameras notate the abbreviated megapixel as “MP”.
So how exactly do we know how many pixels we need from our camera? The first step is to have in mind what your intent is for your images. This is important when the purpose for the images require a high resolution digital photo. Photos for only the computer screen need only a low resolution image, making any camera adequate if that is your only need from your photos. High resolution photos are most frequently needed for printing or developing pictures. Using this example, lets use the goal of printing photos to address our question about mega pixels.
Next we must determine the largest print size we would like of our photo. Let’s presume that we won’t be needing poster-sized images of our photos for wallpapering our home, so poster prints will fall into the “seldom or never” category. With extreme sizes eliminated, we have the three most common photo sizes to think about. According to online photo labs, the following minimum resolutions are adequate to create high quality prints:
4 x 6″: 640 x 480 pixels (0.3 mega pixels) 5 x 7″: 1024 x 768 pixels (0.8 mega pixels) 8 x 10″: 1536 x 1024 pixels (1.6 mega pixels)
I know from personal experience that my 3 megapixel camera is as low as I want to go for an 8 x 10″ print; any less would start showing pixilation at close examination. Based on this experience, I suggest doubling the above megapixel recommendations when buying a camera. This exercise has taught us that if we only want 4 x 6″ prints, then 0.6 megapixels are sufficient. Most digital cameras start at 2 megapixels, which is sufficient to produce quality prints up to 5 x 7″.
Now that we know the minimum megapixel requirements for our needs, we are free to focus on other important features of the camera such as lens quality, color reproduction, optical zoom, body size, etc.
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